Editing- Improving grammar, flow and polishing the content/lower word count

In my view, born leaders have the character qualities of trustworthiness, integrity, transparency along with emotional intelligence that make people follow their leadership effortlessly. A good leader communicates and collaborates with his team and motivates them towards achieving the team’s goal. A good leader is like a helmsman who not only decides the direction of the ship and also navigates it on the correct path. The leader understands and listens to the team members and collaborates effictevely within and outside the team to work towards achieving teams success.

 

I remember this one experience from past when my leadership was truly appreciated and commended by several team members. I was the technical lead for one of the new products released to the market. The product was huge success in the market. As of any product platform, we were working on further enhancements and software/firmware features for the product. During the testing, a serious issue was discovered by a team member. Since I was the technical lead on the project, the test engineer reported the issue to me. Upon further investigation, I found that the issue was serious and could impact multiple devices that were out on the field and if not resolved immedately could potentially lead to a recall.

I got in touch with the product support team and gathered all the complaint records in regards to the product. Based on this information I called a meeting with the management team where I shared the issue, the potential impact of the issue and the risk involved. Collectively, we decided that this was the highest priority for the company to resolve.

Following this meeting, I made a plan with the technical team and we decided to meet twice daily and discuss the plan of action and results. The cross-functional team involved electrical, firmware, software and hardware engineers. We decided to have a thorough review of the design. In the first few meetings, the hardware and software teams kept going after each other. During one of the review, the hardware engineer, Joe (name changed) strongly resisted and pushed the cause to be a software flaw and left the meeting. Post that meeting I talked to the software engineer and we reviewed the portion of software that was controlling the function thoroughly. Since this was done one on one instead of a meeting in front of everyone, the software engineer went even further and shared other details related to how that piece of software was designed. Following this conversation I reviewed the hardware design in detail and looked at the drawings, there were some things in design that made me investigate further. Upon closer review of the technical documents, I was able to learn that some of the component design guidelines were violated. I understood the problem. I discussed the problem with my immediate manager and assured him that I would lead the issue to a resolution.

Following this conversation, I discussed the matter with the component manufacturer and the manufacturer confirmed that my observation about design rule violation was correct. I discussed this finding with Joe. Joe was a very senior level design engineer and with over 35 years of hardware design experience. At first he resisted to the observation. But then I shared the details of the findings and the note from the component manufacturer and assured to work with him on to resolve the issue. Joe mellowed down and showed interest in working with me to come up with the solution the problem. While working with him, I also connected with Joe at a different level and learned a few other things about Joe and his family. Joe used to live far from work so used to go back home only during weekends. I used to work with Joe long hours and I made it a point to stay with him as long as he worked. I also joined him on dinners occasionally when we used to work late. The discussions outside the work helped me to bond with Joe and created a deeper feeling of respect for each other. We worked hard and systematically analyzed the problem. We also involved the software team to come up with a temporary resolution to the problem. The resolution was implemented, tested and was rolled out as a software update. Every member of the team thanked me and appreciated my leadership skill. This project saved the company from a serious recall and saved millions of dollars. This project was also recognized by the management team in a later company wide meeting. While receiving the acknowledgement, I shared the credit with the entire team and attributed the success to team work rather than individual victory.

 

While working on the project with Joe, I also had learned that he was going to help his daughter move cross country and was planning on taking a road trip with her. Having done a cross country roadtrip, I shared some my experiences and suggested some destinations. Joe's and his daughter thanked me for the recommendations and sent a few pictures of their memorable trip.

 

A few months after this project, due to family reasons, I had to leave the company and had to relocate to Los Angeles. When I sent out my farewell email to the team, I got several messages back, but the most important message that I got was from Joe. These are the words of the message: " Nirav, You have great qualifications that I admire. Professional, smart, knowledgeable and persistent (not that I am much fan of your persistency on Hardware) I enjoyed working with you and wish you the best".

One thing I have learned from my experience as a technical lead is, senior engineers are passionate about their experiences and designs, If someone tries to challenge their design it hurts their self-esteem. This can be easily overcome by emotional intelligence of the leader who is leading them. In the above experience that is skill that enabled me to gain faith and lead the team to success.

In my career as a lead, I have led several large and small complex engineering projects. As a lead of a crossfunctional team, I always try to focus on team members strengths rather than weeknesses. I consider my role as a lead to use the best in every person to achieve success in the project while helping the team members to grow and thrive to improve upon their individual weaknesses.

In my view, transparency, trustworthiness, integrity and emotional intelligence are the qualities of an inborn leader's character that make him stand out from others. These are the character quality of the leader that separate him from a manager.