What if I don't want to be a leader? 13

[bradpa77]

Is that so bad? I like being an engineer. I like creating stuff and analyzing stuff and generally working on my own. I understand the need for team leaders but I honestly do not feel that my personality is fit for a leadership role. Quite frankly, I don't like to give direction and my people skills aren't my strong suit.

The problem is that as I progress in my career and gain seniority (10 years experience now), I feel more and more pressure to take on the role as a leader. Job postings in my pay range require me to "lead a team" of engineers and designers. My boss is consistently pushing me to develop my leadership skills. I'm asked to take the lead on new projects.

Everything I read online about leadership gives me the vibe that I am "supposed" to WANT leadership. It's apparently EVERYONE's goal in life to be in charge and run the show. Then I read stuff telling me to be true to myself and find the right career fit. So what do I do? Work hard to become leadership material even though it doesn't come naturally? Should I force the square peg in the round hole? Do I need to become a leader to make it as an engineer? Is a leadership role simply an inevitable step in an engineering career? If so, have I chose the wrong field? Will my career be stalled or even derailed if I avoid opportunities that include leadership?

wtf?

I've been wrestling with these questions for days now. Please tell me I'm not the only engineer that feels this way.

 

[pennpiper]

Here is some defense for your position.

http://www.answers.com/topic/peter-principle

 

[KENAT]

You've only been wrestling with it for days? This started to come up when I'd only been working for about 9 months (which is pretty pathetic really).

Yes there tends to be a general theme/trend that for advancement you need to take on some level of management/leadership... If you think about it, for many jobs/careers it may be the only path to significant advancement. I mean, how far can being a cashier in a store take you?

However, with Engineering if you work it right, and have the right employer you can minimize this and keep it in an area that holds some interest for you.

For instance, while I think it's fallen to the wayside a bit, at one point we had separate technical and management 'streams'. You could in theory reach VP level but in the technical stream. Now you'd still have some kind of management/leadership role but it might be things like leading the IP/Patent review board etc. and in theory only take up a very small amount of your time.

We have a couple of guys in their 50's and more in their 40's that are still in purely technical roles with no significant management responsibilities. They may have to take charge of their own project - or their elements of a larger project - but baring giving advice to junior folk etc. they don't have any real management responsibilities.

Now I will say that some of them may not be getting paid as much as if they'd gone to the dark side, but I suspect they do OK.

There are a few members on this site that have got themselves niches as hardcore analysts/experts etc. and don't seem to have collected management duties along the way. What effect it may have had on their pay compared to if they had become managers I don't know, but at least a couple of them claim to be doing OK.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[ctopher]

"It's apparently EVERYONE's goal in life to be in charge and run the show". Not true.
Don't believe EVERYTHING you read.

If leadership is your thing, someday you'll be a leader, but don't rush it. Do what you enjoy now.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[Maui]

Pressure from who specifically? The personal motivation behind making the move into the management ranks is often tied to increased pay, prestige, and having a larger presence in the overall decision making process. Making your presence more widely known in the industry is also a side benefit, and the increased yearly bonusues can be substantial. For example, when I initially made the jump to the executive ranks my yearly bonus went from roughly 3% (if we even got one) to 34% in one step (and I always made more than this each year because it was based on performance). Moving up in an organization from an engineering role is usually accomplished by entering the management ranks in some capacity, and this is not necessarily a bad thing provided you are a properly skilled and competent individual.

Some of those that I have seen obtain their MBA and enter the management ranks couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. Not only were they questionable engineers, they were downright aweful managers. One MBA in particular was a micromanaging dimwit who would have been more effective if we made him stand in a pot in the corner and watered him twice a day.

One of the biggest downsides is that in some organizations they will expect you to live the job. Traveling can take up a substantial amount of your time, and may involve weekends. Whenever they decide that they need you, you are expected to drop whatever it is that you're doing and attend to their problems. In some cases they may expect you to tow the company line to the point where you actually trade your own ethics in for the job, which is something that I was never willing to do. This is one of the reasons I no longer work for that particular employer.

You have to choose what suits you, and management is not for everybody. If you're happy where you are, there is no fundamental reason why you should make the jump. It's your life. Live it as you see fit.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[mfgenggear]

"Now I will say that some of them may not be getting paid as much as if they'd gone to the dark side, but I suspect they do OK."

Yes be true to your self & the emperor(From Star Wars) will demote you.

You need to work the politics, & stay on the good side of management.
that normally entails more responsibility. if that includes teaching excuse me leading a group so be it.

Mfgenggear

 

[Jetgirl8]

Story of my career. (For reference, I've been in the aerospace industry for 12 years, and in current my current position for 4.) I left my last position because all the work I loved doing was slowly taken away from me and I was put in charge of managing contracts to "lead" others doing the work I wanted to do. My current position is better, but I still struggle with it on at least a weekly basis. If you are good at what you do, people will want to have to lead a team of people doing that, etc. I just really want to keep my head down and do the work.

When the future's architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You'd better lie low

 

[IRstuff]

It's a trade, though. Typically, most large companies will have a purely technical career path, but it will definitely not be as well-paid as the management path. I've been put in that position several times, and have managed to claw my way back to the technical side each time.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[KENAT]

mfgenggear - when I say I expect they do OK it's because I actually saw one of their salaries a few years back (they left it in the copier or something) and it was well into triple figures & well over 50% more than I was making for an essentially similar position though with a lot more directly relevant experience.

Sadly our new engineering director is very much project management focused and his solution to not enough staff/too much work has been to make a bunch of new people project managers - myself included.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[jmw]

Sometimes leading is unavoidable.
I note you don't say "managing" which might be something different.

If you don't lead, who will? Someone less capable than you? And they will be influencing what you do?

Leading usually means doing what you normally do but taking some responsibility for and oversight of what others around you are doing; possibly with more authority to assert your experience, and it is not necessarily the same as "managing" where you may have to put aside what you do and enjoy doing to do something else altogether.

Somewhere along the line you ought to find to be a leader is to be recognised as an authority and as an experienced engineer whose views are officially taken more seriously and having greater scope to apply your skills and influence how others develop and apply their skills.
This ought to be something you can enjoy doing.
In all probability, if you are at this level you probably are already being a leader so some extent.
Take a look at what you do now compared to what you used to do when you started and see to what extent this is true.

Management is something else again. (Unless management are proposing "Leadership" as unpaid "Management". So it depends on just how your duties will change and how expectations will change).

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Twoballcane]

Let me take the flip side of this argument of being a leader. Actually I’m surprised that your management is pushing you to be a leader type if your character seems that it is not a good fit. If you’re a good worker bee, usually they’ll keep you in that role until you ask to lead. However, you’re a leader in your own right. You still dictate how the design is done and you are the expert in the product you are designing. Being a manger is not always necessarily a leader and vice versa. Mangers tend to look after their people, make sure the schedule is on track, and clear any barriers that their people come against. Leaders are on the front end of the project dictating how things should be done and what direction the team should be going. Now with that said, yes there are positions with both attributes depending on the person.

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."
“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”

 

[jmcoope3]

I was always under the firm belief that there's two different kinds of people that go into engineering; Design Engineers and Management Engineers, with the key difference being how much you trust your fellow engineers.

Management engineers trust their fellow engineers, focusing on the times that trust has been rewarded. Their motivation is more team oriented and deflecting problems. I'd never want one of them to be responsible for stamping anything, but they keep the process moving forward.

Design engineers don't have this trust, focusing more on the possible situations of failure. Their motivations are more efficiency and process... not anything to do with the customer. These are the stamping engineers, the guys that keep you honest, and normally the ones that stay way too late and mumble to themselves a lot (at-least that's what I do).

Either way, you miss-place one for the other and you get a crappy manager or a bad designer.

 

[GregLocock]

I'm in the situation Kenat describes, 51 year old pretty much left to do weird technical stuff as I see fit, so long as everything that needs to be done gets done. One thing you might bear in mind that after 10 years doing the exact same job a certain ennui might set in, so you do need fresh challenges, in my case I went into a different technical field than I had been up til then.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[KENAT]

(Strangely enough Greg you were one of the members here who sprang to mind, as was Twoballcane, I just didn't want to volunteer names in case I'd previously misunderstood. However, as you both felt the need to post...)

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[patprimmer]

One problem is that most who make senior management had an overwhelming desire to get there. Some are so egocentric that they cannot imagine others have other aspirations in life.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm

for site rules

 

[Ron]

Bradpa77....there is a confusion here between "leadership" and "management". Often when management asks you to take on a "leadership" role, they usually mean that they want you to "manage" something. They view your technical skills as being portable to the management of other techies. Usually not so.

I have been in one of those larger companies with a "dual career path". The higher one goes up the food chain, the more divergent the career path becomes.

In my case I was in a company that was started by engineers and managed by "working" engineers. The technical proficiency of an employee was valued equally or above their "management" capability. It had one primary bean counter who laid a terrific framework within which engineers could be engineers and management was almost a by-product. Absolute genious.

As the company grew, the company diverged from its own "career path". More bean counters came in. They became weeds in a garden of lush grass. The weeds took over...everything still appeared green, but the underlying root stock slowly died away, taking with it the lushness that was the company. Their only interest was in maintaining a green color...not protecting the root stock.

I have almost always been in a "leadership" position. I don't necessarily play well with others and I sure as hell don't enjoy "managing" anything, yet I have held very responsible positions (VP, Sr. VP, Pres.) all without being much of a "manager". I would much rather take one or more young engineers in the field and let them work with me than to tell them to go do the work and bring me some results. Leadership by example still works.

Engineering is a progressive mentorship profession, not a "throw them to wolves and see who survives" management mentality. Take on a "leadership" role of mentoring and passing along your knowledge. You will likely find that you'll achieve a great deal of respect from your charges that will make you successful in that role.

 

[rowingengineer]

I was once told that if you are to be respected as an engineer in the community a leader you shall be.

Agree with Ron "leadership" and "management" are not on in the same and should not be confused. A "team leader" is not definition of a leader but a small manager, a leader needs no title.

http://www.nceng.com.au/

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

 

[patprimmer]

To be a leader you must be respected.

To be a manager you must have authority, but it becomes easier if you have both and are both. They are neither mutually inclusive nor mutually exclusive of each other.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm

for site rules

 

[SomptingGuy]

Me too...

I was pushed into management in my late 20's and fled from it as fast as I could, changing departments, divsions and countries (but maintaining the comfort of the same employer).

Then it started to happen again as I was formally managing new graduates with little or no experience in our area.

These days I'm in my mid 40's and almost a solo pilot. I get respect from the team I'm in, both older and younger folk. I think I earn less than those a grade above me, but we don't talk about these things. I do know that the job ads in the trade press all seem to want more management duties and pay less.

- Steve

 

[SNORGY]

My interpretation of the OP is that the context of his / her situation is along the lines of being compelled to do more management, delegation and coordination and less of the hands-on number-crunching.

There is a certain sense of inner peace with being left alone to do your own thing, knowing that whatever else is going on around you, at least what *you* are doing is correct and, presumably, enjoyable. It's a darn sight less stressful than being held accountable for the errors or the missed deadlines of the subordinates in your charge. It is also more interesting to be doing the "fun stuff".

Several years ago, I "led" a team of 75 mechanical engineers. My role was to provide them with non-glare monitors, comfortable chairs and mechanical pencils; mediate arguments; as well as to buy them all dinner at the Christmas party (which left me $3,000.00 out of pocket until the new year). I absolutely hated it. It sucked. It wasn't "engineering" at all - it was parenting.

I am a good Project Engineer / Manager, but I *hate* the administration / reporting / client interface that goes with it; all about cost and schedule and billing and nothing about design. If that is what the OP (bradpa77) means by a "leadership" position, then by all means just say no until you actually *want* that in your working life. It's sure not for me, and not for everyone. And it's tough to get out of it if you have the misfortune of being perceived as good at it. Sometimes, even to this day, I still get dragged out of "Project Management Retirement" to actually run a job - usually one that's begun to go sideways and needs to be "fixed".

This is one where you have to stick to your guns, and take advantage of every opportunity to prove your competence and value in the things you actually like to do, thereby deflecting attention away from the skills you have in areas that you don't particularly like.

Regards,

SNORGY.