Engineers Have The Power Skills to Become Great Executives

What is the most common college major of fortune 500 CEOs? It is no big surprise to me that engineering is the most common one. 33% of the S&P 500 CEOs' undergraduate degrees are in engineering.

Why is it so common that engineers become CEOs?

Besides technical skills, academic background and professional experience acquired, an individual’s natural performance tendencies — their power skills — are critical elements to achieving success at work. We refer to the group as the "talent stack." Our research show that specific performance competencies are necessary to enable career success in a particular role.

Our SuccessFinder competency model includes 85 power skills (statistically distinct performance scales) and 35 specific career theme scales — all of which interface with thousands of occupational titles and 500+ career success benchmarks. For developmental purposes, we group the performance traits into 26 competencies. We organize these competencies into five broad categories of performance: Relations, Solutions, Productivity, Motivation and Personal Success.

The top ten competencies distinguish the "right stuff" for a given role.

Interestingly eight of the ten competencies for high-performing engineers are included in our ladder of leadership. It is a model of the performance competencies necessary for the highest performance at three critical levels of leadership. We offer a data-driven framework that enables organizations to understand performance better. They can identify high-performers at each level. We provide better ways for organizations to capture these natural behavioural tendencies. They leverage them to develop strong, resilient leaders required to drive today’s business strategies.

My Journey

I spent my career in engineering. I have been a CEO for over 25 years. Besides my degree in electrical engineering, I am a professional engineer (P.Eng.), International Professional Engineer (IntPE), a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCEA) and a fellow of Engineers Canada (FEC). To broaden my talent stack with business knowledge, I obtained an MBA about eight years after I graduated in engineering.

I led two large engineering organizations, a $400M utility, a joint venture, and a telecom start-up that we took public.

Engineers

What got you here won’t get you there.” — Marshall Goldsmith

Your entire talent stack makes the difference. We can all develop leadership and management skills such as negotiating, planning and influencing. The technical skills that an engineer's job requires are a small percentage of the competencies that are needed to be successful. Interpersonal competencies, business acumen, and, yes, leadership and management skills are all required in engineering work. As engineers advance in the profession, leadership and management competencies become more important, regardless of whether they are on the "management" track. It is your performance competencies that make you unique.

Just as all engineers need management competencies to get work done, an entirely different set of skills are also important-leadership skills.

Leadership is the Ability to Influence

Leadership—at its core—is about influencing people within context. Similar to flow and requires that you place attention and resources when, where, and at the time needed, to affect human systems and processes at any level, be it individual, interpersonal, team, organization, or community.

However, at a different level than the interpersonal competencies that are described as "management."

It's a shame when companies force people to move into management as the only option for career growth. It's a clear mistake." — Jessica McKellar, Founder and CTO, Pilot

I am a big proponent of determining if the technical track or leadership track is right for you. We need both engineers who are subject matter experts and others who are exceptional leaders.

Leadership is about influencing and directing others to a positive outcome. Dozens of individual characteristics of leadership are essential. The general expectation is for engineers to leadership competencies in engineering and technical management roles.

Engineers need to keep in mind that leadership and management are part of their job, so not having these responsibilities is not an option. What is optional, however, are the specific leadership and management characteristics they will be accountable for in their engineering roles.

Engineering is Massive

Engineering is a massive field with over 25 specialties, a few of which are mechanical, civil, chemical, electrical and computer engineering.

We identify specific benchmarks for each specialization. These specialties allow engineers to work in all industries. Thus career options unlimited. Engineering majors also take an assortment of courses, including, math, science, writing and technical courses. With such a diverse set of skills, it is no wonder engineering is the degree that is most likely to produce CEOs of fortune 500 companies.

When the SuccessFinder researchers benchmarked the performance competencies of engineers against the full range of competencies, the researchers found ten dominant competencies that high performing engineers display in the workplace. We can help you determine if you should advance down the technical path or the leadership track — society needs great engineers in both.

Top Ten Competencies for Engineers

Competency	Description
Reasons Critically	Demonstrates the ability to tackle difficult problems by using logical, quantitative reasoning to identify patterns relevant to problem-solving.
Builds Consensus	Enjoys working as part of a team. Emphasis is on appropriate compromise, demonstrating tact, maintaining emotional control and interpersonal tolerance rather than making demands.
Demonstrates Character	Honors interpersonal commitments, maintains the courage of high-minded convictions, values living rightly and plays by honourable rules.
Thinks Conceptually	Demonstrates the ability to comprehend theoretical concepts and be curious about the broader "why?" or holistic perspective on problems.
Strives for Excellence	Demonstrates a desire to produce the best quality products or service and conscientiously tracks and double checks the accuracy of work.
Overcomes Adversity	Demonstrates an ability to persevere when pursuing difficult challenges and responds positively to adversity in the face of failure.
Maintains Accountability	Demonstrates an attitude that is defined by taking responsibilities and loyalties very seriously, by assuming a sense of personal accountability of one’s results, as well as co-workers’ actions without seeking to blame or provide excuses for failures.
Establishes Alliances	Establishes friendly relationships, enjoys expressing one’s views and participating socially with others in a manner that reflects genuineness and interpersonal intimacy.
Initiates Independently	Demonstrates a preference for taking action, pursuing high risk and initiating projects independently of prior approval or requests.
Focuses on Results	Prepared to make the personal sacrifices or expend extraordinary dedication to one’s work when frequent overtime is required to complete assignments.

Great Leaders

There's an inflection point when someone moves from engineer to manager, and it can feel very uncomfortable — like you're only in meetings and not getting anything done."

While it is not easy, we know what it takes to be a great leader. Our research suggests that two fundamental performance competencies are essential at every level of management, from First/Intermediate-Level all the way to CEO. These competencies are: Leads Decisively and Thrives in Chaos.

Leads Decisively: Managers at all levels demonstrate a strong and forceful leadership style and a readiness to influence others directly.

Thrives in Chaos: All people managers are shown to be highly efficient under seemingly chaotic demands and overlapping priorities.

Our research also shows that different competencies are necessary at each leadership stage. We identified nine keys First/Intermediate-Level Management competencies, ten essential Senior-Level Management competencies, and ten critical C-Level Management competencies.

Besides the two fundamental competencies, specific competencies are key on more than one level as one progresses up the ladder. We explain not only core competencies by level, but also address transitions between levels. Some stay important through a leadership transition, and some performance are less relevant. Thus their demonstration must be adjusted to be an effective leader.

Ladder of Leadership

Using the Ladder of Leadership model helps organizations identify high potential employees for succession planning and talent management initiatives. Also, it provides a basis for meaningful individual career planning one, two and three moves ahead. Our customers are calling it a game changer.

So what makes a good leader?

According to Stephen Covey, there are four imperatives for leaders: they must inspire trust, clarify purpose, align systems and unleash talent. Clarity of purpose and system alignment are driven into every engineer on day one of their training. Can the other two skills be taught? Certainly.

Beyond these, engineers have several of the other qualities that define a good leader. They are detail-oriented and analytical. While they are meticulous, they still take risks, but calculated ones. They identify the cause of a problem and provide an economical solution. Engineers tend to have a very realistic outlook on situations and do not add the fluff. They keep it simple. Finally, engineers are tech-savvy and understand how it all works. This provides them with a competitive advantage over other industry professionals. Engineers lead by example, and this helps them succeed.

To develop as a leader, you need strength in four of the ten performance competencies at a given level as set out the Ladder of Leadership. With four strengths and a lot of hard work, you can develop strategies to be adequate in the other six.

Six competencies of engineers match with the manager competencies, five match with the Vice President competencies, and two matches with the C-suite competencies. We are all different.

For example, I have strengths in:

six of the ten engineering competencies
five of the nine manager level competencies
six of the ten vice president level competencies
six of the ten C-suite competencies

I know I would have been a better leader if I the insights provider by SccessFinder. In some situations, we may become overinvested in one of our strengths. It can have an adverse effect when demonstrated too strongly. We need to be careful in expressing these performance competencies.

Engineering and Leadership Competencies

Level	Competencies	Engineer	Manager	Executive	C-Suite
FLC	Leads Decisively		X	X	X
FLC	Thrives on Chaos		X	X	X
CMC	Builds Consensus	X	X
CMC	Communicates Clarity		X
CMC	Maintains Accountability	X	X
M&EC	Demonstrates Character	X	X	X
M&EC	Overcomes Adversity	X	X	X
M&EC	Reasons Critically	X	X	X
M&EC	Thinks Conceptually	X	X	X
CEC	Manages Stress			X
	Executive C-Level Competencies
E&CC	Demonstrates Energetic Enthusiasm			X	X
E&CC	Focus on Results			X	X
E&CC	Inspires Others			X	X
CCC	Drives Achievement	X			X
CCC	Exercises Political Influence				X
CCC	Initiates Independently				X
CCC	Seeks Innovations				X
CCC	Sustains Profitability				X
EC	Establishes Alliances	X
EC	Strives for Excellence	X

Level Key
FLC — Fundamental Leadership Competencies
CMC — Core Manager Competencies
M&EC — Manager & Executive Competencies
CEC — Core Executive Competencies
E&CC — Executive & C-Level Competencies
CCC — Core C-Level Competencies
EC — Engineering Competencies outside the leadership competencies

Manager Level

Managers must naturally seek to broaden their horizons to carry out the projects and mandates that have been entrusted to them. To rally their troops, they must align with and communicate the directions and decisions that are taken by executive leadership. They als0 must be able to build a shared understanding of the tasks and projects to be accomplished with the members of their team.

Vice-President Level

In this role, the executives formulate and implement the strategic plan that guides the direction of the business or their area of responsibility. They exercise leadership with regards to other leaders. They manage a group of managers/directors who themselves lead several teams.

C-Suite Level

C-levels are the starters, the innovators, the drivers of the organization. They define and set ambitious objectives, identify opportunities, and launch initiatives to turn them into a reality. They are the external outward-facing representative of the interests of the organization. The C-level executive must manage the complex interests of different stakeholders within the organization.

Career Growth

You have to be intentional about achieving career growth. You will have the opportunity to broaden the engineering planning and execution of projects coming down the road. The challenge for most engineers is that they do not have a clear sense of what they want from their job. Even when they do, they are not forthcoming about it with their managers. Good leaders are experts at surfacing this kind of data and making it actionable. However, if the engineer does not take the lead, it does not happen.

We provide you with a framework to think through your career growth together. You will be able to articulate

performance competencies you need for the next position
competencies that you will have to manage
skills you want to improve
technical and non-technical experiences you want to have
how you want to increase the scope of your impact on the company

Once you can communicate these things clearly, you are much more likely to find the right opportunities.

Moreover, you are much more likely to recognize them. Read our recent post "How to be Remarkably Lucky – Have an Open Mind." I had an open mind and was always willing to take on challenging roles. Moreover, these attributes were the prime reason that I advance rapidly in my career.

Engineers Need to Position Themselves As Leaders

Companies need to promote and place qualified engineers in leadership positions. Engineers need to do a better job at positioning themselves to take on these roles. As more engineers become CEO's and leaders in their organizations, their peers should find inspiration and look to become leaders themselves.

Engineering schools are starting to support the leaders of tomorrow. The education reform will not happen overnight. In Canada, the National Initiative on Capacity Building and Knowledge Creation for Engineering Leadership (NICKEL) aims to create dialogue on how best to integrate leadership training into engineering curricula. The initiative drive by Dr. Doug Reeve, at the University of Toronto, through the Engineering Change Lab. It is an excellent example of what is possible.

There is a strong positive correlation between engineering strength and economic development, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research's 2016 global study. Revamping the way each nation looks at engineers and the way engineers look at business leadership positions is undoubtedly a significant endeavour. With everyone working together, we will start to see a change with long-term effects.

If you want to get on the fast-track for leadership, drop me a note email. We provide our service worldwide. The powerful insights that we can share with you may open up a whole new world.