Exploring the Experience of Early-Career Black Engineers in Leadership

Engineering leadership is an emerging research area in engineering education that aligns well with recent attention to the production of leaders and diverse engineers. While engineering leadership studies have highlighted elements such as the skills, traits, and behaviors required in pursuing and executing leadership, there is a narrow focus on the current work that also considers marginalized engineers' leadership experiences. Currently, studies that explore engineering leadership as investigations have occurred without consideration of the ways identity also factors into leadership experiences. This work considers the experiences and perspectives of early-career Black engineers engaged in leadership. The research questions that guided this study were: What are the experiences of early-career Black engineers that influence their leadership development? Through the stories of early career Black engineers, what conceptualizations of leadership are illuminated because of explicit and intentional consideration of racial identity in engineering leadership performance and development? How do early-career Black engineers navigate leadership in their professional journeys? The following frameworks guided this work: Komives' Leadership Identity Development Model, Esteban-Guitart's Funds of Identity, McGee's Stereotype Management Theory, and Campbell's Theory of the Monomyth. This qualitative study uses narrative inquiry and semi-structured interviews and captures the stories from six early-career Black engineers. The findings from these stories illuminated the following elements of engineering leadership: a sense of duty and agency to lead, the power of mentorship, and the complex role of managing identity in leadership. This work illustrates strategies encouraging engineering institutions, organizations, and enterprises to consider how leadership is conceptualized and actualized for Black engineers. This study intentionally centers on the authentic voices of Black engineers and considers how personal identity impacts the pursuit and execution of leadership and leadership development. Such considerations have the potential to influence engineering leadership development programs and initiatives that incorporate the unique perspectives of Black engineers.