Engineers are severely underrepresented in boardrooms and university leadership across the country. Here are five ways for mid-career engineers to push through to the next level.

Engineering leaders from across the corporate and tertiary education landscape came together recently to examine why relatively few engineers hold positions of influence on boards, in governments and in universities.

“Fewer than three per cent of corporate directors in Australia are from STEM backgrounds,” said Consult Australia CEO Jonathan Cartledge, at an event co-hosted in a collaboration with Engineers Australia.

“There is an under-recognition of the role of engineers and an under-representation of engineers in positions of influence.” 

A powerhouse panel then shared insights gleaned from decades in the profession. Here are their top five insights…

1. Be inquisitive, always.

Engineers should embrace new skills and be “game to do things that they don't know how to do,” said to non-executive director Leeanne Bond.

“What has steered me over many years is an inquisitive nature – wanting to find out what the problem is, what the value drivers are, and then come up with solutions, and to do that collaboratively,” she said.

This was a sentiment echoed by UNSW Dean of Engineering Julien Epps, whose background in electrical engineering has lent him a problem-solving mindset.

“I spent the early part of my career debugging circuits and debugging code,” he explained. “In the later part of my career … I’ve found myself more debugging systems and processes – and even people, or people's motivations.”

2. Pursue your passion.

“We have thousands and thousands of people in our workforces” who are “genuinely turning up for passion,” said Eva Wood, Vice President & General Manager for Australia New Zealand at Jacobs. 

“The ability to get people to fundamentally [and] rapidly form teams, deliver really innovative solutions, then disband and then rapidly form again – I don't think there's really any other profession where that happens at such a rate of change and at such a pace. That is such a gift.”

3. Embrace generational change.

Engineers are at the heart of solving age-old problems, including renewable energy generation, water security, infrastructure resilience and diversity. The broader industry “doesn’t have a great scorecard,” noted James Glastonbury, Chief Engineering & Innovation Officer at Aveng Group, including diversity, productivity, safety and environmental sustainability in this list. “But the canvas of our solutions is a direct function of the diversity of thinking we can bring to the table. That includes at the board table … right across the organisation, down to project teams.”

4. Challenge the status quo.

Boards can often consider an engineer’s role to be one of execution rather than ideation, Madeleine McManus observed.

“For me, the whole fabric of engineering and how we operate, how we're challenged, how we think, how we're educated, to challenge the status quo, to innovate, to create, to make positive impact for our community – is the absolute fabric of how we lead across all the realms that we operate in.”

This was also front-of-mind for Glastonbury, who encouraged engineers to cultivate a curious mindset. Problem solving “is at the heart of engineering,” he said. “I want to encourage … the engineers in the business that I’m part of to be curious, to be courageous. Yes, we need to follow some rules – but occasionally, we've got to really constructively challenge the rules as well.”

5. Broaden the conversation.

Former Engineers Australia President Dr Marlene Kanga AO was in the audience, and contributed a pertinent call to action. These discussions are vital, she said, but engineers need to widen the scope to include more people. “We should be talking not to ourselves like we are here, but we should [also] be talking outside,” she said.