Industrial Leadership that Inspires: Managerial Communication as an Emerging Pedagogical Focus in Engineering

— To explore the characteristics of effective industrial leadership, this work embarked on a quantitative effort to investigate requirements posed on leaders. Contrary to previous competence-based studies, the present work examined leader qualities more broadly through substantive knowledge, personality traits, socio-emotive skills, cultural awareness, and ethics and values. A particular aim was to conceptualize and operationalize effective leader behavior in industries to identify relevant and targeted foci for engineering pedagogy. Statistical analysis and factor analysis of the data from 503 respondents on 81 leader traits or skills shows that leadership that elicits positive organizational outcomes is founded on such leader personality dimensions as reliability, and such socio-emotive skills as self-leadership, emotional stability, inspiration and assertive communication. Paper— Industrial Leadership that Inspires – Managerial Communication as an Emerging Pedagogical… Paper— Industrial Leadership Inspires – Managerial Communication Paper— Industrial Leadership that Inspires – Managerial Communication as an Emerging Pedagogical…


Introduction
In the contemporary world of hyper-competition, organizations strive to leverage client satisfaction and financial gains by strengthening their employees' psychological connection with work, severely undermined by such macroeconomic forces as social upheaval and political turmoil. At the core of the convulsion, the concept of work is undergoing a change affecting not only organizational and team outcomes but also the context of individuals' psychological processes [1]. This strengthens the business case for understanding and building the psychological capital in the workplace and for identifying measures preventing psychosocial risks [2]. When these risks materialize, they incur monetary costs through absenteeism, presenteeism, decreased productivity, increased employee turnover, deteriorated organizational citizenship behavior, and change resistance [3]. On societal and national levels, negative mental load at work impairs citizen health, increases mortality, lowers the average retirement age, and reduces quality of life, while straining the public welfare and health care systems [4]. Contrastively, a rapidly expanding body of research has established an association between e.g. employee affective commitment and organizational outcomes, or between workplace climate and physiological, psychological and economic effects [5]. To better understand positive socio-emotive factors and their impacts at work, organizational studies have taken an interest in the motivational role of job resources as facilitators of task accomplishment, exploring aspects such as autonomy and social support available at the work community [6], [7]. Representatives of the positivity school have found support for the role of positive emotions as factors yielding positive impacts on individuals' thoughts, actions and physiology, ultimately incrementing their psychological, physical, social and intellectual resources [8], [9]. As the most salient and immediate source of emotional contagion, leadership is increasingly viewed as predictive of employee attitudes, performance, well-being and motivation [10], [11], with follower motivation for higher job performance having been described as the prime function of leadership. As mediators, organizations and management studies have proposed e.g. job design, organizational interaction culture, inspiring visions, or leader's charisma, attractiveness, authenticity, motivational language [12], [13] or leadership style [14].
The myriad quests to understand the sources and foundation of effective organizational leadership have introduced various paradigms, drawing on supervisor influence on subordinates [15]. Traditionally, leadership has been approached through three different theory lines: the first examined leader attributes, the second leader behavior, and the third, contingency theory acknowledged the role of situational variables or contingency factors in moderating leadership effects. However, a group of leadership styles exists that does not fit into any of these theories directly as it cuts across several theories, directing the focus to a mixture of leader traits, conduct and contextual variables [16], [17]. Extrapolating from the core features of the above schools, the answer could be found with the constructivist theory, according to which leadership emerges in the relationship between leaders and followers [18], [19]. Sparked by this theory, the focus of leadership research has subsequently shifted from leader actions to the perceptions of the followers, taking the premise that without followers, there is noone to be led. This consideration for employee evaluations evidences a paradigmatic transition from top-down to bottom-up approaches to leadership [20].
Perplexingly, despite the early recognition of the role of managerial communication as manifestation of leadership style and its significance for employee outcomes, the study of managerial communication competence has centered mainly on elementary and mechanical skills such as clarity of expression, appropriateness of language, timeliness of response, and attentiveness [21]. Until recently, the role of leaders' nonverbal transmission and influence strategies in enhancing human capital has been largely ignored [22], [23], [24].
The presently burgeoning research on leader emotions and emotive communication has made significant advances, drawing upon theories such as motivational language theory and speech act theory, but the full grasp of factors impacting the quality of leader-member exchange is yet to be achieved [25]. While support is available for claims on the role of leaders' individual differences and dispositional variables in interaction with subordinates [26], the communicative building blocks contributing to iJEP -Vol. 7, No. 2, 2017 143 successful leadership are insufficiently understood. Effective management communication has not been operationalized on a level concrete enough to explain for incidents perceived as inspiring, motivating and persuasive by subordinates. Leadership research has been criticized for strong segmentation and neglect to integrate findings from different approaches in a way that would allow simultaneous examination of leader traits, behaviors, situational factors and follower cognitions [27]. To respond to this call and to more solidly establish the anatomy of effective leadership, this study sliced supervisory competence requirements into a set of 81 personal qualifications found through literature review, to examine which dispositions, abilities, and skills are regarded as most pertinent for successful industrial leadership. The findings are based on a sample of 503 respondents to an online survey. Factor analysis was employed to yield the components of leader performance.
This research offers three contributions to the field of engineering education: 1) it furthers understanding of personal qualifications in industrial leadership, 2) it repositions communication competence in relation to industrial leadership, and 3) it builds a framework operationalizing managerial communication in the industrial set-up. Together these efforts not just advance the theory of leadership and management but also provide concrete instruments for organizations and university educators by suggesting priorities for engineers' competence development.

Advances in Managerial Communications Research
Management research has advanced significantly since the early curiosity about ways in which leaders exercise influence on their followers to create a sense of organizational coherence [28], [29], [30]. The fundamental tenets of such influence have traditionally centered on the transactional principles of exchange in the leaderfollower interaction, while directing growing attention to the personal capabilities of the leader, with studies of leader pathologies paving the way [31]. Subsequently, much is known about traits enabling dysfunctional leadership, but to date, only little about leaders' relational or influence strategies, or the implicit motives, thinking styles and attitudes that drive leader behaviors and outcomes and the ways in which they are perceived by subordinates [32], [33], [34].
Supervisor behaviors and abilities in interaction deserve more research attention, however, as they are known to be associated e.g. with organizational commitment and employee performance and well-being [35]. Owens and Hekman [36] contend that positive organizational outcomes such as effectiveness and high-quality leaderfollower relationships can be traced to leader humility. Leaders featuring positive characteristics through e.g. hope, optimism, resilience and self-esteem have been found to promote follower positivity and performance [37]. Kelloway et al. [38] take it as far as to claim that the prime purpose of organizational leaders is to spread positivity to their followers, due to the number of desired impacts that positive emotions induce in terms of creativity, efficiency, scope of attention, physical skills and health, optimism, resilience, commitment and coping at work. Overall, leader positivity seems indicative of subordinate perceptions of leader effectiveness, suggesting that 144 http://www.i-jep.org leaders' socio-emotive skills bear an impact beyond subjective experiences. This, together with the accumulating reports on positive organizational scholarship or positive organizational behavior, substantiates a focus in this study on leaders' psychological capital [39]. Further, Lappalainen [40] challenged the advantage of the mathematically intelligent in leader positions by investigating managers' socio-emotive competence, personality dispositions and analytical intelligence and comparing them to subordinate perceptions. She found that social and emotional intelligences correlated on a significant level with subordinate cognition of effective leadership, whereas analytical intelligence yielded no correlation at all. Four out of fourteen personality dimensions seemed predictive of success in supervisory tasks. It should be noted that these four dimensions, sociability, inspiration, concrete perception, and optimism, all drive and color communication behavior and could therefore broadly be regarded also as components of communicative competence.

Leadership as Emotional Work
Historically, managing stable and predictable tasks involved prescription of specific goals and directions, allowing leaders to direct, or to exercise their legitimate, positional or informational power to punish and reward [41]. Managing in the postmodern world is, however, much more complex, calling for less coercive and more empowering means. As an example of power responding to today's demands for employee's self-directed action and proactive behaviors, leaders' social power, referent or expert power, means that the individual is either seen in high esteem or regarded as possessing unique knowledge, granting him or her subsequent authority. Social power is linked with influencing strategies and contributes largely to organizational citizenship behavior, which in turn promotes individual and organizational effectiveness [42].
From the exercise of formal authority or power, leading others has gradually morphed into emotional work -feelings and affect are deeply intertwined with leading, leader outcomes, and follower outcomes [43]. The motivation and need to follow have deep emotional roots, the profound motive deriving from craving for care and attention, and a sense of identity and purpose -when allowing ourselves to be controlled, we feel protected and secure. The leader provides meaning and simplifications in otherwise complex surroundings [44].
Emotionality at work typically refers to concern for job design, workload, and job satisfaction [45] but also to the quality and impact of an individual's affective responses to work. Studies show that the share of time an employee feels net positive affect matters for job satisfaction, more than the intensity of that affect. This implies that employers should rid their staff of minor irritations that accumulate into a mental load that eventually tips the balance towards constant negative affect. Contrastively, frequent positive reinforcements, although less intense, elevate job attitudes [46].
Leaders can adopt emotionally intelligent behaviors in the workplace but emotionality poses demands also for personality. Certain traits such as extraversion and emotional stability have been found to correlate with leadership emergence [47]. Personality moderates an individual's perceptions as leader-like but requires further investiga-tion as a predictor of job performance or actual leadership effectiveness. In other words, perceived influence is not equivalent to effectiveness. The other way round, the absence of certain traits may hinder the individual from emerging as a leader [48]. To add to the expanding body of research on positive leadership, this work embarked on an empirical effort to analyze the attributes that contribute to leader impact.

Theoretical framework and research questions
Among industrial leadership competences, the professional, transferrable leader skills have earned unanimous recognition, yet a systematic definition and conceptualization of leaders' generalist abilities remains to be achieved [49]. This may result from the nature of leader requirements: leadership competence is increasingly viewed through the lens of communicative competence [50], which is undergoing a conceptual controversy of its own. Further, the systematic analysis of leader communication is perplexed by tension between two competing approaches: leader qualifications can be examined either as learnable skills or as biological personality traits [51].
For the present study, however, the divide between skills and traits remains irrelevant; instead, it suffices to acknowledge that the pivotal personal qualities comprise a mix of learnable skills and personality origins, be they inherent, genetic, biological or the result of conscious skilling or life history. This research subsequently limits its scope to the manifested or behavioral level of these qualities, that is, how these traits or skills are perceived by organizations. The overall research objective to further the understanding of leader qualifications is broken down to two research questions (RQ): RQ1: What is the make-up of leaders' personal managerial qualifications? RQ2: What qualifications matter most in leadership tasks?
The categorization serving as the basis of the empirical research was derived from a literature review of studies conducted in work psychology, leadership, organizational communication, and personality psychology. The aim was to map out the diverse competence areas intervening in leader tasks, resulting in a grouping that is not exhaustive, nor does it attempt to suggest a solid typology or prioritization, but rather serves as a first attempt to direct investments in engineering graduates' leadership education.

Categories of Leader Competences
In industry, technical or substantive expertise alone seldom guarantees effective contextual behavior, which is known to turn field-related knowledge into productivity and profitability [52]. The study of bottom-up leadership must involve also follower perceptions and a subsequent focus on the leader's relational abilities. These process skills address lifelong learning, learning to learn, critical thinking, cooperation, communication, teamwork, intercultural cooperation, organizational understanding and project management. These represent the socio-cultural dimensions that are becoming 146 http://www.i-jep.org increasingly important as globalization intensifies the demands for flexible, socially adept and communicative engineering teams [53]. This paradigm shift manifests itself also in leader requirements: today's leadership theory has departed from the industrial foci on hierarchy, control and division of labour and moved to a post-industrial accent on relationships, networks, trust, ethics and participation [54]. This also reflects a shift in research emphases: where leadership was earlier the subject of psychology studies, it is presently examined through the lens of social psychology, interested in the role of the individual as a group member in a social setup [55].
Consequently, postmodern leadership in industrial operating environments is far from static. The complex temporal conditions have subjected work communities to societal and social forces that urge leaders to assume roles that largely differ from those of their modern antecedents. Heroic, hierarchy-based headship labelled as charismatic, inspirational, visionary, transformational or transactional, among others, was based on the social authority of an individual believed to endow extraordinary gifts and powers. This divine notion of leadership is gradually morphing into a more mundane, constant earning of leader status in inter-human interaction where employees are no longer regarded as subordinates but rather as equal partners [56].
The advanced technologies of today, disappearance of market boundaries, transforming customer expectations, and the subsequently modified operating principles in the engineering world are further moulding managerial competence requirements [57].
These trends set the stage for the analysis of managerial communication that proves effective in the psychological and cognitive processes of the post-industrial workplace. The following sections review literature on today's working life skills, and, in particular, recent findings on competences pertinent to managerial tasks. They broadly categorize managerial competences into five areas: 1) substantive expertise, 2) personality traits, 3) socio-emotive skills, 4) cultural skills, and 5) ethics and values. It should be noted, however, that these categories are broad and at times overlapping, and merely serve as a theoretical point of departure for the empirical work.
Substantive expertise: Functional Job Analysis examines leader activities through behaviours regarded as universal in the managerial setup. The foundation of effective leadership has traditionally been laid on first-rate substantive expertise but is increasingly expected to extend beyond domain-specific capabilities. This expertise is a prerequisite in the five main managerial functions, comprising 1) planning and problem solving, 2) viewing, as well as the three functions of action: 3) independent action, 4) leadership and 5) cooperation [58].
Present membership of many teams, networks and communities simultaneously requires not only subject-related technological expertise, but also soft skills and selfleadership enabling employees to integrate thinking, feeling and behavior [59]. Resultatively, where managers were earlier hired and promoted largely on the basis of their technical or substantive skills, they presently face mounting demands for personal qualifications such as social skills and self-leadership ability. It should be underlined, though, that substantive expertise, be it theoretical, practical or strategic, takes an undeniable role in the build-up of professional expertise and managerial iJEP -Vol. 7, No. 2, 2017 credibility. As substantive expertise is domain-specific, this study investigates it only narrowly and superficially through theoretical knowledge, practical experience, insight, and academic argumentation.
Personality: In addition to observable personality traits that have traditionally enjoyed a dominant position as descriptors of personality, other variables such as motives and cognitive styles deserve attention, especially in the context of organizational life. Motives and cognitive styles are purposive-cognitive factors and causal agents that relate to behavior and have predictive value. More specifically, motives constitute drivers for action functions and cognitive styles for planning and problem solving, which explains why they are worthy of examination in the work context.
This study addresses bipolar personality dimensions that moderate the five universal leadership functions, including achievement motive (competitive achievement and focused achievement), leadership motive (action leadership and inspiration), cooperation motive (sociability, listening and reliance), cognitive style (orientation, perception and thinking), and attitudes (ambiguity-change, optimism and self-image) [60].
Socio-emotive skills: One of the most intriguing organizational processes is interpersonal communication, not from the viewpoint of information exchange, but in particular, from the point of view of the innuendos, feelings and conscious and subconscious messages that employees convey. The recent paradigm in communication studies consequently discriminates between traditional linear views of communication as one-way information transmission, and more recent understanding of communication as a social process involving emotional exchange, culture formation and relationship build-up [61]. What is of interest in the context of leadership research is that numerous studies have demonstrated that the social or relational abilities of the leader and his or her inspirational communication strategies are associated with successful employee outcomes [62].
The present study departs from the definition of socio-emotive competence either as biological or learnable and chooses to focus on its manifested, behavioral expression in the work context [63]. This is important due to the connection between a leader's mood and the subsequent mood of his subordinates. The connection is grounded on the design of the human brain, and because of this so-called mirroring process, huge expectations are placed on a leader, as his emotions tend to shift into the registers of those in interaction with him. What is noteworthy is that moods can be transmitted also nonverbally, because emotions can be conveyed even in silence, through body language. Although every participant in a culture adds his or her own touch to the mixture of personal footprints, those of leaders have the strongest impact, since their messages bear most weight because of the role assigned to them. They manage meaning and interpretations for the entire organization, even when not expressing their thoughts consciously, intentionally or out loud. Their responses and bodily conduct are followed closely and modelled on, and this is how they set the emotional standard for the work environment [64].
Emotional intelligence or socio-emotional intelligence is founded on two levels of capacity: intrapersonal or emotional, and interpersonal or social intelligences, further divided into self-awareness, self-management, self-motivation, social awareness and relationship management. A fundamental aspect of socio-emotional intelligence is the 148 http://www.i-jep.org reflection and understanding of one's own emotions, and self-reflection and selfawareness are generally recognized as the most important and effective managerial tool. Effective self-awareness facilitates self-motivation and emotional regulation, which helps prevent emotions from rising to a level that causes stress and problematic behaviour. There is evidence that those capable of regulating their emotions by means of rational thinking are physiologically, cognitively and socially healthier. Strong intrapersonal, or self-leadership, skills form the platform for social fluency. Social awareness allows the individual to read, interpret and tolerate others' emotions, and those capable of capitalizing on this knowledge by attuning their conduct to the moods of others are regarded as socially skilled [65]. Social fluency can prove particularly useful for those in charge: adoption of soft influence tactics positively facilitates organizational change and makes leaders appear as more effective in the eyes of the followers. Although not always recognized as a communication skill, effective listening has been claimed to distinguish the best managers and leaders [66]. They do not merely listen, but they give their full attention, attune to the other person's feelings, paraphrase and ask questions to understand better. Their attunement is not jeopardized by preoccupation; full listening maximizes physiological synchrony and emotional alignment, resulting in their presence being truly felt by the other person [67].
The present research subsequently includes question items that represent both the one-way information dissemination process and the two-way meaning creation and relationship build-up process.
Cultural skills: Changes stemming from globalization accentuate socio-cultural aspects in employee competence development to accommodate the needs of individuals representing increasingly different educational backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities in the workplace [68]. Global markets and value network necessitate both scientific-technical and economic competences that bolster production, but also sociocultural awareness and mental flexibility bridging the gaps between the growingly multi-cultural staff. Simultaneously, cultural and generic knowledge such as methodological, communicational, and personal skills facilitating the functioning of multicultural corporate teams are called for, as industrial tasks become less repetitive, linear and mechanistic. Resultatively, today's employees experience disengagement that stems from the cultural boundaries characterizing the professional work settings and impeding the build-up of social connections and trust. The increase in workforce diversity also complicates managerial work, requiring cross-cultural skills such as cultural empathy and adaptability [69]. This is why generic socio-emotional skills such as empathy, flexibility, tolerance for diversity and openness are included in the present study. However, as they represent generic socio-emotive skills, they were not grouped under their own heading in Table 1.
Ethics and values: Recent managerial wrongdoings have set higher and more public requirements for leader conduct that is in line with organizational values and societal morale. More than ever, employees need to be ethically oriented and socially responsible, capable of contributing to a just, equitable and sustainable world. Further, they are expected to master ethical thinking and implementation both on the macro-iJEP -Vol. 7, No. 2, 2017 149 ethical level related to their profession and the micro-ethical level of the individual [70]. Consequently, the present survey includes question items addressing sustainability, values thinking, integrity and responsibility.

Research framework
Traditionally, managerial communication studies have focused on the interaction between managers and subordinates, neglecting to adopt an individual differences perspective and paying, until recently, little attention to an individual leader's personal capabilities. To fill the related research gap, the present work embarked on a quantitative empirical effort to conceptualize and operationalize effective leader behaviour in today's industry. The study examined leadership broadly through five categories of competence pertinent for managers' professional artistry: 1) substantive knowledge, 2) personality (motives, thinking styles and attitudes), 3) socio-emotive skills, 4) cultural skills, and 5) ethics, values and attitudes. Under such a definition of leader capabilities, the five areas were further divided into 81 skills, abilities or personality dimensions, responded to on a Likert scale 1 (not important) -6 (highly important).
This approach is founded on our previous study that identified effective leadership to comprise the substantive foundation, the personality level of intrapersonal or selfleadership ability, and the manifested level that shows as communication behavior, as depicted in Figure 1. The key finding was that effective managerial conduct centers on assertion (alpha .88) emotional availability (alpha .90) and inspiration (alpha .81), found on the interpersonal or skills level.  http://www.i-jep.org

Method and data collection
The present research focused on examining today's leader requirements in industry. The ultimate aim was to support organizational HR processes, particularly recruitment and competence development. The survey asked for 1) respondent details (age, gender, and experience from supervisory tasks), 2) respondents' industry or field, and 3) respondent insights into supervisory requirements (81 question items as listed in Table 1). The survey was devised with the Webropol tool. An online survey link was emailed to corporate HR managers, who then forwarded the invitation email to their staff. Responding took approximately 20 minutes.
The question items were derived from the literature review and two previously established instruments: 1. the Work personality index WOPI 360: WOPI 360 is a multi-source appraisal for the comprehensive assessment of managers' universal competences in terms of competent, good and desired behaviors. The 45-item questionnaire incorporates descriptive statements typical in managerial work situations. The respondents use a 1-7 graphic rating scale to appraise how descriptive each statement is of the target person's habitual behavior (1 = not at all descriptive; 7 = very descriptive). [71]

Emotive Communication Test (ECT): The ECT is an other-report tool measuring managerial socio-emotive skills. Its origin is in the Affective Communication
Test ACT, which assesses nonverbal expressiveness and the affective elements that are essential to face-to-face and interpersonal relations in effective leadership. The instrument is valid for examining one's ability to transmit emotion, and to lead and inspire others, thanks to its focus on such dimensions of expressivity as communication ability, emotionality, extraversion, responsivity, and empathy. The ECT is an adaptation that was modified to suit the Scandinavian operating culture, addressing self-regulation, assertion, agreeableness and emotional accessibility through 20 questions on a 1-7 graphic Likert scale (1=not at all descriptive; 7=very descriptive) [72]. The data were gathered from organizations that employ engineers. As can be seen in Table 2, most respondents in the sample represented the private sector (engineering, commerce, finance), and the rest the public sector (higher engineering education or research, health care, city administration). Anonymous responses were received from altogether 503 respondents, out of which 269 were male and 234 female. In the sample, 190 respondents were 40 years or above, and 303 under, and 308 had managerial experience and 195 not ( Table 1). Table 2.
Respondent fields.

Engineering industries 119
Finance 75 Commerce 63 Engineering education, or research 79 Health care 9 Other 158

Results and conclusions
The results from the sample of 503 respondents to the online survey indicate that regardless of respondent age, gender, managerial experience and field, such emotive skills and personality dimensions that form the foundation for self-leadership are prioritized highest in industrial leader quality requirements. These included the ability to deal with emotionally difficult situations: receiving critical feedback, admitting one's mistakes and apologizing. Managers are also expected to be balanced, implying that impulsive behavior is destructive in managerial tasks. Further, managers are expected to manage traditional information dissemination duties and to actively deliver and spread relevant information. In the sample of 503 respondents, the top ten item averages were as shown in Table 3. Table 3.
Top ten item averages in the sample No major differences can be found between male and female respondents, as can be seen in Table 4. Nine out of ten items were identical on the two rankings, with only one difference: where men viewed "admits his/her mistakes" as an essential leader requirement, women prioritized "remains calm and collected even in crises". Table 4.
Top ten item averages for male and female respondents. Respondents' managerial experience did not induce major differences in responses, either, as shown in Table 5. Eight out of the ten items on the top ten list are identical, with only two differences: those with managerial experience value "inspiration and motivation" and the ability to "communicate clearly and unambiguously", whereas those with no experience in managerial roles prioritized the ability to "remain calm and collected even in crises" and "practical, hands-on, field-related expertise". Table 5.
Top ten items for those with experience in managerial tasks and for those with none. When examining the averages per respondent field, some peculiarities emerge. Table 6 demonstrates that all the fields within the study value managerial "reliability", "positive feedback" given by the manager, manager's abilities to "accept critical 154

Has managerial experience
http://www.i-jep.org feedback" and "communicate difficult issues face-to-face", and managers who "share information and keep others up-to-date". Some differences emerged when analyzing differences between fields. Quite logically for a sector that operates in citizen health and security, healthcare prioritizes practical, field-related expertise highest. The sample of the "Other" field comprised mostly employees from city administration, which, in the absence of more tangible incentives and bonus programs, probably long for recognition and feedback from their leaders. In finance, skills in clear and frank information transfer are of the essence, which can be expected in an industry where even the tiniest inaccuracies in details can induce major financial risks or loss.
What was regarded as least important for managers in all the fields was "hugging or touching in emotional situations", which could be a cultural trait in the Finnish society. Similarly, competitiveness, an original or personal communication style, and reliance on others were not deemed important, nor were academic writing skills or small-talk. These findings apply to all respondent groups, to both genders, to those with or without managerial experience, to younger and older participants. Subordinates apparently do not wish to serve leaders that are driven by a strong competition motive but rather appreciate social motives in them. On the other hand, they want their managers to be assertive, without a need to rely on others or to look for others' acceptance. Workplace interaction should focus on work and the substance matter, small-talk is not valued. A common, plain and ordinary communication style suffices that does not even have to be academically sophisticated.

Factor analysis
The data acquired from the 503 respondents was treated with SPSS for factor analysis (main component analysis, varimax rotation in use), examining the differences between respondents with and without managerial experience. The aim was to identify the competences required in managerial work that are regarded as pivotal for organizations.
The five strongest factors in the sample of respondents with no managerial experience emerged as shown in Appendix 1 in their order of strength: 1) emotional stability, 2) agreeableness, 3) self-leadership, 4) efficiency and energy, and 5) conscientiousness. The first three categories are of personality origin and manifest themselves strongly in interaction with others as self-regulation ability, lack of impulsiveness, approachability and self-discipline. It is interesting that substantive knowledge explains for leadership to the least extent.
In the category of respondents with managerial experience, the five strongest factors were, in their order of strength: 1) agreeableness, 2) self-leadership, 3) emotional stability, 4) conscientiousness, and 5) assertion. Again, personality-driven attributes were accentuated in respondent perceptions, showing that managers understand the value of interaction and the quality of their relationship with the followers. The emphasis on conscientiousness probably stems from the competitive and performancevaluing operating environment in today's organizations and the demands its poses for drive and achievement. Assertion offers no surprise, as firm and convincing ethical communication has generally been valued by other studies, too.

156
http://www.i-jep.org Discussion Traditionally industrial managers have regarded emotions as an element that disturbs the rational operation of organizations but are beginning to understand that humanity goes hand in hand with good performance. An increasing body of evidence has confirmed the mediating role of leader affects and emotional intelligence for industrial performance. Post-modern employees recognize that the fundamental or primal task of leadership is emotional, to prime good feeling in those they lead by creating resonance that allows the best in people to be unleashed. This good feeling in the community facilitates the build-up of a reservoir of positivity, which brings added value as the decisive factor driving productivity and the overall performance of the organization.
This study set out to break leadership down into its essential components, to support university curriculum development and organizational competence development by identifying the key constructs of successful leadership. The analysis revealed that organizations place huge expectations on their leaders in terms of their personality development and socio-emotive abilities. This study showed that the most accentuated expectations are directed to leaders' self-leadership ability; the most crucial component of managerial interaction seems to be the ability to control one's behaviour in a way that conveys balance, warmth and stability as this promotes approachability and ensures communication of critical information also bottom-up. While self-awareness and self-leadership are beneficial in bringing balance and happiness to one's life, their appropriate and purposeful application in a way critical for the entire organization takes place, first and foremost, through reliable, ethical and value-based leader conduct that secures the fundamental legitimacy of the organization. By demonstrating self-leadership, the leader can serve as an example in accepting one's weaknesses, apologizing for one's mistakes, accepting criticism and appreciating others' successes and effort, but also in motivating oneself for competence development, resilience and personal growth. Further, motivational and inspirational leader communication styles, active listening skills, and spreading of positive energy and passion for the organizational mission are known to contagiously infect the work community with joy of work and dedication and elevated levels of achievement and performance.
In order for this to materialize, the engineering education needs to incorporate themes such as self-leadership and self-reflection into the degree curricula to ensure a solid basis for constructive dialogue and positive communication in industries. Besides serving engineering communities through more versed and effective leadership, such a reform will allow engineering graduates, be they leaders or subordinates, to lead more satisfactory -and productive -lives characterized by warm relationships and genuine interaction.