Designing Your Leadership Style for An Effective Engineering Career

The following is a summary of Episode 82 of The Engineering Career Coach (TECC) Podcast. I will summarize the main points in this post; however, you can also listen to the show through the player below, the

In this session of The Engineering Career Coach (TECC) Podcast, Chris Knutson interviews retired major general Paul McGillicuddy on leadership.  Paul McGillicuddy is a retired Air Force General Officer with 31 years of service to our nation.  He flew multiple aircraft including the T-37, T-38, F-111, F-16, U-2, RQ-4 and the KC-10. 

Listen to this session and learn how to be effective as a leader. Here are some key points Paul discussed in this episode:

• Leadership is not all about you; it’s about taking care of the people that work for you.
• When you screw up or make mistakes, you have to make amends and apologize, sincerely and quickly.
• You need to be a leader and experience it.
• Lead by example. You have to earn their respect and trust.
• Every decision that comes to you is not met with 100% satisfaction.
• Leadership is a continuous learning process.
• The need to be understood is as great as the need for oxygen.

Traits of a good leader:

• Integrity – You have to have integrity as a leader. Act in a manner that you would like your entire organization to act.
• Humility – Kindness and humility go hand in hand.
• Kindness – The best leaders are kind, have empathy, and can put themselves in your shoes.
• Willing to be out front.

Where to find leadership training:

1. Practice leadership by joining a professional organization similar to your career, or other organizations like Boy Scouts, your church, etc.
2. Watch your good leaders and take notes, and watch your bad leaders and take notes to make sure you will not do the same thing they’re doing.

Dealing with difficult boss:

• Adjust to your boss’ leadership style as long as he/she operates with integrity.
• It wasn’t the job of my boss to get along with me; it is my job to get along with my boss.

Time management skills:

• Manage your calendar. Make sure the things you need to do are in your calendar.
• Learn to delegate and trust. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Why can’t someone else do this instead?
• Process emails in batches and get everything done.
• Never leave work until work is done.

Networking tips:

• Prefer face-to-face networking or via phone call.
• Go from small connection to a much larger connection and see opportunities to help each other.

Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success, found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website at EngineeringCareerCoach.com to access all of the free engineering career resources he has created to help engineers succeed.