Unique engineering programme develops leadership mindset

A look at the list of specialisations offered by the University of Auckland Faculty of Engineering makes the point. In the toolkits of budding biomedical, chemical and software engineers, for instance, you can be sure there will be no concrete and steel.

But the point is made another way too. As found by 2024 Part III engineering science student Shahed Ismael, there is value in learning soft skills quite apart from engineering’s hard technical underpinnings.

Now an intern at national electricity grid operator Transpower, Shahed’s degree involved operations research, data science and mechanics. But she supplemented her final year’s course work by participating in the Dean’s Leadership Programme (DLP) run by the Faculty.

“It fitted in really well alongside the technical aspects of my studies in lectures and labs. The DLP showed me the importance of having both soft skills and hard skills.”

Now in its tenth year, the programme was founded– and largely funded – by Sir Colin Maiden, Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1971 to 1994, and before that a senior mechanical engineering lecturer and engineering student. Sir Colin died last year aged 91.

A research post at General Motors in the US, at that time the world’s biggest company, gave Sir Colin the insight that was possibly the seed of the DLP’s creation.

He writes in his 2008 autobiography An Energetic Life that among the top executives he encountered at GM were some “hard ‘old bulls’” who although being practical engineers were also “inflexible and very narrow” in outlook.

While GM gave him “the best possible educationin manufacturing”, he also developed his management style there, “with a strong emphasis on delegation of authority and team building”.

Successful though his time at GM was, Sir Colin writes that his most rewarding job was Vice-Chancellor: “Helping young people to further their education and creating an environment that encouraged staff and postgraduate students to make major research contributions in their fields of expertise.”

His legacy continues in the DLP, with Shahed saying the stamp Sir Colin put on the programme remains.

“It was acknowledged that how the programme is now was because of him.”

With just 30 hotly contested places for Part II and III students a year, the DLP has two strands consisting of breakfast sessions with engineering industry figures and workshops.“

The breakfast sessions were very useful for getting insights into what the world looks like beyond university,” Shahed says. “We met many different people at all levels, from fresh graduates to people who have been in the industry for years, and they told us about their work and about such things as the importance of leadership skills in their workforce.”

Hands-on workshop sessions then gave programme participants the opportunity to see what leadership means on the job.

“The workshops had themes like leadership through partnership and leadership through change. As we tackled new topics, I began to realise things I may have overlooked such as the different personality types of the people we work with and how to handle conflict.

“The sessions involved practical, real-life work and I walked out after every one feeling like a better person – knowing more and understanding more.”

Thomas Donnell, a Part II participant in the 2024 programme, also got plenty from the experience, crediting it with landing him roles this year as vice president of the Chemical and Materials Engineering Students Association and as an Engineering NZ Student Ambassador.

“One thing that sticks with me is the idea that leadership isn’t a title, it’s a mindset,” says Thomas. “So no matter what your job title is within a company, whether it’s a CEO or an intern, leadership is a tool you can use to achieve your shared goals as a team. For me, the DLP was the perfect opportunity to develop some of my pre-existing leadership skills, mainly from community leadership roles, through an industry-focused perspective, which is incredibly valuable for engineering jobs and internships.”

Faculty of Engineering Dean Richard Clarke says a key aim of the DLP is to instil the idea that engineers shouldn’t be looking for problems for which they have solutions but offering answers for existential challenges. That’s where soft skills come in.

“We’re trying to lift people’s gaze to the wider context, getting them to take a step back to see the existential problems. They need to be able to communicate with non-engineers.”

The Dean says Sir Colin remained closely associated with the DLP up until his death and reserves from his funding over a decade – plus sums from donors Andrew J Clark and Rebecca Keene, Andrew Faulkner, the AUEA Endowment Fund, Fady Mishriki and Sir Ron Carter – will be used to keep the programme going and potentially expand it.