Choosing to Lead

Abstract

It is important that young engineering managers be encouraged to take leadership roles whenever opportunities occur and not to assume that they must wait for promotion to top management. This paper presents a model of the leadership function that is independent of the potential leader's status. The key is to interpret certain change events as potential opportunities for leadership. These leadership events can then be managed to align the event meanings of others with yours. This requires the use of persuasion and negotiation to influence the other actors in the network and to endorse your leadership. This actor network is sustained using active communication and reinforcement to achieve the common goals. The model of leadership presented in this paper is based on research into cognitive and communicative factors associated with the leadership process and describes guidelines for those ambitious engineers willing to act decisively, should an opportunity occur.