Learning by immersion is a proven way to help engineers experience and develop essential leadership skills—with every department and project they contribute to.
When people leave jobs, all too often it’s because they’re unhappy with their leadership. Amid the Great Resignation, a 2021 survey found that two-thirds of employees who weren’t happy with their manager were thinking of leaving the company within the year. This survey incorporated employees across 15-plus industries, and the data rings true when I consider my work with engineering leaders and their teams.
The flip side of this stat? Leaders and managers—even good ones—are under growing pressure to meet increasing demands with dwindling resources. Strengthening emerging leadership can be an integral way to improve employee retention while keeping engineers (and their leaders) happy, engaged, and supported.
Engineers are often hired for their problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and technical mindset. But how do we properly expose and equip them to become the successful leaders that continue to encourage and engage (and retain!) their surrounding talent?
One answer: Immersive learning.
The desire to learn, develop, and try new, challenging things is innate to emerging engineering leaders—and also an added benefit for engineers looking to advance in technical career paths. However, without immersive opportunities, the only way many engineers are offered new, robust experiences is through outside offers—which means they often take their sought-after skills to a competitor in their quest to grow.
Immersive learning—what I call “immersive engagement”—is a powerful leadership development method that places engineers in real-world and really different workplace settings so they can learn and perfect new skills and techniques.
In these scenarios, these engineers aren’t passive spectators. They are active contributors who directly influence project outcomes. In this “sink or swim” framework, engineers are actively embedded in new environments to stretch their comfort zones, skill sets, and emotional intelligence.
Ideally, immersive engagement involves intentional rotations through different departments throughout the company. As engineers become immersed in each new group and in each new role, they find a sense of permanency and ownership in the team and their work.
I’ve watched, first-hand, as these engineers work harder at overcoming obstacles and provide value to every (and any) department they contribute to—and with each opportunity, they develop and hone the real, impactful leadership skills to succeed in any situation.
Here’s why learning by immersion works.
Immersive learning enables real-time skill development.
With immersive engagement, engineers experience real learning by doing. Skills are developed and improved in real-time. Engineers—and their companies—are able to quickly see the ROI on investing in these new skills.
Through immersive engagement, engineers are not just outsiders “helping out” from their own department. They become a valuable part of each team. Knowing they’re a critical contributor of a cross-functional team carries great power. With an understanding that their failure lets the whole team down, there’s no choice but to succeed at each task ahead.
Immersive learning cements lessons learned.
I’ve seen firsthand how skills harnessed through immersion can last longer than those learned through a workshop, book, or virtual environment.
Immersive, hands-on experiences deepen the learning by giving emerging leaders time to develop necessary problem-solving, decision-making, and collaboration skills before they are put into critical leadership roles. These lessons are further engrained when shared with others—another natural benefit of immersive engagement.
Immersive learning provides a high-level perspective.
In addition to being hands-on, immersed leaders develop a depth of understanding of both projects and departments across an organization. They not only know what is going on and who is contributing, but also why and how it all comes together.
One of the marks of a successful leader is the ability to see and understand the big picture—something that is nearly impossible to do if you’ve never met, seen, or worked with all of its moving pieces. Immersive learning allows engineers to not only sink in but also draw out, allowing them to see the common patterns and performance rhythms that add to the greater whole.
Combined with experiential development, collaborative learning, and rotational exposure, immersive engagement accelerates an engineer’s real-world skills while honing their critical leadership skills and gaining an unparalleled depth of learning. When encouraged outside of their comfort zones, high-performing engineers can be the highly effective leaders companies need to drive team engagement, performance, and retention.
At Minett Consulting, we help companies transform high-performance engineers into high-impact leaders through real-world, hands-on, on-site leadership development. We build on your existing systems to empower, equip, and effectively retain and promote emerging leaders while creating a powerful flywheel of collaboration, immersive engagement, rotational exposure, and experiential development throughout your entire organization. Find out where your company should focus first —take the Engineers-to-Leaders Company Assessment.
