Reeve, D., & Rottmann, C., & Sacks, R. (2015, June), The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.24857

\bibitem{asee_peer_24857}
  Reeve, D., \& Rottmann, C., \& Sacks, R. (2015, June), \emph{The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations}
  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington.
  10.18260/p.24857

Doug Reeve P.Eng., Cindy Rottmann, and Robin Sacks.  "The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations".  2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2015.  https://strategy.asee.org/24857 Internet.  28 May, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_24857}
  Doug Reeve P.Eng., Cindy Rottmann, and Robin Sacks.
  "The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations".
  \emph{2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2015.
  https://strategy.asee.org/24857 Internet.  28 May, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_24857
author = "Doug Reeve P.Eng., Cindy Rottmann, and Robin Sacks"
title = "The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations"
booktitle = "2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2015"
month = "June"
address = "Seattle, Washington"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://strategy.asee.org/24857}
number = {10.18260/p.24857}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -            The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership OrientationsContext & Objective:The National Academy of Engineering and Engineers Canada have been advocating forengineers to assume greater leadership responsibilities in their workplaces and in society (EC,2009; NAE, 2004), but little is known about how engineers orient themselves toward leadership.In phase one of our study on engineering leadership we used grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss,1967) to identify three professionally relevant leadership orientations— Technical Mastery (the“go to” engineer for technical questions), Collaborative Optimization (engineers who build highperforming teams) and Organizational Innovation (engineers whose creative ideas drive thecompany). In this paper we report on phase two of the study, the primary objective of which wasto analyze the prevalence of these orientations in a larger sample of engineers.Relevance to LEAD:Our project is directly relevant to LEAD is it involves empirical research on the nature ofengineering leadership from the perspectives of professional engineers.Methodology:The primary source of data for our analysis is a survey of 175 engineers working for twointernational organizations with head offices in Canada. We solicited information aboutparticipants’ 1) background characteristics, 2) leadership orientations across time and situation,and 3) their evaluation of the skills and traits of exemplary leaders. We used Cronbach’s alphato test the reliability of survey scales using the full complement of data collected (n=175) andfound that all three scales met the social science reliability threshold of 0.7 (Kline, 1999). Forthis paper, we use descriptive statistics to analyse engineers’ leadership orientations acrossdevelopmental and situational contexts.Findings:Overall, as might be expected in a highly technical profession, a greater proportion of engineersin our sample prioritized technical mastery (45%) over each of the other two orientations. Whenwe analyzed the data by career stage, however, we found that as engineers progressed throughtheir careers from students to junior engineers to senior engineers, the percentage of them whoprioritized technical mastery dropped (45% to 28%), while the percentage who prioritizedcollaborative optimization (39% to 43%) and organizational innovation (16% to 29%) grew.Beyond this interesting developmental trend, we found that situational prompts also shapedengineers’ identification with the three leadership orientations. Engineers at all career stageswere most likely to prioritize technical mastery when provided with task-oriented prompts(64%) and collaborative optimization when provided with job satisfaction (45%) and teamwork(48%) prompts.Conclusions & Implications:Our findings suggest that engineering leadership orientations are dynamic entities that shift overtime and across situations. Among other recommendations to be discussed in the full paper, itbehoves us as engineering educators to expose all students to multiple ways of influencing,supporting and relating to their colleagues. Leadership strategies that may feel uncomfortable toundergraduate students will become increasingly relevant as they gain workplace experience.
AU  - Doug Reeve P.Eng.
AU  - Cindy Rottmann
AU  - Robin Sacks
CY  - Seattle, Washington
DA  - 2015/06/14
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - The Ebb and Flow of Engineering Leadership Orientations
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/24857
DO  - 10.18260/p.24857
ER  -