Episode Transcript
If you’re not currently, you’ll soon be facing your next engineering career opportunity.
And you can see that it will be more of a leadership role.
You want to show that you’re the best choice to lead this high impact project.
Your own way of leading feels different than others you’ve observed.
And you find yourself questioning your capabilities.
What can you learn or change to make yourself more effective?
Who are the other leaders whose examples you should follow?
But there are many ways to be an effective leader.
And there really isn’t a whole lot you need to change at this point.
Applying Your Own Leadership Style to Your Engineering Role
Instead of force-fitting yourself into someone else’s leadership style, apply your own to the role.
I think you’ll find you have something wonderful to offer.
In fact, let me share with you what I’ve recently learned.
It’s something I’ve discovered through the interviews I conducted for my upcoming book.
It’s a unique and powerful approach to leadership that tends to be used more by women.
And more than a few women I spoke to describe it as “magic.”
I’ve found that each woman has a certain superpower that she can tap into to release the magic of her leadership style.
It’s a mode of leadership that’s based more on maximizing people and less on directing them with self-power.
And I’m betting it’s one that resonates with you, too.
Women Engineers and Their Leadership Magic
Here are 3 of the common features of this leadership magic:
- Maximizing People
Maximizing people means bringing the right people together. And motivating them for the job at hand.
It means leveraging their skills, talents and strengths so they can bring what they do best to the team.
So that their work is fueled by what drives them.
And their contribution has greatest impact.
Maximizing people requires that you make the effort to understand each person.
Know where their energetic center lies. And enable their work to be in alignment with that.
In the same way you align your own work with who you are as a person, finding that alignment for each team member leads to better results.
Team members become more motivated to reach team goals.
Each can better define what their role is. And all work better together.
Maximizing people requires frequent and clear communication to activate, encourage, and affirm.
And it requires that you give the right kind of support: Provide resources. Remove roadblocks. Have their backs.
- Exploiting Team Synergy
Exploiting team synergy first requires that you see the potential in people and the power in teams.
Women often have a knack for approaching projects through other people.
For attacking problems using the power of teams.
You don’t know exactly how a problem will be solved or what the solution will be.
But you do know there is a solution. And that your team will reach it.
Getting your team to solve a problem is the goal.
But by maximizing people and exploiting team synergy, you’ll get your team to accomplish more than they ever thought they could.
And hence solve the toughest engineering problems.
- Leveraging Engineering Experience
You have engineering training and experience. And this plays a significant role in realizing your leadership magic.
Your background in discipline, analysis, process and structure help you and your team define the project and strategize how to carry it out.
Other engineering concepts are invaluable to your leadership approach, like:
- Creative problem solving
- Organizational skills
- Systems thinking
- Risk analysis
Even if you’re no longer in an engineering job, those skills keep working for you.
And in combination with your unique leadership approach, they bring your magic.
I heard this over and over again from the women I interviewed.
They told me about their successes in solving some of the most difficult problems in their organizations.
About accomplishing the so-called impossible.
Accomplishing what others had repeatedly failed at.
Your Own Style is Your Leadership Edge in Your Engineering Career
Find the leadership style that aligns with authentic you.
This is your leadership edge.
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and highlight your leadership style.
That’s the magic.
The magic that drives you. And makes an impact in your career and the world.
Next time on Her Engineering Career Podcast, we’ll revisit being seen and heard in the engineering workplace.
Be sure to tune in for Episode 172.