Citation (IEEE): B. M. Gordon, “What Is Engineering Leadership? A Personal Essay,” The Bridge, vol. 39, no. 4, 2009. [Online]. Available: https://www.nae.edu/ Freely available in the archive of The Bridge at nae.edu.
What it argues
A personal essay arguing that leadership is a recognizable human quality, distinct from process management, and that engineering leadership adds a technical core: enough knowledge and vision to grasp what matters in a large system and to dive into any part of it. Gordon criticizes organizations that separate the inventor from the people who bring an invention to market, describes the leader as the creative center a team forms around, and draws on his own early career to argue that one learns to lead by first learning to follow.