March/April 2017

In Focus
All for One, and One for All

Rallying everyone behind a company takes a leader willing to rally behind everyone in their charge

Perhaps more than any other time in history, engineers in the 21st century are expected to be strong leaders, and not just the profession as a whole but individual engineers as well. The ability to lead has become something of a prerequisite for becoming an engineer.

However, the demand for leadership isn’t the only thing that has changed in the 21st century; leadership has also come to mean something very different than simply providing direction to others. As trained civil engineer and notable management expert Tom Peters put it, “management is about arranging and telling; leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.”

Creating a sense of belonging or community and helping those under you to grow and develop are two of the hallmarks of modern leadership. More importantly, this change in leadership isn’t just a trendy push being made on blogs, LinkedIn, and employment websites. It’s become expected. Engineer leaders and workplace experts take building community and helping people grow seriously and cite many practical benefits for doing so.

All for One

Creating a sense of community and fostering growth influence everything from employee job satisfaction and retention to the quality of a company or firm’s work.

“You hear, ‘People will leave the job before they leave the people,’ and I truly believe that,” says President and CEO of Rowe Professional Services Company Leanne Panduren, P.E., F.NSPE. “I don’t want people coming to work for us because I’m giving them a paycheck every Friday. I want them to have a sense this is their family away from home.”

In the very first paragraph of her new book The Magnetic Leader, Roberta Matuson writes “people do not work for companies, they work for people.”

“If you think about some of your most favorite jobs that you’ve had, I would venture to say that the reason you really liked those jobs was the people,” she says. “You liked the people you worked for, you liked the people who were on the team.”

In case it wasn’t obvious, studies have shown a link between employee job satisfaction and retention, and surveys have shown that social workplaces and community are valued highly, especially by millennials.

“If you want to reduce employee turnover, which is quite expensive, then you have to really focus on these areas,” Matuson says. “That drops money to the bottom line.”

It’s also believed by many that job satisfaction improves both productivity and quality of work. In fact, one study conducted in 2011 by Shawn Achor, one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success and whose research has made the cover of Harvard Business Review, found that providing social support is even more important than receiving it. Those in the study who picked up others’ slack, took coworkers to lunch, and organized office activities were 10 times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept 
to themselves.

“Having a sense of belonging and community makes you a much better employee; I think you’re more efficient, more caring, and more thoughtful because you’re finding your work rewarding,” says Brad Aldrich, P.E., F.NSPE, president of water resource engineering firm Aldrich + Elliott. “I think job satisfaction fosters efficiency and a higher quality of work.”

A strong sense of community that keeps people satisfied with their job and excited about work also help leaders fulfill their own duties—other things a leader is expected to do become that much easier.

“As a leader, if you have that sense of community, it makes your job easier,” Panduren says. “If you’ve already built that, where people are already helping each other, it just makes your job as a leader easier because you’re not trying to individually lead 100 people.”

“The reality is that on any team you’re only as good as your weakest staff person, so in my opinion it helps everyone—the individual, the team, the company.”
—Leanne Panduren, P.E., F.NSPE

“When you have a team of people who really enjoy coming to work every day, it’s a lot easier to motivate them,” Matuson adds. “It’s also a lot easier to get them to stay late when those time periods come up that a project requires all hands on deck one evening or over the weekend.”

When a leader helps those under them to grow and develop, they reap similar benefits. Job satisfaction and, not surprisingly, quality of work increase, which again make a leader’s job much easier.

“The reality is that on any team you’re only as good as your weakest staff person, so in my opinion it helps everyone—the individual, the team, the company,” Panduren says. “If you’re looking at every employee as a long-term employee and long-term asset for your company, it makes sense.”

“When you have a team that is well trained, it’s like a well-oiled machine,” Matuson says. “And you can focus on doing more top-level work, growing your own career, and taking on more responsibility because you don’t have to look back; you know things are working.”

One for All

Ultimately, creating a sense of belonging or community and the growth and development of individuals requires the investment of the communities and individuals themselves, but there are plenty of things leaders can do to foster both.

A good first step is to heed the oft-heard phrase attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: Be the change you wish to see in the world. Despite being a rather mangled paraphrase of Gandhi’s actual words, it’s still good advice.

“The biggest thing is to walk the talk—to demonstrate and model what you’re trying to do,” says Aldrich, a past president of NSPE. “Leading by example is important.”

“You need to ask your people, ‘How can I be of service to you?’” Matuson suggests. “You’ve got to go to bat for your people.”

“The biggest thing is to walk the talk— to demonstrate and model what you’re trying to do.”
—Brad Aldrich, P.E., F.NSPE

A good practical example of this is Aldrich + Elliott’s practice of taking new employees on trips. When Aldrich and other senior employees need to travel they grab a new employee and take advantage of that time behind the wheel.

“That windshield time, getting to and from a place, is really invaluable for having conversations you really can’t find the time in the office to have,” Aldrich says. “If you take opportunities when you’ve got maybe a couple of hours and it’s just the two of you in a car, it’s really invaluable in terms of getting to know people better and build that community and understanding.”

The practice of taking new employees on trips highlights another important piece of advice from Aldrich, bringing people together naturally. Rather than creating forced encounters like taking a new employee out to lunch, Aldrich has found bringing people together in the context of their natural workflow produces much better results. For new employees especially, it’s much less imposing and puts them more at ease.

Another practical example of this would be lunch-and-learns, where employees are brought together to hear a speaker over lunch. At Aldrich + Elliott the speaker is sometimes a vendor who instructs employees on a topic, but the firm also hears presentations by its own employees. This creates opportunities for younger engineers to hone their presentation skills and brings everyone together in a way that feels natural.

But perhaps one of the better ways a leader can help the professional engineers under them to grow and develop is to encourage and support their involvement in professional societies like NSPE and civic organizations. These groups provide a testing and proving ground for many skills, including leadership skills.

NSPE, state societies, and state chapters are a great way for younger engineers to get involved in committee work and chapter leadership, Panduren says. “I really feel that getting your staff involved outside the company allows them to spread their wings.”

Through active involvement in professional and technical societies, engineers can learn leadership skills in an environment that’s removed from workplace hierarchy and more forgiving of mistakes, Aldrich says. “It’s a very comfortable way to cut your teeth, rub shoulders with other professionals, and build community outside your own firm.”

Panduren agrees that workplace hierarchy can be intimidating to a young employee. If a two-year employee attends a meeting with her manager and the manager’s manager, that young employee may not feel comfortable about participating. “When they get into outside organizations, that’s no longer a barrier,” she says.

Practical examples aside, in addition to walking the talk, a final important piece of advice for any leader is simply that they are the leader. There is a burden of leadership that every leader simply has to accept even when trying to create a sense of community and help those under them to grow. Sometimes a leader has to go farther than everyone else.

“Sometimes as a leader you have to take that extra step,” Panduren says. “You’re not going to be met halfway. Sometimes you have to go more than halfway to have meaningful interactions.”