Why engineers need management essay

“ Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. ” Stephen R Covey Why engineers need management? Engineers play very significant role in motivating innovations that will benefit customers and increase profits. From the earliest stage of their careers, they are expected to lead projects and teams and to bring new ideas to friuitation.

Senior-level engineers are expected to lead large, complex projects; to drive innovation; and to provide guidance for less-experienced peers. Excellent leadership skills are necessary to effectively execute such responsibilities http://www. ieee. org/organizations/pubs/newsletters/npss/0607/leadership_skills. html Engineers are trained to innovate, but, unfortunately, many have not learned the skills necessary to influence others and to develop ideas that increase profits.

Many managers are trained to do this, but they cant get into the minds of every engineer to harvest all of their ideas. Engineers, then, need to know how to articulate their thoughts so that others will be inspired to build on them. They need to learn how to drive projects and ideas to create innovations that customers will value. While not every engineer will be the next Thomas Edison, every engineer can aspire to accomplish great things that customers will value.

Engineers who dont have these goals need to ask themselves Why not? Every manager who isnt encouraging their engineers to have high aspirations should ask themselves the same question. Following are seven reasons why technical professionals need leadership skills: • Technical acumen alone is not influential. Technical gurus without leadership skills have limited influence. Not many can achieve guru status, but wouldn’t you rather be a guru with technical master and the combination of business skills and interpersonal skills that make a great leader? • Leadership is not just for managers. Leading and managing require different skill sets. Some leadership experts might argue this point, but most agree that leadership has little to do with “ management. ” Generally speaking, managers should also be good leaders.

However, strong leaders often aren’t suited to be managers, and forcing a strong leader into a management role can be counterproductive. • Engineers lead projects. Even engineers who aren’t “ project leads” provide a certain amount of direction, and they need to influence others to help get their work done. • Engineers can guide less-experienced peers. Guidance is providing direction one of the three basic definitions of leadership (the other two are influence and authority). • Engineers need to help their managers’ business succeed.

You may not be inspired to help your manager be more successful as an individual, but you must be dedicated to helping your business achieve success. If not, find another job. • Engineers can influence decision-makers in their organizations.

Engineers understand technology better than non-technical managers, and they understand the details better than most technical managers. • Everyone should be interested in building character. Leadership is mostly character and a little bit of skill. People listen to people who have integrity and who apply it well on the job. | | | | What are the duties of an engineer being a manager? Or how much important is management for professional engineer? Managers have basically two duties: To get the hold of people who are working for you and your company and to maintain an environment in which people feel comfortable to do their work. Engineers learn management skills though their mistakes done. After passing through technical ranks then came to management. There are some responsibilities of an engineer manager discussed in this article: 1-BELIEVE THE PERSON KNOWS HOW TO DO JOB: After passing through technical ranks then came to management.

There are some responsibilities of an engineer manager discussed in this article: Engineer managers start their career by doing tasks facing different technical problems. So they know very well what it takes to do the job their staff is now doing. They hire only those people who know how to do job. If they assume each person knows how to do job then they will get better results. Engineer managers Engineer managers start their career from performing technical tasks, so they know very well They hire only those people who know how to do their job if you assume each person knows how to do job, they will get better results.

Although some people do their work successfully with or without your assumptions, some people’s work will be affected by what they think you think of them. Give your staff their assignments, ask if they need help, and then leave them alone to get the work done (unless they ask for help). I don’t mean that you shouldn’t talk to them while they’re doing the work; you just shouldn’t interfere with them doing their work. When you assign work, ask if the person understands the work to do, and if he or she has the tools to do it. Decide jointly when you will check in with each other (periodic status reports, one-on-one meetings), and stick to that schedule.

If the person gets stuck, he or she should feel free to come to you for help, but if you insist on interfering, your employee will come to you for help only as a last resort. Treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you’d like to be treated. The Golden Rule “ Treat others the way you’d like to be treated” is appropriate for many purely social aspects of life, but not always appropriate for work. Effective managers learn how each member of their staff wants to be treated. Some people want specific tasks and instructions, while others prefer more general information.

Some people are motivated by solving new, tough, complex problems, but others are only comfortable when dealing with things they already know how to do to. In addition to working differently, we all prefer different types of recognition. Money is not the only method of recognition you can use to reward your staff. Some people are motivated by private thank-yous, some by public recognition, some by M; Ms or movie tickets, some by a team party.

Remember that whatever motivates you will not necessarily motivate every member of your staff. Talk to your team members to learn what form of recognition each prefers to receive. 4. Emphasize results, not time. Many organizations reward people based on the amount of time they spend at a job, not the results they achieve. However, hours on the job may not correlate with productivity.

If you really want to improve an organization’s productivity and efficiency, consider permitting everyone to work only 40 hours per week. One objection I often hear is that “ You can’t get anything done here between 9am and 5pm. ” If you manage in a high-interruption environment, decide what you can do about the interruptions. Are there meetings you can cancel? Are your team members able to organize their work so that they can be maximally productive? When people are at work more than 40 hours per week, they start taking care of theirbusiness at work. They pay bills and they call the people they haven’t called because they’ve been working. Once you create an environment where people get work done at work, and start encouraging people to work no more than 40 hours per week, you can then reward people based on what they can accomplish in 40 hours a week. I always find that productivity goes up (because people aren’t too tired to do the work, and because they’re not taking care of personal business at work). When you start observing results, not just time, it’s also much easier to give accurate and appropriate performance evaluations.

Are your staff completing their plans and designs? When they write code, how much rework do they need to do? (If you only observe how much code I can write, I can create many defects along with my code. ) Plan the work for a 40-hour week, and reward the kind of work you want done in that time. . Admit your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. They can range from forgetting a meeting to making a crazy customer commitment.

It’s embarrassing to admit that you make mistakes. Many of us think that we lose the respect of our group or peers when we admit mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes very often, you can actually gain respect when you admit your errors. If you forget a meeting, and then apologize, the other person will understand you, and eventually forgive you. Whatever you do, don’t deny or ignore your mistakes.

Ignoring a problem doesn’t make them go away, it turns the problem into a monster. At a recent client, a manager yelled at his staff in a meeting. After the meeting, he realized that he should not have yelled at the team. He was all set to let them settle down a little, and talk to them in a few days. I suggested he talk to them right away, before they had time to get angrier with him. He resisted at first, but then relented, and spoke to each person alone two days later. Every person said something like this to him: “ I was just angry with you after the meeting.

If you’d come to talk to me right away, I would have chalked it up to a bad day. But now, it’s been two days. I’m still angry with you, in fact, I’m even angrier, but now I’m not sure how to trust you. I don’t deserve to be yelled at. How will I know you won’t do this again? ” My client wasn’t altogether sure how to handle the situation. He thought he’d done the right thing by waiting, and had only made the situation worse. He decided that he would never let things wait again, and talk to his staff right away. It took his staff a few months to fully trust him again, but my client actually increased his personal power by admitting he made a mistake.

Now, he and his staff can joke about the incident, and they all call it a turning point in his awareness and capabilities as a manager. 7. Plan training time in the regular workweek. Engineering is a challenging and constantly changing discipline. Since it is constantly changing, consider planning training time in the regular workweek.

If you don’t train your people on an ongoing basis, you will both lose. The training can be about the projects or about technology. You can do this in a number of ways: * Hold brown-bag lunches, where each person discusses a particular area of his or her expertise. Hold periodic expository talks from each department.

With any luck, each department in your organization is intimately familiar with what it does, but normally other departments don’t know what the others do. * If you have cross-functional teams in your organization, you could have each team present its project to the rest of the company. * Invite outside experts to talk about specific technology or projects.

These experts could be professional consultants or speakers, or they could be a knowledgeable friend or colleague. If you’ve bought a tool and already had training, consider organizing an in-house “ user group” meeting, where people can share how they use the tool with others and discuss problems, tips, and tricks. Summary Engineers can be good managers, if they think about managing their management performance in a similar way to doing engineering: identifying how to manage your staff, and a willingness to observe your own work. You don’t have to do everything perfectly as a manager. You need to do enough right to help people do their best work group and provide your staff with an environment they can do their best work in.