In today’s ultra-competitive world, tomorrow’s great leaders
are more likely to require much more different skills than their
predecessors to succeed. Young engineers who aspire to be the best,
would therefore need to be ‘different’.
As the world evolves, engineers in particular are increasingly
called upon to act in important managerial roles, which normally
require a particular set of skills. And it is always paramount that we
differentiate between ‘leadership’ and ‘management’. Leadership
is all about setting a new direction or vision for a group that they
follow; whilst management controls or directs people, resources in
a group according to principles or values that have already been
established. In simple terms, leaders tend to think drastically, while
managers think incrementally. As the famous phrase goes
‘Managers do things right, leaders do the right things.’ In other
words, a leader knows what’s best to do, while a manager knows
how best to do it.
Generally categorised, great leaders or managers, regardless of
past or present, tend to have all or some of the same traits: they are
highly motivated to succeed, have planned out their career in
advance, have high energy levels, ambition directed, smart and
confident, and last but not least, are able to differentiate between
significant and insignificant issues or matters.
In today’s age of rapid changes, it is also imperative to note one
of the main resources that most of us would have taken for granted,
i.e. the human factor. To be successful, it is essential for a leader to
have 100% support of his/her staff or employees. They need to
share the same visions, values or objectives that have been set. The
leader should therefore generate a working environment which
would enable his/her staff to reach their full potential, i.e. a sound
and competitive business environment. We must remember that
successful leaders always recognise the worth of their people and
inspire them to perform to the best of their abilities by providing
them a clear path to success.
So, engineers could also be leaders! When we talk about the science
and technology industries, all companies need engineers with great
leadership qualities to run them; certainly not only accountants or lawyers.
Throughout the centuries, there have been countless briliant engineers who
have gone on to become greatleaders. They were Robert Stephenson,
Samuel Allan Armstrong & Ralph M. Parsons, just to name a few.
As time goes by, business leaders have had to adjust their styles and
strategies to attain successes.
In the 21st century, successes are normally achieved through
multi-disciplined teams. Often, the leaders do not need to
understand every aspect of each team member’s role, but instead
the need to appreciate the role that each member plays in the
system is imperative. Thus, the leadership style becomes sort of a
benevolent dictatorship.
No doubt, in today’s technology-driven world, we have to
agree that change is the only thing that is constant. To be
sustainable and grow further, today’s young engineers face the
challenges of planning, initialising, realising, controlling and
stabilising all the change processes on both corporate and personal
levels. Globalisation has shrunk the world to such an extent that
markets are no longer localised. Companies are operating
everywhere and anywhere; employees and clients are all global. In
short, the benchmark of business and leadership excellence is
borderless.
So, where do we, all the young aspiring engineers, stand? What
will our roles be? How can we shape the future of our country? We
must not only aspire, but inspire ourselves to be great leaders of the
future; to be the drivers of Malaysia’s economy. To be tomorrow’s
leaders, we need to exploit the approaches best suited to the needs
of the situation. In tackling the many complex inter-linked issues
that we would be facing in the future, we would definitely have to
produce adaptive leadership styles that would enable us to be
flexible in responding to changes in the global environment.
In short, it is important to remember that it is better to make a
decision and correct it if it is wrong, than to make no decision at all.
As such, we at the Graduate & Student Section (G&S) strive not
only to set objectives and goals, we also aim to achieve them, i.e. to
help all young engineers to improve, both personally and
professionally. We wish you and all young engineers out there
good luck and have a great year ahead!
