Well hello there. I’m Pat sweet.

In today’s show, we kick things off with a bang and talk about leadership in engineering and how you can lead no matter where you are on the corporate ladder. Maybe you’re not on the ladder at all – either way you can lead and that’s the take-home message for today.

Before we get into the main content though I want to take a moment to thank you for joining me today. It’s awesome to be able to be podcasting again, and it’s awesome that there’s anyone out there listening to this. If you could see me right now you’d see that I’m in a makeshift studio in the closet in my master bedroom. So a humble situation here – but sonically superior to just about anything else in the house. So all that to say thank you so much for being with me. I’m obviously having a lot of fun with this. I hope you are too. But let’s get on to the main content for today.

[1:57] Music.

[2:07] The first thing I want to talk about here is what leadership is and it can be tough to describe what leadership is, even if it’s really easy to see it in action. There are lots of different models of leadership but they ultimately boil down to one important thing:

[2:23] Leadership is about your ability to guide those around you to work toward a common purpose or vision. The vision is normally something aspirational to make the world – even if it’s just the world immediately around you – better in some way.

[2:39] Helps people understand and really feel in their bones the why behind what a team is doing and what the world might look like if their mission is accomplished. Really imbuing that why into the work helps people to engage with the work and ultimately that helps people do work faster do better work and have better impact.
Leadership, if you view it from that perspective, helps a team make better decisions maintain engagement improve morale and like I said just plain do better work.

[3:15] So to sum things up a strong leader is someone who’s got a compelling vision,
and who can effectively communicate that vision to others through their words their actions and their behaviors through just the kind of person that they are. When I say communicate, that’s really important there. I don’t mean communicate in terms of just saying the words what I mean is really transmit that Vision in a way that others get it. I think I said a few moments ago – get it deep in their bones. They don’t just understand what the team is trying to accomplish and how they’re trying to make the world a better place, they’re really living it when they step into the office each day, and they feel compelled to pursue it because it’s the right thing to do. One of the things that leadership gets confused with is management and one of the key takeaways that I want you to walk away with at the end of this episode is understanding that while leadership and management are absolutely related and probably come together on the shelf in the bookstore – they are different ideas.

Let me share a little story.

[4:29] Some time ago I worked for a very well-respected engineer with decades of experience in the organization I was working in. Let’s call him Doug. His name’s not Doug but we’re going to call him Doug. Doug was, by any measure, a world-class expert in the technology that we were working on. He always knew what was going on, he knew how to solve any technical problem that came up and when I first interviewed with the company I was really really excited to work for this guy. It was clear even just through the interview this person was a world-class expert and who doesn’t get excited about working with someone who’s like really really good at what they do? He even had a pretty compelling vision for how the future might look if we were to be able to accomplish what we were setting out to do.

There was just one problem – the guy was a bit of a jerk.

[5:20] He really didn’t treat his people with respect. He was very comfortable sharing with others just how flawed he thought other people were when they weren’t in the room, and he always had someone else to blame for when things went poorly. And after a year of this I realized – man – I was starting to dread going to work. I even thought about leaving engineering for a time, like, I was in a very very bad spot, and, after making an internal move to get a fresh start I really realized the truth of it. Engineering wasn’t the problem. The work wasn’t the problem. Doug was the problem and my relationship with him as a result of the lack of leadership skill there. I was working for a manager who couldn’t lead.

[6:04] So I tell that story because anyone who has had an experience like this knows in their heart the difference between management and Leadership. They know that those are two different things. Not all leaders are managers and not all managers are leaders. And while the two are related they really are different concepts. If we look at management, management is about, control, it’s about planning, it’s about measuring progress. It’s really analytical. It’s “hard” and it’s about setting out to to really execute a particular set of steps in a particular way such that you can get from
A to B. It’s very important work. It’s very very important work. without managers, our large organizations in the world would have a very hard time getting anything done.

Leadership is a little bit different. Leadership is about your traits and behaviors and more importantly about vision. It’s about emotional intelligence and how you deal with other people. A leader tries to figure out not how to get from A to B so much as understanding

[7:20] that you’re at A and you would like to be at B and where is B. And are you really aiming for B or should it be C or D or E? Understanding what that destination ought to be sets the course

[7:35] that a manager would then plan out and execute toward. So, they’re to the two different things and they require different skill sets and often the very best managers, if you think back to the best managers that you’ve worked for in your career, there’s no doubt that they will also have been excellent leaders because not only were they able to sort out where B needs to be – that’s kind of a mouthful –
but also how to get there, so they have both leadership and management skills.
Let me emphasize something here: the difference between management and Leadership uncovers a really important opportunity, because you don’t need to be a manager in order to be a leader.

[8:26] Let me say that again you don’t need to be a manager in order to be a leader and that’s really important because what that means is

[8:36] everyone can lead you don’t need any particular job title on your business card on your LinkedIn profile. You can lead
where you are. A junior Engineers’ sphere of influence may be smaller than someone else’s
but that doesn’t mean that the junior engineer can’t lead. They absolutely can. And maybe their impact on the organization is smaller because their reach is smaller but they can still impact the
the teams that they work on. This is a key takeaway and this is one of the questions I’m really trying to answer through this
episode. The the title of the episode was the honest truth about when an engineer can lead, and here’s the punch line: you can lead right now.
And I know I’m talking to the (hopefully) thousands of people right now through this show wherever you are: you can lead right now.

[9:29] And that’s really powerful. That’s really powerful, and my hope is that the next time you go into the office you can see yourself through that lens – through the fact that you are
or can be a leader. There’s nothing holding you back other than your own
particular skills and aptitudes, which can be developed. And that’s and that’s another key point is that you don’t need to ask anyone’s permission,
to be a leader you don’t need to ask for a promotion to be a leader. Certainly it helps.
Certainly it’s great to be in a position to manage others and be in a position where you are formally entrusted with the success of a team. That puts you in a great spot,
but you don’t need it so.

[10:15] Let’s say you want to be a leader what do you do? There are a couple active things that you can do to lead regardless of where you are.
I’m going to tackle four big topics here. The first one is leading yourself. and what I mean by that is you need to have a vision for yourself in your own career, getting to the bottom of your why,
why you go to work and the difference you are trying to make happen in the world is super important. What are your own personal values what do you stand for? If you don’t

[10:47] have this written down, it’s easy to feel like you have an intuitive sense for it, but if someone were to ask you – if you were sitting right in front of me in this closet my bedroom and I asked that question it,
it could be very hard to to answer that
succinctly, so write it down, put it up on a wall, share it with other people. Really get comfortable with what your why is all about and then take time to reflect each week on how well aligned you are to that mission
vision and values.

[11:19] What worked? What didn’t? What did you do that really moved the needle toward accomplishing those things? It can be really hard to provide direction to others.
If you don’t have your own orientation sorted out, so sort it out. And that’s something that even just by having that in your own career,
other people will see that. Other people will see that you are goal-oriented that you have a vision. Maybe it’s just to get your professional engineering designation. That’s not grandiose – lots and lots of people do that but if you’re a junior,
and the other Juniors within your work group see that and see that you’re working toward that you can have a major impact on those people.
One of the things that I spent a lot of time during the covid-19 pandemic working on is toward my PMP designation project management professional and
luckily I passed the test about a month ago. Woohoo! So
one of the things that happened is it came out to some of my some of my work colleagues that I was working toward that and I found out other people were interested so we formed a study group so we could work on it together.
This is nothing remarkable, but by sharing my own goal with others and being clear on what my goal was I was able to bring others along for the ride
right? And this is a very very simple example but this is something anyone can do.
This had nothing to do with my my job title right? It had everything to do with my own vision and leading myself such that

[12:48] I could bring others along for the ride.
The next topic I wanted to talk about was leading your team whether you’re the team’s manager or not. like I said earlier,
if you can make sense of why your team exists, what your team’s why is, you can you can help bring that team toward their why.
Make decisions and contribute to group conversation by invoking that why – it’s really easy for people to lose sight of it,
and if you can have it at the top of your mind and remind people what what you’re there to do crazy meetings that are going off madly in all directions can be can be brought back on track simply by reminding the group
what your team exists to do so think about what are your team’s values?
how do you model those values? You need to look for ways to build them into your routines, your interactions, and the way you deal with the rest of the world. If you can’t make sense of your team’s values or Vision, if that’s confusing,
ask your team leader about it talk about it. Organizing a meeting to sort it out with them and with your team. Even just
asking to have those things more concretely established can have a huge impact on your team and really change the way your team’s leader is thinking about the team. These can be very very powerful things – simple things to do – but very powerful.

[14:08] And finally be excellent in your own work. Show people glimpses of the team’s Vision by getting closer to it yourself. Be deliberate about things like continuous improvement and making progress – that could be
work on a test report or could be working a billion dollar project proposal – it doesn’t matter. Whatever your
work is, be excellent at it and really try to model the values that your team espouses.
The third of the four topics I wanted to cover with respect to how you can actually lead no matter where you are is to serve others. Leaders are service-oriented. They exist to help others.

[14:50] And that’s important to bear in mind because a lot of leaders believe that their teams exist to serve the leader.
Good leaders don’t see it that way. Good leaders see it the opposite. They look for ways to support the team so that the team can work toward the vision and then get out of the way. They look to remove roadblocks.
They look to deal with issues. They look to support and develop their teams. Listen to your team members.
Really listen. Active listening is is one of these things that is often recommended then very seldom applied. And often what
you realize when you really listen to people is that people don’t always need advice or help, but someone to just hear them out – to help them get their own thoughts in order.
Or even just to feel like someone else cares about the things they’re struggling with and, again, you can do this in
any role in an organization so try to adopt a service orientation and if you can do that,
you will be seen as a leader within the group absolutely. And the final thing that I wanted to touch on and this is kind of a funny one.
It’s that no matter where you are in the organization you can lead by thinking.

[16:03] And I know I know it’s kind of a crazy thing to say but this is a common theme throughout all of this. Leadership requires
active dedicated thinking about the bigger picture and a lot of people don’t take the time in the run of a week to think
big picture. There’s a really good line in the INCOSE handbook. INCOSE is the International Council of Systems Engineering and I’m a member of INCOSE and have a systems engineering designation through them
but the line of the handbook is in one of the first chapters and
I’ve hung on to that for the last several years. The line is “thinking is always in scope”.
No matter what project you’re on no matter what you’re doing, thinking is in scope, meaning you can make time to think. A lot of people don’t because they feel like like that time doesn’t exist.
It’s always okay to think, so make time, literally book it in your calendar
every once in awhile to think about the big picture, think about your goals your team’s goals, your vision, your mission, because without making this a priority
you’ll never get to a point where you can really articulate things in a way to make it easy for yourself to understand let alone to share that with anyone
external either – your team members or anyone else in your organization.

[17:25] And I want to emphasize something again – all of these things, every single thing that I mentioned here today in terms of what you can do actively to lead, you can do regardless of where your name ends up on the org chart.
If you’re having trouble, find a mentor, someone you respect ,whose leadership you resonate with. You’ll find it’s amazing how giving people can be of their time and wisdom if you just
ask. Find someone who’s doing it to model yourself after. So what’s the take-home message as we kind of conclude this main segments?

[17:59] Let me let me recap the main points here because we’ve unpacked a lot in our chat today and as you can tell I get really excited about this so it’s probably a good idea to sum things up.
Leadership is about guiding people toward a common Vision through your actions behaviors and example and it’s different from management, which is more about
control and planning and execution. Luckily you can lead from anywhere in your organization.
We talked about some of the practical things you can do with respect to leading yourself, your team, and the value of really dedicating time to think.
We also talked a little bit about the value of finding a mentor. If you can’t find a mentor or you want a little more hands-on help in developing your leadership skills, that’s something I can help you with too. If you feel like you’d benefit from something like that you can go ahead and book a call with me
at EngineeringAndLeadership.com/meet. Next up the E&L mailbag.

[18:59] Music.

[19:09] This is the part of the show where I read your mail, comments, tweets, and messages and answer your questions. I promise to read absolutely everything you send me and I’ll share my favorites here on the podcast.
Last week, I released a new productivity guide called Finding the 6th Day: An Engineer’s Quick Guide to Making More Time Now.
It’s free to download so I’ll put a link in the show notes for you which you can get at EngineeringAndLeadership.com/episode7.
The whole idea behind the guide was to try and come up with a way to help people create an extra eight hours of productive time within the next week,
a bold claim, I know, but I really think if you take a look at the guide you’ll find that

[19:48] it’s easier than you might think to create a bunch of extra productive time. The guide generated quite some buzz, which is great to see.
Tyler Watkins of TylerJWatkins.com wrote to mention that he’d never seen a productivity guide before that suggested getting early feedback
which was cool. One of the things I suggest is that you take
early versions of whatever product you’re developing, be it a physical product, or code, or a report, whatever it is, and bring early early early prototypes to the people you’re making it for
to make sure you’re on the right track because one of the main killers of productivity is
rework. Not really understanding what the expectations are or what your customer (whether it’s an internal or an external customer doesn’t matter) what your customer.
expects of you. So the earlier you can get feedback on on prototypes, even simple ones,
can really really improve productivity by avoiding rework. Full disclosure Tyler and I studied together in engineering school. He’s a super great guy really really well read.
And I mentioned his website TylerJWatkins.com off the top. He’s got a lot of really cool stuff on his site. His specialty really is in both
physical and mental training and he’s got a book coming out soon on stoicism so I’m planning on having him on the podcast talk about that. I think that can be really cool. So thank you very much Tyler. hopefully we’ll be hearing from you soon.

[21:13] And I got another comment an interesting question about one of the other recommendations I made in the guide from Carl Friesen.

[21:21] I recommend what I call a calendar cleanse which is
exactly what it sounds like: a thorough review of all the items in your calendar and to have a real think about whether or not you are either getting or giving value in each of those meetings and if not,
I suggest you recuse yourself from those meetings.

[21:41] Carl was asking if the it was maybe a bit easier to kind of skip out on meetings what with everyone working from home these days and he was kind of concerned about people just bailing on meetings because they didn’t feel like it and
my thought is that it probably is easier for people to just not show up to meetings because they’re working from home and can come up with every excuse in the book – but a word of caution on this –
if you decide to bail on meetings I always always
always suggest staying 100% above board. And what I mean by that is let your organizer know you won’t be going anymore and and explain why. Nine times out of ten
there won’t be an issue in the organizer will understand that you were added to the invite a long time ago and you know the conversation has kind of wandered and you really don’t need to be there anymore.
The tenth time though maybe you realize that you’ve overlooked something and in fact you really are important to a particular meeting, so
always coordinate that with the organizer of meeting if you’re planning on delegating the meeting to someone else or recusing yourself from the meeting to save some time very very important there.

[22:51] Again if you’re interested in getting a copy for free of,
Finding the Sixth day just go to the show notes at EngineeringAndLeadership.com/episode 7.
That’s all the time we have for the show today. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve had an awful lot of fun with this and I’m looking forward to the next episode. In the next episode we’ll be talking about the life-changing magic of saying no.
If you enjoyed the show it would be awesome if you could leave a review for me that helps me improve the show and helps others to find the show as well.
If you want to read what you’ve just heard go to EngineeringAndLeadership.com/episode 7.
There you’ll be able to read all the main content and even download a full transcript of the show including all the links and resources mentioned. Until next time this is Pat sweet reminding you that if you’re going to be anything.
Be excellent.

[23:48] Music.

[23:57] You’ve been listening to the Engineering and Leadership podcast with Pat sweet.
If you’d like to learn more go to EngineeringAndLeadership.com where you’ll find more free articles, podcasts, and downloads to help Engineers Thrive. That’s EngineeringAndLeadership.com.

[24:14] Music.