Leadership

We can start with the following definition of leadership taken from Northouse [1]:

“Leadership is a process of influencing others to reach a common positive goal.”

This definition is important as it identifies that leadership can be approached as a process.  It does not need to be thought of a “position”.  From this perspective, engineers can develop the skills to lead from any role they take.

Engineering Leadership

Engineering leadership has been defined in many ways, and often include the technical nature of the engineer’s role and responsibilities, contextualized to engineering practice. Engineers also do not approach leadership as a position, but rather approach it as a process with a need to develop the underlying skills that enable leadership, followership and working with team members and society in a multidisciplinary context [2].

Example Engineering Leadership definitions:

The engineering leadership definitions below are samples of many that exist in the engineering leadership literature.

Definition 1:  “Engineering leadership consists of capabilities and values that transform technical people from individual contributors into those who can lead teams to deliver a complex multi-disciplinary product” [3].

Definition 2: “Through engineering leadership, individuals and groups implement transformative change and innovation to positively influence technologies, organizations, communities, society, and the world at large” [4].

References:

[1] P.G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice, 9th ed., p.g. 6, 2022, Sage Publications, Inc.
[2] R. L. D. Komarek, In search of a definition and frameworks for engineering leadership development, New Directions in Student Leadership, vol. 2022, no. 173, pp. 33–41, Mar. 2022, doi: 10.1002/yd.20477.
[3] MIT. Bernard M Gordon MIT Engineering Leadership Program. https://gelp.mit.edu/, accessed January 21, 2023
[4] Paul, R., Sen, A. , & Wyatt, E. What is engineering leadership? A proposed definition. ASEE Conference Proceedings, 2018.