2.1. The engineering profession and its evolution

According to the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales (website, 2016), an engineer was, from Napoleon’s time, “a person who built or invented war machines or who ensured the design and execution of fortification works or a stronghold seat”; today, it is “a person who ensures to a very high technical level a work of creation, organization, direction in the industrial field”. Eyraud [EYR 03] evokes the evolution of the engineering profession, from a “knowledgeable” or “aristocrat” engineer to an “established” engineer considered as a “professional in the world of workshops and mechanics”. Thus, the Ecole des arts et métiers was created at the beginning of the 19th Century, within the framework of “encyclopedic ideals of the Enlightenment”. An engineer will take various forms of management, administration and team leadership responsibilities. Livian [LIV 95] noted, however, the difficulty of managing the careers of engineers who must choose between “a ‘specialized’ technical competence”, which is rarely valued, and managerial responsibilities for which they do not necessarily have neither attraction, nor skills.

Eyraud [EYR 03] notes that human, economic and social training, even if it sometimes represents a relatively large part of the schedule (20%, for example, at the Ecole des mines), “only imperfectly meets the needs of future engineer-managers … There is little awareness of their future role as an operational manager of human resources”. Yet, companies are more and more aware of the importance of this human dimension. In a research project on building skills, which was conducted with CESI engineering students, and in particular with those who follow apprenticeship programs, Blandin [BLA 10] highlights among the components of the engineering competence the “mobilization of human resources appropriate to the action” including the notions of motivation, commitment, leadership, respect for the other, and the ability to negotiate and adapt.

In the USINOR group, “the priorities in the area of recruitment of a young engineer are: firstly, someone who has the ability to work in a team; secondly, a ‘mobile’ person both in his or her head and geographically; thirdly, a person not possessing an exclusive technical competence, but who is open to the people and endowed with capabilities of leadership; and fourthly, a person able to cumulate local (hierarchical) and cross-disciplinary functions. On this point, it is for the latter to be able to be a person of connection or a person of leadership of a network” [EYR 03]. Berlia ([BER 13], cited by [SIT 15]), the Chairperson of the Apeejay Stya group in India, explains that along with the skills related to the specific field of activity (the hard skills), her company is looking for soft skills: “Today, an engineer must communicate with the customer, engage in the organization and its goals, work in a team and better understand the dynamics of its work environment”.

For Balaji and Somashekar [BAL 09], these soft skills are multiple. They draw up a long list: “Leadership, teamwork, conflict management, management, interpersonal relations, autonomy, decision-making, anticipation, continuous learning, empathy, persuasion, negotiation, presentation, self-efficacy, diplomacy, goal orientation, flexibility, customer service, written and oral communication, creativity, innovation, problem solving”. Blom and Saeki [BLO 12] group these skills into two categories: those related to employability such as confidence, teamwork or willingness to learn and those related to oral and written communication or the mastery of languages. They show that employers place more importance on the human dimension that represent these two types of soft skills than on purely professional skills related to the engineering profession. Most of the collective agreements or job evaluation methods recognize this dimension. The Hay method used by many large companies distinguishes, for example, three dimensions among human relations skills: “information: the efficiency and friendliness in the exchange of information with others; demonstration: the ability to understand and make themselves understood, to advance, to associate and to guide others; and conviction: the ability to understand, influence, develop, motivate and convince others”.

The CTI [CTI 15] analyzes the evolution of the expectations of the professional world, of society and of individuals over time, expressed in terms of the skills necessary for the practice of engineering. It notes that these skills have evolved over time: “Specifically oriented towards the scientific and technical aspects, they are gradually extended on the request of enterprises and engineers”. It insists in particular on taking three dimensions into account, the organizational, personal and cultural dimensions: the ability to insert in the professional life, to integrate into an organization, to lead it and to make it evolve; the ability to work in an international context and the ability to know oneself, to self-assess.

Zimmerer and Yasin [ZIM 98] stress the growing importance of leadership skills to manage complex projects in the current environment. Goodwin ([GOO 93], cited by [KRI 07]) shows that the project engineers’ performance depends more on their conceptual, human and negotiation skills than on their technical skills. Albero and Roby [ALB 14] consider that “the main issue of scientific and technological training is not limited to the strict acquisition of knowledge and know-how reduced to these fields, but also relates to the development of dispositions to responsibility, to strategic action and decision-making, in the reflexive taking into account of the realities of context and the characteristics of human activity”. For Moysan Louazel ([MOY 94], cited by [MIG 01]), “the uncertainty of the economic situation and the rapidity of changes are at the origin of this desire to get the engineers out of a too strong functional anchoring or a too strong specialization”.

García-Chas, Neira-Fontela and Varela-Neira [GAR 15] also stress the evolutions that push today’s engineers to collaborate more and more with their colleagues. They find, like Mu, Zhang and MacLachlan [MU 11], that most of the engineers have creativity skills on a technical framework, but that if they are not complemented by social skills, they may not lead to a success on the market. To be successful, they must demonstrate self-control, effectively use their social networks and develop their political skills. Slusher, Van Dyke and Rose [SLU 72] even consider that engineers whose skills are mainly technical are less likely than others to have access to senior management positions.

Sonntag [SON 07] notes that engineering training is increasingly taking these evolutions into account: in parallel with scientific courses, management courses, languages, humanities and social sciences make it possible to include it “in an industrial and social logic, of collaborative work, of ethical and citizenship reflection and personal development”. A CEREQ study [CAL 15] on a sample of Generation 2010 engineering graduates in employment in spring 2014, however, points to the gap between the level of skills acquired in training and the level required for the job. It highlights that, “in the scientific field, for engineering graduates, the level acquired in training is always significantly higher than what is required in the job”. On the other hand, skills deficits are perceived by young graduates at the level of general skills: organize research and information processing, identify and pose a problem, communicate and especially organize the work and management of activities.

2.2. The analysis approach

The approach is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with a sample of 23 people with engineering training, of very varied ages and functions: an average age of approximately 40 years; 15 men and eight women; 14 in technical or developmental functions, six in management or commercial functions and three consultants or trainers, former students of four engineering schools. The emphasis is on the identification, the acquisition method and the development of human or relational skills in their profession.

Firstly, in a somewhat directive approach, a general question was asked to engineers: “Can you tell me about the human dimension of your work?” Next, an approach based on the critical incident method was used. They were asked to mention two concrete situations that they had experienced: first, a situation in which they had been particularly satisfied by the human aspects of their work and then another in which they had been particularly dissatisfied. A qualitative analysis with a comprehensive approach has enabled, from the transcript of the interviews, the identification of the human skills that the engineers thought they needed and the clarification of the points of blockage or resistance that they might encounter in the acquisition or transfer of these skills within their company. An analysis of the frequencies of occurrence of each theme was then carried out to highlight the most frequently mentioned dimensions about human skills in their profession and to identify those that seemed more or less satisfactory to them.

2.3. Skills mobilized in their profession by engineers

Our study being focused on human skills, engineers were questioned on this dimension of their profession but, in their answers, they were led to also mention the technical skills that they consider as an important basis for their profession, less by the mastery of knowledge than by the analysis skills and the reasoning method that those skills enable them to mobilize. They realize, however, that beyond purely technical skills, they need more general skills to integrate a set of activities and have a global vision of their work situation to oversee, coordinate, arbitrate and organize the action of a larger whole. These skills relate to relationships, the adaptation to various and changing situations, or even the values and the respect of a certain ethic. Instead, they speak of human “qualities” rather than “skills”. They are linked to the personality of each person and can be reinforced through support or adapted training, but they are primarily acquired in the field, over time and with energy:

“We are engineers, therefore necessarily, if we are at this position, it is because we have technical skills … [we] learn many things, we learn to make equations at innumerable degrees. For the last five years, I have only used crossmultiplication”;

“I think that what is expected of an engineer in a company … is to have analyzed, [to have] formulated their proposals, to prioritize the proposals and to consider a certain number of people”;

“An engineer, is first and foremost someone who, beyond a technical training, or technical skills, has a reasoning method … we learn to solve problems by making hypotheses, retaining the bad or the less good, arriving at a result which is what it is, but which is built on a logic”.

Most of the interviewed engineers have evolved towards non-pure technical professions. The mastery of relational skills appears essential to them for coordinating the actions and leading teams:

“The technical side, it must be 20% of the work. Next, there is still 80% of relations with colleagues. If we manage to ‘get along’ with such a person, well, we will be better listened to … When we are students, we do not realize, or we realize with great difficulty, that there is really a very close person-to-person relationship, because the technical part is not that important, and not so difficult to solve”;

“80% of our time we must speak with people, or work with people, so we are obliged to have human contacts”.

These relational skills are essential for the management of hierarchical relationships. The engineer must know how to work in a group and lead a team:

“In my profession, between an engineer who despises the human resources side, and someone who has a sense of contact with people, well, we quickly see the difference”;

“We never work alone. Human links or discussion between people, if we do not know how to do that, it is complicated”;

“I believe that it is important to force yourself in the morning to go around the team: how are you? Shake hands, … It sounds silly, but it is the beginning of communication”;

“You have to know at times to say: stop, let’s stop, we take an hour one-on-one with our colleagues to really repeat the point, see what goes, what is wrong… We often say what is wrong, but we must also know how to encourage, motivate and say what goes, not hesitate to congratulate people when this is the case”.

“Engineers, we expect of them technique, but we expect of them the qualities of a manager, we expect them to know how to report, we expect them to know how to behave in a group”;

“We work a lot in projects … we need to know to defend our opinions, and then also to know to be persuaded by others when in fact they are correct … to know how to be part of a team”.

In these management functions, the engineer must also know how to motivate and make people progress:

“It is necessary to understand people, we must know them. It is necessary to see fairly quickly where they are good, where they are not good, and we have to come… to pull them in the same direction, in the right position. There are some people that must be motivated because they have a naturalness to be pessimistic or withdrawn, so we must explain to them that they are champions of the world. And there are others who believe that they are champions of the world, we must explain to them that no, not quite, and it is rather slow”;

“… we need to make people progress… from time to time, we must say, in life, what can they do? In which direction can we guide them? Can they progress?”

The engineers we interviewed often also have the opportunity to have relationships with clients, and relational skills seem to them to be essential in this context:

“When we are with a client, we are first and foremost asked to know how to listen to their needs, to know how to be reactive”;

“With a colleague, if you made a mistake, well, it is a misunderstanding but it is not necessarily always serious. If you make a mistake with a client, we have a trust capital that erodes fast enough”.

The application of these skills is not an easy task. It involves effort and a personal challenge:

“If we want to be accepted in a team, I think when we get there, we must at first know how to be less visible, to listen, to analyze the situation”;

“Trying to go to others, it is also necessary to know how to open yourself”;

“We must be very humble, something that we do not necessarily learn in schools either. We often have the impression that we are part of an elite, that we are very strong, etc., and often it is necessary to know how to say: finally I have a lot to learn”;

“Then, there is another dimension, it is how to position oneself in relation to people … We greatly imagine that the other person assimilates so quickly, whereas this is not the case at all”.

A more general dimension that emerges from the interviews is respect for values or principles of honesty and fairness:

“There are requirements in terms of behavior, ethics, I don’t know: transparency”;

“He said to me: with you, I learned honesty … we did not agree, but I have always told him what I thought, and finally I think this helped him”;

“We cannot tolerate it, if we saw in a corner a manager or a supervisor being unfair, I would not support that. It must be part of our human values and I think we are very sensitive to that”.

In relation to the engineers’ managerial responsibilities, environmental skills appear to be important to understand the context in which they work and to manage the cultural differences that they encounter and which require openness and adaptation skills:

“People live in a cultural environment, and today we are very quickly confronted with many cultures… I think that, beyond religion, we naturally come from a social background, even if we do not want to see it, and to discover in the company a kind of fabric from different tangled backgrounds, it is not at all clear”;

“The worst thing is to remain compartmentalized in our universe and I think that intelligence, it comes through this openness… people are confronted with different cultures, the world is internationalized, it is not the hype”;

“I have worked a lot, and I still work internationally. Therefore there we are confronted with people who do not think as we do, who have other ways of working, so it also requires a lot of flexibility. It is necessary to adapt, not to have too many preconceived ideas”.

Finally, the engineer appears as a sort of a conductor:

“The engineer in the construction industry is at the center of a galaxy where everything revolves, finally a lot of things revolve around them. They are conductors”;

“To release a product, we must work with a research center, we must work with the industry to determine if our idea is feasible, we must work with the people in finance and management to know how much it will cost, how much it can bring, we must work with external service providers, for example, to advertise, to make promotions, to make packaging, decorations, so we work with thousands of people. Next, we must give them in to the hands of salespeople, so that they sell them, so we are conductors”.

The main human skills expected of the executives interviewed are therefore: an open mind (not to remain compartmentalized); an ability to know how to get out of the “rational”, the technique learned in engineering school; a flexibility to avoid preconceived ideas; an ability to work in a team and an ability to listen.

2.4. The development and transmission of skills

The engineers we interviewed often consider that these human skills “cannot be learned”; they were acquired through the diversity of experiences that they have lived, mistakes, failures they have experienced, and by coming out of the cocoon of their usual circle to understand people of different profiles and backgrounds. The exchanges with colleagues can be supplemented by the aid of training or the support of a coach, but what is essential is to go to others and to be ready to open oneself. The contribution of experience therefore seems fundamental for the development of these skills, even if some consider that they are largely innate: “I suppose that there are natural predispositions in relation to others”. Engineers can also be aware of the limitations of their skills when they are confronted with specific situations. This is the case, for example, of this young engineer at the beginning of his career who realizes the limitations of his knowledge: “Most have been there much longer than you, they know the job better that you”. One engineer who, shortly after graduating from school, found herself managing people at the end of their career felt helpless; she realized that what she had learned, which she was proud of, and which made her feel strong, was not sufficient and that finally she still had a lot to learn: “Even if they try in our schools to teach us a certain number of things on this point of view, I admit that we are quite helpless when we begin to work… I arrived in a team, I was 23 years old… and I found myself managing people who were almost 50 years old on average. So I think that we are really helpless”.

The basic training acquired at the beginning of professional life above all provides technical skills, but also a credibility which facilitates relations at work. This basic training, which generally leads to a diploma, is supplemented by diverse experiences in our youth, which are very enriching in terms of human and relational skills; this is the case, for example, of those who have been summer camp instructors, who have completed their military service or actively participated in associations:

“People who take courses on youth work certificates (BAFA), or who are following a summer instructorship, summer camps, things like that … already, they have a facility to contact people”; “We had this chance, me, my generation, to have to do what was called military service … I found myself all of a sudden out of a super-nice cocoon … I think that it opened my eyes to another range of relationships”;

“Associations … when we are students, prepare us well for functional relations, of the same level … They prepare us well to manage a project”.

All engineers interviewed insist on the professional experience that they have subsequently acquired in the company, in relation with others, and which allowed them to acquire a large part of their individual skills, but which also allowed them to develop collective skills that characterize the know-how and the behavior patterns of a work team. They insist on the progressive learning of relational skills which are linked to the experience in the field:

“It is an experience or a state of mind that we acquire. I believe that in fact, human relationship … only the everyday experiences develop it”;

“Human qualities, I think that they mature. We do not react in the same way when we are twenty or forty years old. I think that we will not learn this at school… taking a step back from situations, risk-taking, acceptance of failure, the ability to motivate, I think this is learned considerably”.

A political dimension, linked to the creation of networks, is often mentioned by our executives. All interviews stress the importance of having a network:

“In a group such as ours, there are many strata, so also in this case, sometimes it’s a bit like politics. We must know how to create networks … It is important to also cultivate relationships”.

The transmission of skills is often informal and sometimes difficult. It is done on the occasion of meetings, exchanges, and it is facilitated by participative management. It accompanies career developments, particularly on the occasion of interviews or professional assessments:

“There really is this side: transmit to others your knowledge, so it is often during meetings, or in class, a little presentation of studies where there is really an exchange”;

“If people have limited skills on this particular study, if they are left alone, this is a disaster. We have to help them, we have to support them”;

“People’s faults, it is very complicated to change them. We can work on qualifications, but faults are always the most difficult aspect, it is more complicated”.

Skills development therefore results in a progressive acquisition, and this acquisition is not performed alone, even if it is very much the result of an individual willingness. It implies a transmission by those who master these skills, and it is greatly facilitated both by managers and tutors who encourage and support executives in their efforts, but also through exchanges between colleagues. Just as much as managers, if not more, it is the coworkers who are the main vectors of skill transfer. Still, it is necessary that the organizational context promotes collaboration and sharing. If not, competition or mistrust can lead to feelings of incompetence and inhibit the acquisition of new skills.

Meetings, team work, and also more informal exchanges facilitate discussions regarding each person’s difficulties or successes and contribute to skill development. This development is often not the primary purpose of these work meetings:

“Mutual assistance between colleagues enables the exchange of much information, the transmission to others of a part of their knowledge, sometimes even during coffee”.

At these meetings, older and more experienced people have a privileged role to transmit experiential knowledge that is often implied and difficult to explain. To benefit from these exchanges, however, it is necessary that the person listens and is open to others:

“Trying to go to others, it is also… it is necessary to know how to open oneself up, it is necessary to know how to reveal some information about oneself, it is necessary to know how to give a little before receiving. So it is really engaging. There are people who do not want to do it”.

Sometimes, the organizational context is seen as an obstacle to skill development. People who would be ready to transmit their skills may be subject to strong pressure of results or lack of means: “We are in a context where we demand a lot of results, there is a lot of pressure”. When they are overwhelmed by the multiplicity of their roles, they find it difficult to see their function of team leadership as a conductor role, and they consider themselves rather as equilibrists:

“We need to maintain a balance between all that. That is to say, to be effectively reactive to the client, to know how to listen to them, etc. but at the same time know how to interface, escalate the information internally, and then to keep time for your collaborators, etc., so it requires playing a little balancing act”.

All of these pressure factors that engineers experience today can therefore constitute an obstacle to the acquisition of new skills. Faced with increasing demands for results, a multiplication of their roles, a permanent demand for adaptation, they may feel that they are no longer able to cope and that they have not mastered their function.

2.5. Dimensions of human skills

To obtain a more precise idea of the human skills that emerge from our interviews, a quantitative analysis has been carried out to highlight the most frequently mentioned themes or sub-themes and, based on the satisfactory and unsatisfactory situations that they had experienced, the themes that were related to each of these situations. Six main themes emerge in the analysis of what evokes the human dimension of their work for engineers: communication, group spirit, culture, organization, recognition and authority. For each of these themes, Figure 2.1 indicates the sub-themes related to them in terms of skills and factors related to their work environment.

When the interviewed engineers evoke the aspects of the human dimension of their work, a first theme is linked to communication. In order to communicate well, it will be necessary to be able to have an open mind, respect, know-how, trust and frankness, to inform, listen and understand others. Group spirit refers to five other types of skills: creating a favorable atmosphere, facilitating the exchange, cohesion, conviviality and solidarity. Organization translates into flexibility, balance, coherence, reactivity and adaptation. Recognition implies that we know how to develop others, enhance them, motivate them and set an example. Finally, authority corresponds to skills in terms of diplomacy, politics, exercise of power and conflict management.

The identification of these broad categories can be useful for trainers responsible for developing the human skills of engineering populations.

Figure 2.2 indicates the frequency of occurrence of each of the sub-themes mentioned by the respondents. It highlights the importance given to communications and to the development of others, then to leadership-related elements such as authority, motivation, respect or group spirit. These concepts are at the center of engineers’ concerns.

To define priorities, the analysis of concrete situations experienced by engineers as very satisfactory or very unsatisfactory (Figure 2.3) will be useful to define measures to strengthen satisfactory situations and to remedy those which seem unsatisfactory. The main factors that are unsatisfactory for the engineers in our sample (which appear negative in the figure) are communication difficulties linked to conflicts, organization problems or lack of confidence. Developing communication and conflict management skills therefore seems to be a priority to reduce frustrations that can be experienced when engineers encounter difficulties in this area. The most satisfactory factors, by contrast, are related to group spirit and to the opportunities for development and exchanges that they may encounter in their work. Developing the ability to create a favorable atmosphere and to support the development of their collaborators should contribute to promoting the mobilization of engineers themselves.

We have seen that most authors and professional associations or organizations consider that engineers must master, in addition to technical skills, human skills, soft skills which must enable them to deal with situations with which they are then faced in their functions and which will allow them, if they wish, to evolve towards broader management functions. Literature provides a whole set of skills, grouped for some [BLO 12] in skills related to employability or to communication; for others (Hay method), in skills of information, demonstration and conviction; and for others still [CTI 15], skills with organizational, personal or cultural dimensions.

For our part, we have identified six main dimensions: skills related to communication, authority, group spirit, recognition, organization and culture. These dimensions partly reflect those defined by Balaji and Somashekar [BAL 09] or Blom and Saeki [BLO 12], but they complement and specify them by applying them to an engineering population. We have highlighted the emphasis that should be placed on communication and group spirit in order to avoid unpleasant situations and develop satisfaction. It is important to note the particular importance of these relational skills when engineers are in contact with clients, because their responsibility is great and the consequences of their actions can be particularly serious for their enterprise.

It is also evident from our study that these human skills are mainly acquired through field experience, day-to-day relationships within a team, encouragement and support from their manager or appropriate training. Their acquisition assumes a certain humility, a willingness to listen and to have an open mind. It may be facilitated by prior experiences during studies in internships or associations, and by the networks that people have been able to create. Engineers are, for the most part, aware of the importance of this human dimension, but their desire to develop their skills in this area is often limited by constraints linked to the pressure they feel to focus on immediate results in order to cope with the rapid developments in the professional context.

The study that we conducted has an exploratory character. It contributes to a better understanding of the importance and characteristics of a dimension that appears to be essential among engineers’ skills who can no longer simply live in an ivory tower based solely on their technical skills. Its scope is necessarily limited, given the size of the sample which cannot claim to be representative of all French executives. A complementary questionnaire study would verify the conclusions obtained from a larger sample. Our results, however, make it possible to suggest courses of action for the executives themselves and for the engineering schools wishing to best prepare their students for their future functions in business.