Opinion piece written by College of Leadership and Management office bearer, Heidi Edwards MIEAust CPEng
Are we leading people who have a certain "type" preference? And, if so, what can we do to increase our effectiveness in an environment that demands diversity?
My most recent personality test did not tell me anything about myself that I didn’t already know. In fact, it put a label on me: Engineer. Surprise!
Most professionals will, at some point, encounter the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DISC, or one of countless other personality tests that purport to give us better, more illuminating insights into ourselves. Yet, ask people what they do differently after taking one of these tests, and few will be able to articulate this convincingly.
Faced with somewhat predictable results, I contemplated what I was going to do differently as a leader. My personality and my chosen profession were clearly intertwined. Logical, but so what?
It wasn’t the first time that I had been presented with this information. At the start of our careers, a few hundred of us graduates took a personality test which put each of us into one of eight sectors. Most of the room ended up in the sector that I was in, because an overwhelming proportion of us were engineers. Collectively, it was no surprise that we were logical, results-oriented, enjoyed problem-solving and loved making things happen. As a young engineer with no work experience, I took the results to mean that we were all quite employable and that industry clearly valued our type as much as we valued being that type.
This time, the message wasn’t lost on me.
For leaders of engineering teams, it wouldn’t be uncommon to have many of the people in our teams identifying with a particular type – let’s call it the engineer type, though, by extension, the same principle could apply to any other profession where like-minded people are drawn together. That’s not a good or bad thing, in itself, but there are some development opportunities that may be worth considering.
A group that is predominantly made up of one type may find itself lacking in certain areas. For example, engineer types may be highly skilled in solving problems, but less skilled at selling the solutions to the masses. We might consider the selling less important than the solving. And if someone disagrees with our solution, we may have a tendency to be too dismissive. The catch cry, “Trust me, I’m an engineer,” comes to mind. Recognising and having the team recognise these shared gap areas, whatever they may be, is the first step to being able to address them.
Another opportunity comes in valuing and protecting the diversity of our teams. Deliberate action may be required to ensure that the people who don’t identify with the engineer type are not marginalised, be they analysts, accountants, or even atypical engineers – yes, of course they exist. It might be easiest to manage according to the prevailing style of the group, but it wouldn’t necessarily be what is right, or what is best.
Then, there is the challenge of leadership development. If our team members are very comfortable – perhaps even secretly proud – about being the engineer type, and if they are mainly required to work with other engineer types, those dynamics can become the status quo. How are early-career engineers then going to develop the skills required to be really successful at working with anyone who isn’t an engineer type? And how will this place them as they progress into roles demanding increasing responsibility and broader reach? These roles will require people to influence a diverse group of people from different disciplines, backgrounds and types. If the work environment doesn’t naturally present opportunities to develop this flexibility and awareness of other types, a dedicated effort needs to be made to equip our emerging leaders to meet this challenge.
Organisations are placing increasing emphasis on diversity because they recognise that diversity of thought unlocks value. The contemporary leader in engineering cannot afford to only be a leader of engineer types. We must develop the skills in ourselves and our teams to be versatile, not just in how we solve engineering problems, but in how we relate to others too.