For an engineer to establish a firm and fast threshold career while at the same time seeking to be more innovative, an engineer is required to ensure a right balance between idealistic and realistic nature. Inventing something in today’s world requires individuals to be practical at all times. However, the invention doesn’t just depend on well-known properties or behaviors because the engineering fraternity has experienced design of technologies and equipment that some twenty years back seemed absurdly unimaginable. A lot of brilliant ideas never materialize because they are limited regarding vision and future technological advancement expectations (Schuchardt, 2009). Before any invented technology came into existence there existed an idea that was independent of the actual innovation in the mind of the creator, and the final innovation is a replica of the idea and this mark to justify how important idealism is to engineering. Realism is based on real experience, and their innovation is limited to reality whereas idealism advocates for the opposite as we can think of something non-existent and bring it to reality.
The bottom line is that innovation in engineering in rare cases follows any predefined path however how well it is predefined. Hence, the unexpected is bound to be achieved, and if all the engineers tried to be realistic at all times, nothing could get invented. Idealistic thinking is what has enabled us to be where we are today but still as Edison once said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” I firmly believe that the one percent is reserved for the dreamer but for the drudge work to be achieved it solely depends on dreamer’s desire to make it happen practically (Schuchardt, 2009).
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Extraverted Sensing personality types
Extraverted sensing is defined as the type of sensing that is oriented towards the external world which just means that their source of excitement mostly originates from objects of the world. Although in many instances psychological classification leads to oversimplification of people’s jobs, it serves to provide insights into yourself and the people who surround your daily life. The engineering career trains an individual how to avoid intuitive leaps, analyze methodically, stay calm and how to work with teams. Personality doesn’t have a huge impact in engineering as it does in humanities and technically no personality can stop an engineer with the right attitude from achieving their goal. There are many successful extroverted engineers, but they tend to lean towards managerial and shy away from technical design aspects as introverts tend to be favored in engineering due to their mindset that allows analyzing of a problem and creating the bigger picture and finds a path to a good solution (Felder et al., 2014). This characteristic doesn’t work well with the extraverted mindset that tends to gain their problem-saving energy from social interactions.
We can’t generalize on the success of an individual or their failures depending on a particular personality type. A lot of time in engineering is spent working in teams around other people hence the extravert personality plays a major role in brainstorming for ideas that can help solve a problem faster than brainstorming in secretion at the same time developing good professional working culture (Martins et al., 2012). The nature of the work done models the personality types of individuals as highly technical environments will tend to attract or even demand introverted personalities. However even in such a demanding environment interaction with others can’t be ruled out as it is necessary for all typical engineering situations hence requiring one to develop their social and communication skills that are necessary for the process one is needed to describe or explain their work to non-engineering staff or dealing with either technical or human issue who mostly are in management and whose decisions have a direct impact on your job.
- Felder, Richard M., Gary N. Felder, and E. Jacquelin Dietz. “The effects of personality type on engineering student performance and attitudes.” Journal of engineering education 91.1 (2014): 3-17. . http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1303276-can-engineers-be-extroverted.html
- Martins, Nico, and Melinde Coetzee. “Organisational culture, employee satisfaction, perceived leader emotional competency and personality type: An exploratory study in a South African engineering company.” SA Journal of Human Resource Management 5.2 (2012): 20-32. https://journals.co.za/content/sajhrm/5/2/EJC95859
- Schuchardt, R. F. “The Engineer, Practical Idealist.” Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 48.4 (2009): 1460-1463. https://www.reference.com/world-view/difference-between-idealist-realist-7ea5d4e5482e4d04
- Schuchardt, R. F. “The engineer, practical idealist: President’s address.” Journal of the AIEE 48.8 (2009): 611-614. http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2009/05_2/features/04/
