TABLE OF CONTENTS Engineers look forward to the time when they can have projects of their own.
Project engineers have the best jobs in the business. They have ultimate responsibility for the work as a whole. They are the real architects of the project solutions. Even more than their colleagues, they look at the job as a whole from the beginning. They watch carefully to make all the details come together into a timely, economical, fresh, and effective meeting of the need.
Team leaders can easily take independent professional view-points. In fact, they must!
You will remember from Chapter 3 that the project engineers are the leaders of teams of engineers and supporting people who are assigned specific projects problems to solve, machines to design. We also saw that there are still many one-person projects in engineering. In such a case that person is a project engineer, too. But in this chapter we will think mostly about the team leaders.
Often engineers are first selected as leaders because they have made unusually fine technical contributions to an earlier job. This technical competence and initiative is the most important quality that they bring to the new task, but it is by no means the only one needed. And it cannot make up for a lack of administrative skill or leadership.
It is especially important for engineers just stepping into their first job as team leaders to review the administrative and leadership techniques required. In a well-managed organization their boss will help them with this,...
