Developing an Engineer into an Effective Manager Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Developing an Engineer into an Effective Manager Case Study Solution

Introduction

Engineers are the people who are given the responsibility of inventing, designing, building and testing of machines with the purpose is to fulfill the objectives and requirements. Due to the advancement of age, the need and desire for engineers have been significantly increasing as many companies require engineers for building machines. Many of the people are focusing their career and education towards engineering. There are many types of engineers which have different education and background such as electrical engineer, computer engineer, mechanical engineer, and many others.

The skills which are needed by the engineers are the ability to work in a group or team, strong analytical skills for solving problems, knowledge of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology, excellent communication skills and attention towards details while working on projects. These are the skills that every engineer must have to improve his growth and in becoming a successful engineer.

Managers in the organization are the roots of the company who have the responsibility of achieving the company’s objective. The hierarchy of the managers from top to down is the CEO, vice president, director, and manager. They also have the responsibility for supervising and guiding their employees through guidance, motivation, and support. The three skills that managers must have are the conceptual, human and technical.

Engineers spending many years in their field are confident on their technical skills and intend on further going by becoming an engineering manager. For becoming an effective manager, the engineer must be confident on leading groups, developing their non-technical skills such as leadership skills, becoming a public speaker, empowering team members and giving credits when things go successfully.

Developing an Engineer into an Effective Manager Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Abstract

            Engineers are the people who are given the responsibility of inventing, designing, building and testing of machines in which the purpose is to fulfill the objectives and requirements. Engineers spending many years in their field are confident on their technical skills and intend to further improving their career by becoming an engineering manager. The skills needed to be effective managers are communication skills, leadership skills, delegation skills, persuasive skills and technical skills.

            Engineering managers are given the tasks of handling the team for improving the workflow and operations. It is important for having these necessary skills for building a team culture, managing conflicts, delegating tasks and empowering, motivating and building relationships.

Writers Personal Experience

My personal experience for developing effective managers is to first determine the needs of the manager such as if the organization lacks the human resource manager, engineer manager, operation manager or others. Similarly, in this case, we have identified the need for an engineer manager. A number of internal employees would be identified having the necessary skills for becoming a manager within the engineering department. The candidates would be selected from within the organization rather than outsourcing a new manager since many of the employees are looking forward to getting a promotion and it would create dissatisfaction among the employees if the manager is outsourced.

Once the best individual is selected which meets the necessary skills for meeting the job description of the engineering manager,the next step would be to develop the necessary skills of effective managers. These following skills are essential for an effective manager.

  • Communication Skills
  • Leadership Skills
  • Delegation Skills
  • Persuasive Skills
  • Technical Skills

An effective manager must have good communication skills for communicating with its subordinates since the engineering manager would be communicating with manufacturing personnel, technical leads, clients and top executives. The leadership skills are also important for leading and motivating the employees as these would improve the productivity of the people. The manager must have good technical skills for providing the calculation that would help in solving problems and making fewer errors.

Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness is the key to developing an effective manager. Since the focus is on the engineer, the person needs to have the necessary technical skills in science, engineering, mathematics, and manufacturing. For developing the self-awareness skills, it is important to first understand the person’s strengths and weaknesses. Once the weaknesses of the person are identified which could be poor teamwork or leadership skills. The next step would be to improve the weaknesses and turn those into strengths by providing the necessary training and development.

The effective manager needs to practice self-discipline by being a good leader and being patient as it is the most important trait for having strong leadership. The manager needs to have an open mind and must not put its emotional thoughts while making decision and judgments. For building self-awareness, the managers need to take feedback from friends, family, and co-workers through the 360-feedback which would improve the working style and competencies that would help in building self-awareness(Tjan, 2015).

Managing Stress

For managing stress among the employees, the effective manager would be given the training and guidance for how to manage stress in the organization. One of the techniques is the role analysis technique in which the jobs would be broken down into roles which would help in clarifying the job and eliminating redundancyin work.........................

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