If you’re a maintenance engineer that wants to move into leadership, there are certain competencies that you’ll need to nurture and develop – some of which may be unexpected
Case Western Reserve University’s School of Engineering has shared ten attributes that it says engineers need to become successful leaders. While some are skills that you might expect any leader to exhibit and some are clearly linked engineering, others may be more of a surprise.
“The best leaders stay curious”
Emma Botfield, UK and Ireland Managing Director, RS
Curious as to what they are? That’s a good start, as curiosity is one of those ten attributes. Emma Botfield, UK and Ireland Managing Director at RS, knows why. “The best leaders stay curious throughout their careers,” she says. “Some of the greatest inventions in history came from people asking, ‘what if?’. Being curious keeps you looking for opportunities to do things better in the future.”
Below are the views of three more industry experts on the rest of the attributes listed by Case School of Engineering.
Problem solving
Ian Bell brings almost 30 years of experience in the engineering sector to his role as Vice-President of Engineering and Facilities at RS. What does he think of the Case School of Engineering list?
For a start, he’s not surprised that that problem solving is at the top. “Problem solving is the core skill of maintenance engineers,” he says. “Our default response is ‘We've got a problem – we need to fix it.’”
Strategy
At the same time, says Bell, leaders need to understand strategy (fourth on the Case School of Engineering list). “Keep your eye on the horizon,” he cautions. Where is your business heading? And is the work of maintenance engineering aligned with these corporate objectives?
“There’s something about having a team that really enjoys business-as-usual and gets a kick out of it,” he continues. “But keeping the team motivated to do brilliant business-as-usual is not an easy thing. And I think a differentiator for an engineering department is the ability to say no to stuff in order to focus on what matters, because less is more.”
Negotiating the tension between needing a sharp focus on priorities and a wider vision of the business and its direction is what distinguishes the most successful engineering leaders.
“Balance the introversion that you often get from engineers with the extraversion, the ability to see the bigger picture”
Ian Bell, Vice-President of Engineering and Facilities, RS
“The great engineering managers that I’ve been lucky enough to work with have been able to balance the introversion that you often get from engineers with the extraversion, the ability to see the bigger picture,” observes Bell. “Coupled with great engineering, that’s what you need to succeed.”
Collaboration
Being willing and able to collaborate is also vital, argues Bell – and this appears high up on the Case School of Engineering list too.
“Some engineers are definitely happier working on their own,” says Bell, “but the strength of maintenance engineering is in the whole team working together.” Collaboration includes working with other areas of the business as well. What if a crucial bit of machinery fails? To solve the problem quickly, you’d better involve the finance team. “You’re going to need funding, so you need to involve all the people who can make that happen,” adds Bell.
Diligence
Bell agrees with the list’s emphasis on diligence too. Why? “Engineers tend to be introverts. That makes them great at focusing on detail and means that they have the enthusiasm for coming up with technical engineering solutions.”
Moreover, says Bell, engineers must not lose this diligence and attention to detail (what he describes as “the passion for getting it right every time”) when they move into leadership. It’s a characteristic they need to nurture throughout their career.
Flexibility
Finally, says Bell, engineering leads must be flexible (ninth on the Case School of Engineering list). “Tackling the big items, doing them properly and driving solutions all the way to a new way of working that is self-sustaining is not easy,” he explains. It involves a willingness to both take new ideas on board and, if plans don’t work out as expected, adapt to keep projects on target.
“It’s about having an eye on the future and staying aligned because strategies change so quickly. The engineering function needs to be flexible, responsive and ready to give the business what it needs.”
Business minded
“The strategy should be business centered”
Dr Moray Kidd, maintenance engineering academic
Like Bell, maintenance engineering academic Dr Moray Kidd understands why a grasp of business strategy appears on the Case School of Engineering list. “It’s got to start with a clear strategy at the corporate level and that should cascade down into the various disciplines across the whole business,” he says. “In maintenance engineering, specifically, the strategy should be business centred in order to deliver the corporate objectives.”
Core management skills
More generally, argues Kidd, engineers who aspire to leadership need to develop a range of core management competencies. “I’m sure that the qualities of leadership are not really unique when it comes to maintenance engineering,” he says – but engineers need education and training to develop these qualities. “There’s a real recognition that a good technical engineer does not necessarily make a good leader, and there are programmes being set up globally to address some of these gaps.”
Still, more is needed. “From undergraduate level straight through to postgraduate or even PhD in research, we don’t do enough in terms of developing engineers’ interpersonal skills,” he notes.
Communication and empathy
One area where there is a skills gap is communication. According to Kidd, even maintenance engineers with PhDs from leading institutions can find communication challenging. “Sometimes they’re just unable to communicate to the relevant stakeholders, especially around the business value of what they are doing,” he states.
“Communication is key to developing as leaders,” he adds. The contributors to the Case Engineering School list felt the same, going as far as to include communication twice (positions five and ten).
“Leaders who are unable to communicate effectively are unlikely to succeed”
Dr Moray Kidd, maintenance engineering academic
It is an essential part of motivating and empowering a team, therefore has an important place in the engineering leader’s toolkit. “Leaders who are unable to communicate effectively are unlikely to succeed,” Kidd argues.
Another skills gap identified by Kidd is emotional intelligence, which also appears on the Case Engineering School list as an important characteristic for engineering leaders. Why is emotional intelligence needed? Because without empathy, the ability to communicate effectively is limited.
Speak the right language
Richard Jeffers, founder and Managing Director of RS Industria, a plug-and-play Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform, highlights the importance of language as well as communication. “To get your message across you have to speak the language of business,” he argues. “That means you need to talk about the value of mitigating risk – avoiding downtime – rather than just saying I need to shut down production.”
Use creativity to tackle challenges
“Maintenance engineering is all about creativity”
Richard Jeffers, founder and Managing Director, RS Industria
Jeffers also links problem solving, first on the Case School of Engineering list, with creativity, which is seventh on the list. “Maintenance engineering is all about creativity,” he says. “It’s about constantly identifying and solving problems. And when you’re trying to solve a problem, you are usually doing it in the context of limited resources – and that calls for creativity.”
Furthermore, creativity becomes even more important as you progress higher into leadership. “I think the need for creativity increases as you become more senior,” says Jeffers, “because you end up with the tough gigs, the problems that more junior engineers have not been able to solve using conventional techniques.”