This is Part IV of a six-part series about leadership for engineers preparing for their first professional leadership role.
Where to begin?
Every engineer-leader has found themselves in some form of the above situation on their journey from engineer-employee to engineer-leader. When you break the barrier between self-responsibility and team responsibility it’s only natural to feel a lot of anxiety. I certainly did when I assumed leadership of a 250-person public works organization. Not only was it my first major leadership role, but I also had a language barrier to overcome since over seventy percent of my workforce was German! Talk about stress! Then add 9/11 to the mix…and a new child…and working on masters degree.
I learned very quickly the need to relax. I don’t mean kick-back and watch work flow by, but relax in my need to do everything, be everything, and accomplish everything. Tied very closely to delegation, effective engineer-leaders know how to relax in order to get the job accomplished.
What I learned right away in this high-stress leadership environment I found myself in was the following:
Rely on the team that’s been in place. Most often a first-time engineer-leader is promoted into a leadership role that already exists. This means that there’s already a team in place, one that has written/unwritten rules that guide workflow, responsibilities, and the norms of getting along to get the job done. Once I figured out what these teams were, I leveraged them to accomplish the organizational goals I was given or developed. To try to do all this myself would have been impossible and to build new teams counterproductive. Use what you have at hand to the utmost.
Focus on health like a laser. The fact is, no one else is going to hold you accountable for your health. Even in the military where I’ve spent the past two decades, although physical fitness regulations exist and each member has physical standards to uphold, there are still those who elect not to achieve them. When you’re stepping into a leadership role for the first time you absolutely must protect the most important asset in the game – that’s you. This means a diet that gives you energy, not take it away; drinking plenty of water; getting sleep even when you think an all-nighter will solve your task load problem; and the big one – doing physical fitness.
Schedule time for family. That’s right schedule it. I scheduled Friday and Saturday night’s for my wife, blocked all day Saturday for my infant son and working on my masters and scheduled get-away weekends every month. It was painful to do this; I knew that I had work that needed to be done. But I also had a powerful piece of wisdom given to me by a mentor I respected very much: when it’s all said and done, anyone can do your job, but only you can be the father to your son and husband to your wife. I couldn’t argue with that and haven’t since.
Put processes in place to allow you to disengage. It’s been said that an effective leader is the one who can go away for a month and their organization doesn’t miss a beat. I didn’t have access to this thought back in my first major leadership foray, but I did figure out that processes would help to allow me to disengage from constant focus on work. Being a public works department we had 24/7 responsibilities and it wasn’t uncommon to get calls in the middle-of-the night two to three times a week. Those calls would come to me to keep the boss informed. Information is good, but when it isn’t critical, it means I don’t get sleep (see the rule above!). So I instituted a ‘duty-officer’ roster and my senior managers shared the responsibility for being on-call during the night. Along with the duty roster was a set of criteria for what issues needed to be transmitted to me immediately, regardless the time. The process not only allowed me to disengage because I knew I had qualified people still minding the store, it also gave those managers who were on-call increased responsibility and stake in our organization’s success. A win-win.
As a leader you don’t have to be on-point 24/7/365. In fact, if you do attempt this you’ll burn out and crash. While you will have episodes where you’ll have to be all-in, most often you have the opportunity to relax through the implementation of processes, procedures, and forcing yourself to look after yourself and your family. Leadership is a long-game activity, treat it that way.
"To lead people, walk behind them." Lao Tzu
Christian Knutson, P.E., PMP is international infrastructure development program manager, engineer, and author. He has 21 years of experience in leadership, management, engineering and international relations earned from a career in the U.S. Air Force and is author of The Engineer Leader, a recognized blog on leadership and life success for engineers and professionals.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net