Upon facing the trend of development, the reliability of the society on engineers can no longer be denied. Society demands the maximum interaction with technology which makes science to be nearly synonymous with innovation. But technical skills alone are not enough. Leaders are required in order to turn ideas into solutions, to bring innovations to life as well as to influence the governments and societies. In order to achieve that level, leadership must be a key component advancing for the engineering profession to sustain, remain relevant and associated in a period of increased outsourcing and global rivalry. According to Paul and Falls (2015), students define a leader in an engineering context as someone who can possess strong personal and influential character, able to lead and work in a team and proficient in technical skills. Nowadays, corporate companies who intent on maintaining a competitive edge are looking for engineers that are capable of leading multidisciplinary teams and combine technical ingenuity with business intuition (Warnick, Schmidt & Bowden, 2014). The changing nature of engineering in a globally competitive environment need to be explored. This writing will address on the engineering leadership knowledge that will equips future engineers to meet the needs of 21st century engineering which includes identity development, technical skills and innovative thinking skills.
Leadership identity reflects one’s values, mindset, actions and responses. Since leaderships starts from within, it is very crucial to develop one’s personal character before anything else. The keyword to this matter is the sense of responsibility which is the foundation and backbone of the leadership skills (Paul & Falls, 2015). Responsibility can be broaden to many scope which includes responsibility to self and others. By developing self-awareness, leaders can understand their strengths and weaknesses in a balanced way. Acknowledging weaknesses or areas of development in a constructive manner helps engineers to improve themselves and to see them as challenges rather than obstacles. A confident and positive leader, will make the employees find reassurance and security. Therefore, it is important for leaders to have high tolerance of ambiguity and the ability to remain calm and composed despite the situations. By doing so, they will be able to think, act and lead rationally, orderly and in a purposeful manner in times of uncertainty. Great leaders ‘walk the talk’. They are honest and transparent, and have high integrity–they do what they say they are going to do. The importance of being conscious of their own leadership behaviours and how they are impacting others cannot be neglected. Engineers are not meant to be readily perfect. There is always a door for learning. They can learn to lead from the example of other role models around and anticipate in building and enhancing their subordinators because a good leader creates a better leader than himself. They must be able to lead by example, inspire and motivate through actions.
The best leaders possess great communication skills to get their message across and really inspire others. It is about time for engineers to work on how to break the stereotype that engineers are lack of social skills (Villa, Esquinca, Mein, Golding & Hug, 2015). Maria Montessori, a physicist who are known for her philosophy of education stated that words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people. Therefore, it is compulsory for engineers to be able to conduct a presentation to the level of understanding of the audiences (Warnick, Schmidt & Bowden, 2014). Persuading technical professionals can be challenging. Listening which might probably be one of the most underrated communication skills can be a good starting point to master this branch. Coming back to the engineering student perspectives, faculty needs to increase student’s participation when it comes to technical skills rather than maintaining the traditional way which is lecture-based approach to maximize learning outcome (Warnick, Schmidt & Bowden, 2014). Next, leaders need to know the importance of networking which involves connecting with people, sharing ideas and accessing anything helpful, for mutual benefit. A leader engineer act as the middle point of all relation in business terms (Villa, Esquinca, Mein, Golding & Hug, 2015). Building a network of contacts is a powerful and effective way of managing one’s career. For engineers, it is particularly effective as it enables them to achieve more in a shorter timeframe. As time waits for no one especially in business terms which is very related with engineering career, a leader need to excel in prioritization to ensure smooth flow of management. This includes the ability to analyse the processes and select the simplest way to finish a task as well as good adaptation when there is a sudden change of plan.
Engineers have deemed innovative thinking a necessary skill in their line of work. A good engineer leader who keeps the main goal in focus is able to think outside of the box, display excellent strategic vision and create purposeful image of the future. According to Paul and Falls (2015), an engineer leader should not only view a situation as a whole, but is able to break it down into sub parts for closer inspection. Not only is the goal in view but a good leader should be able to break it down into manageable steps and make progress towards it. They should be able to tackle the current situation and take advantages and opportunities in the marketplace. In order to do that, engineer leaders should dare to take risk to meet up with people from different disciplines, background and areas of expertise to share their thinking because that is the time where innovation is more likely to occur. Sometimes the complexity of a problem demands diversity while other times, the application of one field’s methods or habits of mind to another field’s problem produces the breakthrough. However, some push-back occurred might occur along the way. This is where a leader should. display fearless loyalty to doing what is right for the organization, by creating a filtering mechanism.
As a conclusion, the first priority of leadership engineering is to develop the right personality, together with the right skills and to the right degree in innovative work. Managers in industry are challenged to cultivate key leadership attributes in junior engineers. Industry is also similarly challenging universities to broaden curricula beyond the intellectual endeavours of design and scientific inquiry to the greater domain of professional leadership and entrepreneurship which emphasize the need for leadership education to be done in team and implemented at early academic career (Warnick, Schmidt & Bowden, 2014). The engineering leadership knowledge is important to be implemented at early phase of study because it seeks to provide a paradigm shift in producing engineers who can lead with caliber.