Understandings of empathy held by Australian engineering leadership

Abstract

Empathy is emerging as a vital engineering skill in light of the growing complexity of engineering work and necessity of human-centred solutions. While there is emerging research on empathy in engineering, there is a lack of specific focus on Australian leaders in this field. Considering the criticality of this demographic to realising systemic change in engineering organisations and the profession, this thesis examines how Australian engineering leaders understand empathy. To achieve this, thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with seven Australian engineering leaders has been conducted. From this, it is clear that a collective uplift in empathetic skills within engineering is essential, particularly for engineering leaders. However, this necessity varies depending on an individual engineer’s work, which reflects their personal abilities, and is completely natural and acceptable. It is inherently empathetic to recognise and champion the diversity of skills in engineering. Developing empathy as an engineering skill requires holistic and nuanced integration into engineering education as well as whole-of-career development. Self-selecting engineers should be empowered to deepen their empathy skills and a baseline awareness requirement should be established for all graduates. These findings are significant as they challenge the all-or-nothing approach to people skills in engineering while reinforcing their criticality to the future of the profession. This thesis recommends that systemic change should be reflected through a tiered approach to empathy in Engineers Australia’s competency standards involving a Stage 1 awareness and a Stage 2 knowledge. This approach sidesteps the issue of congested undergraduate education programs to deliver a collective uplift in empathetic capability. Ultimately, this thesis provides rich insights from Australian engineering leaders in how empathy might be better integrated into engineering education and the profession.