Part I
Introduction to Technical Leadership: Why Take Time Away from the Study and Practice of Technical Problem Solving?

Exceptional performance in an engineering or scientific position and career requires detailed knowledge of the fundamentals of the specific field and related areas, and the ability to apply that knowledge to solve problems. However, these capabilities represent necessary but not sufficient conditions for career success. Less than 50% of an engineer’s or scientist’s time in any technical position will generally be spent on science‐ or engineering‐focused tasks. This percentage always decreases with responsibility level and experience; in high level leadership or management positions, less than 20% is typical. Much of the day‐to‐day time invested by practicing engineers or scientists irrespective of their specific vocation, involves interactions with other individuals and groups of individuals within or outside the organization, where directions, goals, and performance are discussed and decisions made. It is therefore critical to develop leadership and decision‐making skills, to communicate decisions and their implications clearly, and to ensure that these tasks are performed in an ethical and professional manner. That is, “… an engineer is hired for his/her technical skills, fired for poor people skills, and promoted for leadership and management skills” [1]. Despite the essential nature of these skills to career success, little emphasis is afforded them in core or even elective courses in science or engineering curricula.

The need for skill development in leadership can be envisioned easily. Below are three examples of situation types encountered frequently by technical leaders for which they have received no training and often have little awareness.

• Two of your team members are simply incompatible. They argue about trivial as well as significant issues, make derogatory remarks about each other to other team members, and their behavior is degrading collegiality and team productivity. As team leader, how do you resolve this issue?
• One of your team members is rude, arrogant, and disruptive at team meetings. Other team members avoid this individual and refuse to interact. Due to the specific technical background and expertise, the individual is critical to the success of two of your projects. How do you handle this situation?
• A decision must be made regarding the purchase of a new spectrometer for use in your analytical department. The department members are split regarding which manufacturer and model should be ordered, and the discussions have become extremely heated and emotional. As team leader, how do you make this decision, and how do you deal with the individuals whose recommendation you did not take?

If these examples make you uncomfortable, wonder how you might address such issues, and begin to question if you want to ever be a team leader, then you need to keep reading.

Technical leadership effectiveness has been described through the relationship among various interpersonal effectiveness traits for engineers [2]; this view has also been applied to science and mathematics backgrounds [3]. The elements of interpersonal effectiveness are defined as [2]:

• Ability to solve problems, make decisions, communicate with and engage others
• Awareness of themselves, others, circumstances
• Commitment to responsibility, ethical behavior

The need for these interpersonal proficiencies are evident from even brief consideration of the situations described above. The importance of developing “soft” or “professional” skills has been the subject of recent articles for scientists [4, 5] and engineers [6], that illustrate what skills are needed; the articles offer brief descriptions of how these skill sets can be developed in students and early career professionals.

Corporations and academic institutions must identify and develop leaders who in addition to having engineering and scientific competency, can establish and promote a vision, build and run teams, make timely and effective decisions, communicate clearly, ensure high performance levels, and manage change. Individuals generally achieve the latter six proficiencies by trial‐and‐error or observation after completion of their degree(s). In their employment environment, they encounter many examples of leadership successes and failures. Being competent engineers/scientists, they analyze these situations either after their own initial success or failure or after observation of others displaying successful or unsuccessful attempts at these efforts; such “data” lead to a realization of how the situation could have been handled better. As Mark Twain, Will Rogers, or Rita Mae Brown (depending upon which search engine is used) noted:

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

These approaches to developing leadership skills are effective but linear and thus time intensive, since the number of different scenarios that can be encountered is infinite. A situational or contextual leadership approach is taken in this book, where specific situations are posed and/or discussed in light of the uniqueness of that particular scenario. Analogous to solving technical problems, the similarity among certain types of situations should shorten the time frame needed to develop technical leadership awareness and skills through identification, discussion, and recognition of how various commonly encountered situations might be handled. Such knowledge will allow engineers or scientists to progress rapidly up the learning curve in their “new” role of leading others.

Engineering and science students are taught how to address problems while increasing their understanding of the field by solving numerous problem types in homework sets or exams. The methods developed can then be used to attack new problems previously unknown to the students. After graduation, the students are expected to use their problem‐solving skills to address more open‐ended problems with a sufficient number of boundary conditions that an exact solution is unlikely or impossible. Rather, an “approximate or optimum” solution is needed, as experienced in process or product design problems. The intent of this book is to introduce the reader to open‐ended (situational or contextual) problems focused on technical and nontechnical colleagues, boss, or subordinate behavior and interactions that defy simple, clear, or exact solutions. By offering examples of dilemmas in technical leadership along with selected analyses of possible ways to address or consider such issues, aspiring or current leaders can build awareness and develop approaches to address future variations on these themes or new situations. In addition, many decisions must be made with less than adequate data or information, a situation that is not viewed favorably by engineers and scientists. When the situation to be resolved is dependent upon individual or group (personal) reactions and behavior, the resulting responses are often disconcerting to those who expect both system and individual behavior to be reproducible and predictable. Instead of this anticipated, or at least hoped‐for behavior, the approach needed to resolve problems and successfully lead others depends upon the specific people and personalities involved, the culture within the organization, and the time frame within which a decision is required. Because the leader has very limited or no control of these issues, frustration is a frequent outcome. An effective leader recognizes that the problem and frustration encountered may not be due to incompetence or mediocre performance, or to the unpredictable or illogical behavior of others; rather, the issues encountered may be due to the fact that the leader’s and team members’ perceptions of the situation differ because of either misunderstanding or to disparities in values, motivation, experiences, and priorities.

This book is intended for technically trained individuals who (i) are considering, anticipating, or have recently been promoted into formal leadership positions; (ii) wish to have a “snapshot” of the types of issues they will face in such positions; and more importantly, (iii) wish to know how they might deal with common situations encountered that involve personal, social, political, and economic aspects. The starting point in dealing with many leadership situations is for the leader to understand and control himself/herself. As a result, numerous discussion and homework questions focus on introspection to gain knowledge of and insight into who the reader (leader) is. The specific topics or chapters contained in this book will also be helpful to those who are currently struggling to function effectively in leadership positions and to those non‐technically trained individuals who have been given the task of leading or managing engineers and scientists (assuming that is possible). Within each chapter, there are discussion questions and frequently a vignette; these scenarios are set apart from the rest of the text by shaded text boxes. In the case of the vignettes that appear at the beginning of chapters, suggested ways to approach the dilemma described are offered at the end of the chapter.

It is also hoped that the concepts and information contained in this book will make those who are following leaders better “followers” since they will derive improved appreciation for the issues and complexities...