Prepared By:

Marc Ryan Jaudian

Joshua Jamero
Arvin Jay Lopez
 Leadership is often thought of as the ability to direct the
behavior of others, as a boss would assign tasks to his or her
employees.
 Leadership is much more than directing the activities of
employees. The responsibilities of a leader go well beyond the
internal workings of the organization.
 Leaders have multifaceted responsibilities, including setting
organizational goals, interacting professionally with the
community, and acting to influence the direction of the
profession.
 A leader’s success depends on his or her adherence to
principles of leadership, which include:
1) Accepting responsibility for planning and organizing
resources, including human, financial, and physical.
2) Having the ability to inspire innovation and creativity to
others.
3) Having an interest in motivating others within the
organization.
4) Demonstrating the ability to provide the organizational
structure needed to achieve organizational goals,
especially in the face of changing conditions.
5) Accepting the responsibility for making organizational
decisions.
 Adaptability: The ability to change in response to new demands
or constraints.
 Agility: Skillful under pressing conditions.
 Commitment: A sense of duty to fulfill responsibilities.
 Competence: Having the knowledge, skills, and abilities to
achieve and end.
 Confidence: A feeling of assurance about the ability to succeed.
 Courage: Steadfast in meeting adversity.
 Curiosity: The internal motivation to learn new things.
 Discipline: The ability to control behavior to meet specific goals.
 Enthusiasm: An eagerness and the ability to inspire the interest
of the group.
 Industriousness: Diligently active in pursuit of
organizational goals.
 Initiative: The instinct to initiate action, including
motivating subordinates.
 Integrity: Rigid adherence to a code of behavior that serves
group goals.
 Persistence: An attitude to persevere in the face of
obstacles.
 Selflessness: Having greater concern for achieving group
goals than for meeting personal goals.
 Vision: Intelligent foresight related to group matters and
being perceptive about future trends.
 Leaders must also have a value system that will allow them
to lead efficiently and effectively. Values that are important to a
leader include:
• Integrity: Adherence to technical and moral codes of behavior.
• Respect: Consideration for the well-being of others and
willingness to listen to ideas.
• Assertiveness: Enforcing rules with the proper authority.
• Honesty: Being trustworthy and capable of acting without
deception or fraud.
• Creativity: Willingness to think outside of conventional routes.
• Dependability: Being responsible and reliable, able to complete
task on time.
 A leader has many and varied responsibilities: hiring and
firing, setting organization goals, representing the organization
in community outreach, providing financial control, including
generating business, and not least, ensuring guidance on ethical
matters. A leader’s responsibilities related to ethics and
professionalism include:
1) Identify ethical and social responsibilities for all employees.
2) Demonstrate the conduct of employees through one’s
actions, i.e., serve as a role model.
3) User organizational resources to promote ethics education.
4) Articulate the consequences of violation of ethical standards.
5) Use the power affected by the position to enforce proper
conduct.
Failure to fulfill these responsibilities can cause the
organization to fail.
 Leadership is both and an applied skill. A civil engineering
student can gain leadership skills at the undergraduate education
level. A student can take a leadership role in design teams,
competitions, clubs, and societies on campus. Excellent examples
of these opportunities include being a leader in an engineering
project or running for an offer position in a student chapter.
The student must keep in mind that a leadership role,
especially in an established group, may not be available
immediately. Many times, a student must prove his or her loyalty,
interest, and ability to be a leader by actively participating in the
group over and extended period of time. In Engineers Without
Borders, where groups of students plan and execute engineer-
related international work, all students who are involved in a
project do not go on the trip: it’s simply not feasible to fund
airfare for a group of fifty students to do the work that ten
students can do, where the money could be applied elsewhere. To get
the spot of the trip, the student must show that he or she has the
technical capability and is committed to the group and the project. A
student does this by attending meeting regularly, contributing to the
design, working with other students outside of meetings, and
participating in fundraising and sports events, among other activities.
The task in which students participate as they rise to a position
of leadership are largely not technical in nature but provide
opportunities to use the same leadership skills as corporate CEOs. The
task generally involve administrative duties and directing the activities
of other group members. Motivating subordinates is a primary
responsibility of a leader, and a student chapter officer learns about
motivating fellow students to show up on time at fundraising activities.
Leaders are generally good communicators, and a student chapter
member can improve his or her ability to communicate by directing
committee meetings.
Leaders of Engineering firms must plan organizational
activities, and a student who organizes an effort at concrete
canoe building will gain planning experience that will be of
value as he or she rises to a position of leadership in an
Engineering Company.
 Developing leadership attitudes and skills should begin
early in one’s career. Even during first year or two after one’s
undergraduate matriculation, observing leaders at the place of
employment can provide valuable guidance. The leadership
performance of senior staff members can provide guidance on the
proper conduct of a leader. Where senior staff do not function
well, their negative performances can serve as valuable guidance
on conduct to avoid when serving in a leadership position. This is
a time in one’s career when knowing hot to evaluate leadership
can be a worthwhile education.
While observing leadership performance can be
instructive, it cannot replace actual experience. Leadership
experience can be obtained both at the place of employment and
externally in other professional activities.
A young engineer should seek advice from his or her mentor
within the company about assignments that will provide
leadership experience.
Leadership development must continue throughout one’s
engineering career. Companies will often provide support for
professional development conferences, workshops, and seminars.
Active participation in professional organizations at the local,
state, or national level will provide leadership experience.
Globalization and the increasing interconnectedness of
communities around the world introduce new obstacles and
opportunities for engineers to provide leadership. Active
participation in professional committees that deal specifically
with international participation and issues provides the
opportunity to develop global contacts.
 Creating a new organization requires experience and
knowledge. While books devoted entirely to the subject have
been written, only a few elements of the task will be
presented. Two aspects are especially important, planning
and organization, which are defined as:
1) Planning: The process of identifying, analyzing,
evaluating, and deciding among alternative opportunities
for the purpose of meeting organizational goals.
2) Organization: The process of using resources (human
and material) to execute the organizational plan.
Leadership is critical to these two responsibilities.
 Books on management include numerous theories
that have been proposed to evaluate a leader’s effectiveness.
Unfortunately, none of these are universally accepted.
General evaluation criteria can be listed, but all of them are
not important in every case. Therefore, the criteria is
important in a specific case must be identified, ranked in
importance, and them applied to the evaluation of the
specific leader. The following evaluation criteria are common
to many of the theories on leader effectiveness:
1) Technical Competency: In order to delegate tasks, the
leader must appreciate the abilities that will be needed to
complete the assignment. Technical competency is
therefore necessary to assign tasks and supervise
projects.
2) Ethical Maturity: Identifying values important to an
organization and resolving ethical conflicts requires ethical
maturity; a person is ethically mature if he or she understands
the breadth of his or her ethical responsibilities and makes
decisions where the ethical responsibilities to completing
entities are properly balanced (i.e., unbiased).
3) Decisiveness: Decision making is an important responsibility
of a leader. An effective leader will be the one who is decisive
and hindsight continually made the correct decisions.
4) Motivation: To achieve organizational goals, a leader will need
to ensure that subordinates are motivated. This requires
supervision, good communication skills, and the belief that
the organization is sensitive to the workers’ needs.