The Engineer Personality

Before it's too late, I will say that through the 23 years that I have been running Selling for Engineers seminars, I have met around 6,000 engineers and liked nearly all of them, (though there was once a guy I had to eject from an event near Hull :-). Part of the reason that I enjoyed meeting them is that under the surface I'm an engineer myself.

In the seminar I show a simplified psychometric personality assessment. It becomes a group exercise to identify the characteristics of three strongly differing types. One is the CEO, boss type, another the lab tech type and the third the friendly-but-dim, salt-of-the-earth-type.

What emerges after a lot of humorous banter is that all types have 'good' and 'bad' characteristics, yet each of the 'bad' characteristics can be seen as a positive in certain, necessary situations. For example, most people if asked out of context whether being 'dogmatic' is good, will say that it isn't. Yet if you ask them whether being 'focused and determined' is good, they will say that these qualities are. Seen with this perspective, 'dogmatism' = 'determined and focused'.

From this you can infer that according to the circumstance, any personality trait can be either 'good' or 'bad' and that problems occur when the 'bad' characteristic is inappropriate for the context. The trick for good 'job-fit' is matching the person to the niche where their characteristics are valuable.

All of which is to say that the list of less attractive engineer qualities half a screen above is what you get when you want someone who can invent solutions to big problems and make things that work and are safe.

A perennial difficulty in the science and technology sectors is that 'engineer types' are generally not commercially minded. This doesn't matter too much if there's someone else to deal with the business of finding work and selling your services. But in a small company and sometimes even in larger ones, it's often an 'engineer type' who has that role. One for which his or her personality is not very appropriate.

Of course there are some exceptions, but if you look at a psychometric evaluation of the traits that make a good engineer and those of successful entrepreneurs the differences are significant. Consequent on the personality gap, their life experiences are dissimilar. Entrepreneurs want success and accept that risk is involved in achieving it. You can't say that about the average engineer, who prefers to play it safe, which of course is a good thing for the rest of us who use their products.

From presenting business skills courses to engineers I have seen that only about 3 people from groups of 12 show natural business aptitude, and of them only half have ever had any formal business education.

The remainder don't know that they don't know. I've talked to universities about including sales / marketing topics in engineering courses, but this has never gone beyond an initial show of interest.

I think that's a problem because, ultimately, lack of commercial awareness translates into wasted opportunity, effort invested in projects which don't reach a viable market.

UPDATE June 2017 - things are finally beginning to change and several universities have engaged me to run introductory courses, but this is still a drop in the ocean. If you are a student or a member of staff at a technical university or institute contact me if you are interested in attending or presenting a 'Sales Skills Workshop' which I offer worldwide either without charge or at a reduced fee, depending on location.