Is Management Inevitable

Andy,

The vast majority of my experience has been in the polytechnic academic realm which offers a roughly parallel track to corporate engineering.  Instructors at my institute often develop their own boards and circuits or embedded code to teach electronic concepts - so they practice some engineering, though usually not aggressively innovative engineering.  At some point in the career of an instructor an opportunity will come up to consider moving into a leadership stream or stay on in the classroom.  The money is better at the leadership level and once the threshold has been crossed into leadership, pathways to management and beyond open up.

In my experience not every instructor is suited to the leadership path.  The opportunity may be candidate agnostic, but the role is not.  Strong technical skills do not automatically morph into strong leadership or management skills.  I have known many instructors that had brilliant skills as lecturers or curriculum developers or lab designers, but give them a problem that involves managing unpleasant people problems and they freeze, panic, or make utterly baffling decisions that often confound the problem.  I always volunteer to sit on interview panels when openings come up for leadership positions as I am very interested in seeking out and nurturing new leadership talent.  My perspective may be narrow, but it seems to me that the combination of strong technical ability and superior soft skills savvy seldom appear naturally together.  Usually one or the other is dominant, and it is often easier to implant and grow technical skills than people skills.

Andy,

The vast majority of my experience has been in the polytechnic academic realm which offers a roughly parallel track to corporate engineering.  Instructors at my institute often develop their own boards and circuits or embedded code to teach electronic concepts - so they practice some engineering, though usually not aggressively innovative engineering.  At some point in the career of an instructor an opportunity will come up to consider moving into a leadership stream or stay on in the classroom.  The money is better at the leadership level and once the threshold has been crossed into leadership, pathways to management and beyond open up.

In my experience not every instructor is suited to the leadership path.  The opportunity may be candidate agnostic, but the role is not.  Strong technical skills do not automatically morph into strong leadership or management skills.  I have known many instructors that had brilliant skills as lecturers or curriculum developers or lab designers, but give them a problem that involves managing unpleasant people problems and they freeze, panic, or make utterly baffling decisions that often confound the problem.  I always volunteer to sit on interview panels when openings come up for leadership positions as I am very interested in seeking out and nurturing new leadership talent.  My perspective may be narrow, but it seems to me that the combination of strong technical ability and superior soft skills savvy seldom appear naturally together.  Usually one or the other is dominant, and it is often easier to implant and grow technical skills than people skills.