MEL #005 | The Impact of Mentorship On Engineering Careers with Dr. Jim Szybist

SZYBIST: There are lots of opportunities for leadership sort of among your peers, professional societies leading a small team, leading a task. Seek out those informal leadership opportunities ahead of time.

Don’t rush it and make sure you know what you’re getting into when it’s time.

ADAMS: In this episode, I’m talking to Dr. Jim Szybist.  Jim is the head of the Propulsion Science Section at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is focused on developing decarbonized solutions for all parts of the transportation sector. 

In our conversation, Jim shares his journey into engineering, from taking apart broken appliances in his mom’s kitchen to the decision to pursue graduate studies and his career development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

In our leadership segment, Dr. Szybist discusses the significance of influencing organizational change.

Finally, Dr. Szybist offers valuable advice for aspiring leaders, stressing the importance of understanding leadership roles and seeking informal opportunities to develop leadership skills. 

With out further delay, here is my conversation with Dr. Jim Szybist.

Hi Jim. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

SZYBIST: Thanks for having me.

ADAMS: Well, I’d like to start by just taking us back to how you got into engineering in the first place. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SZYBIST: I guess I was sort of pushed in the engineering direction, but actually entered undergraduate as an undecided. I was always interested in technical things. Anytime there was a, when I was a kid, there were a broken appliance or other gadget or gizmo, I would be the one with the tools taking it apart to figure out how it worked. So after being undecided for a couple of years at Penn State, the, chemical engineering options spoke to me. So I got into chemical engineering. And then as a chemical engineer, it was a of a big competitive program and it was going okay, but there was an option to sort of specialize that degree in energy and fuels. 

I met a professor in a actually different college, College of Earth and Mineral Science, who took me under his wing, Professor Andre Boehman. And I continued on my grad school studying under his tutelage. A lot of it’s sort of what options come up, the personalities that you mesh with combined with what it is that you have a natural inclination for. So that’s how all of those stars aligned for me.

ADAMS: I’m curious about the chemical engineering piece and you said it kind of spoke to you. Was there anything specific that drew you to chemical as opposed to the other engineering disciplines?

SZYBIST: Well, I was actually more torn between chemistry and engineering. So it seemed like a good way to split the middle because I was interested in chemistry more than any of the other sciences. Biology didn’t really appeal to me or physics, but chemistry did. So I liked the chemistry aspects of it.

And so it just seemed like a good way to bring different interests together.

ADAMS: And you decided to go to graduate school. Can you talk a little bit about your decision to continue on and get an advanced degree?

SZYBIST: Yeah, my decision making process at the time was such that, you know, I kind of like what I’m doing now. I’m comfortable in grad school and I’m not sure that I’m ready to go out into the real world. And so I did like that sort of comfort of knowing. this is not not everyone does this, but I stayed at the same place for undergraduate and graduate. So I already knew the professors, I knew the program, I liked what I was doing. So a lot of my decision to go on to grad school was, you know, keep doing what I’m doing, because I’m liking it. And, and then I’ll have more options when I’m done with it. So it was not part of a master plan that I had. But I was going down a pathway, I was being successful at it. And, you know, at the end of the day, thought,you know, I’m gonna have more options with this degree than I would with a bachelor’s degree. So let’s give it a shot, see what it’s like. So that’s how I ended up there.

ADAMS: I think it’s so important that you mentioned that because many of our students come in thinking that they have to have everything planned out and some of them even feel a little bit concerned when they don’t have this clear defined path. And what I heard you say, and this is often the case, what I hear many leaders say is that I didn’t really have a clear plan, that I actually used the inputs that I was getting from what I was doing, whether it be a mentor who took me under their wing, or I started to really enjoy what I was doing, and or I was really having success with what I was currently doing. Oftentimes those are the motivations that drive people continue to move forward less than a master plan that you just sort of check off the boxes and keep going in this predefined path. So I appreciate that you sharing that because I think that that is another great way to have a career trajectory and oftentimes what I hear leaders talk about. 

You mentioned Professor Andre Boehman as someone who took you under his wing. Can you talk a little bit more about that relationship and maybe the role of having his mentorship what that meant for you and your career?

SZYBIST: Well, backing up before sort of what pushed me out of the core chemical engineering program at Penn State, we were all just assigned an advisor, a professor who’s an advisor at Penn State. And so I talked to him about this energy and fuels option within chemical engineering. And I said, was I’ve toured the lab and I’m really interested in the whole prospect of doing research on engines and having a little bit more of the hands-on element. And his response to me was something like, well, I can take you down the street and get you a job at a mechanic automotive repair place. And that’s when I’m just like, I don’t want to interact with this person at all because they’re putting down my, putting down what I wanted to do, putting down another professor at the university and that whole line of research. And at that moment, I was just there like, this is not for me. Your advice is not for me. So I felt a little pushed out of the chemical engineering proper. My undergraduate degree is still in chemical engineering, but the research that I did under Andre Boehman, had, both the fundamental science part of it and the hands-on aspect. that was really important to me. And I think that’s really important to a lot of young engineers who not only want to not do something significant, but also they’re interested in using their hands, seeing how things work, making things work. And there’s a certain satisfaction from being able to be hands-on.

Andre’s laboratory was an engines lab and he brought in a number of undergrads and it really was an option, an opportunity to go in there, be around research. know, when an undergraduate student first came in, they were doing things like sorting fittings, figuring out how things work, understanding how to change out gas bottles, the sort of, know, this is how the laboratory works.

But I enjoyed every minute of it. And I found that I was able to take on more and more setting up new experiments, just getting big complex things to work. So every couple of months, I sort of gain more responsibility and more autonomy in that laboratory.

And it was his encouragement and talking to him about how different things worked. And he would describe, yeah, this type of sensor package or control package is supposed to work this way. And then just sort of let me go for a little while until I needed some help and I could come back to him. And he was great about seeing how far somebody progressed and helping them along. And he wasn’t afraid to let people, you know, go at their own pace. So some people would struggle doing something for a while, but I got a lot of satisfaction out of being able to get over that hump myself and figure out how something worked. So I think that style of mentorship wasn’t for everyone, but it certainly worked for me.

ADAMS: Yeah, that’s great that you found someone who really helped you flourish and find what you really like to do and what you’re really good at. And I think it’s really important what you mentioned earlier on, which is to say that maybe the first person you sought advice from actually didn’t do that at all. They actually discouraged you from pursuing what you had wanted because it didn’t fit their view of what advanced degree engineers should be doing. And you could have taken that advice and said, OK, no, guess that’s not going to be for me. I guess I need to do something else. But instead, you kept going, and you kept maybe looking for someone who would help you actually pursue what you wanted. And fortunately, you found Dr. Boehman. And it sounds like that was a great relationship and really influential for your career.

And so now you’re in the lab, you’re doing these hands-on work and you’re getting your advanced degree. And that then leads you to a relationship with Oak Ridge National Lab and you’ve been there for many years. So can you talk a little bit about how you started at Oak Ridge National Lab and what your career has been like over the years?

SZYBIST: Sure. So I want to back up and say one more thing about my grad school experience. So Andre Boehman was…He was early in his career at the time and publications were important. And he knew the academic world. He grew up around that because his father was actually a professor as well. a lot of what he was doing was centered around getting publications out the door. And that’s something that set me up very well for my experience at Oak Ridge National Laboratory because walking into the door, I had a mindset of the importance of publications.

And so I’ll come back to that in a minute, but going to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, it was actually Andre Boehman who made the initial contact for me at Oak Ridge. And I came to Oak Ridge initially as a post-master’s fellow. So as I was working on my doctorate degree at Penn State, I came down for six or nine months and did some research here.

And that actually fed into what I did for my doctorate degree. But it was a lot of the same types of research, a lot of the hands-on engine laboratory doing fuels work. But what made me stand out at Oak Ridge and made me sort of an immediate valuable asset to the team was not only the getting big complex things to work, but was turning the research around and writing papers and getting it out the door. It’s sometimes surprising in my current role to see how much of a struggle it is for people to take all of the great data and results that they have and turn it into a product and get it published. that, you know, people are good at different things. But the whole

getting a publication done is really important at a national lab because unlike industry, we’re not out there selling the products. The publications and that information transfer, that’s the main output from the university. And there’s a saying that if it was never published, it was never done. So we need to publish it to finish up that research, to finish up the results and to get it out the door.

I came to Oak Ridge, I think I started in July and I worked under a researcher here by the name of Bruce Bunting, who was really good. he told me something early on in my career and he said, the important thing is not that you have the best, most conclusive, most profound study. The most important thing is that you keep talking, you be part of the research group and you be part of the community that you establish yourself as someone who’s important to the field and that can be part of the conversation. And I really took that to heart and made myself part of a lot of these recurring meetings that happen, interacting with DOE sponsors and and really just being relevant to the field.

ADAMS: There’s so many good nuggets in there, but one of the things that came to mind was this idea of you really understood from day one, it sounds like, what one of the really important key things of the mission of Oak Ridge National Lab, which is around publications. And so 

I think that’s really important for aspiring leaders to understand is that you need to align your efforts with the core important metrics and mission of whatever organization that you’re in. And I was fortunate myself to have a mentor very early on. In my case, I worked in industry. And so he said, look, you need to understand how everything that you do maps to the revenue of this organization. It doesn’t matter if it’s one step, two steps, or three steps, but every single thing that you do, you need to understand how it hits our bottom line. And I too took that to heart and found that that was really important for my career trajectory. And it sounds like you did the same thing in terms of publications, but also in terms of this idea of constantly being relevant in the conversations of whatever research areas that you’re focused on. Can you talk a little bit about the types of roles that you’ve had within ORNL and maybe sort of where you started as in post-masters all the way through to the, you’re a section head, so you lead a pretty large team. And so can you just talk a little bit about how that trajectory happened?

SZYBIST: I think when people think about what somebody does in their career, think most people experience a lot more diversity in their career than I have. So I’ve I went straight from graduate school to a job at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and I was a postdoc and I excelled in that role working under Bruce Bunting and then I was hired on as staff in the same group at Oak Ridge. And in fact, in my nearly 20 year career there, I’ve been in the same building around the same laboratories the entire time. Now, now the projects have changed, but I’ve basically been in the same part of the organization the whole time, just going from very junior to now very senior in that same organization. But a lot of it stems from first, you’ve got to deliver on what you have, you can’t just always be thinking of the next thing. And I was kind of had no thought of leadership at all early in my career. It was not something that was on my radar screen. And in fact, it was something that I actively rejected from that point of view. It was more of a, I want to be a successful researcher. I wanna deliver the results. wanna, in the field that I’m in, we really do need to interact with the industry to make sure that our work is relevant.

And it is just by doing these things that I ended up standing out in certain ways. So getting the results published, interacting with other national labs, making connections to industry at various conferences and other meetings, and working directly with industry. I saw my career go from a postdoc to an associate staff member to a full staff member to a senior staff member, then to a distinguished staff member. most people go from individual contributor, which is where I was, to then a group leader, and then up the ladder. it was when I was a very senior individual contributor that the laboratory underwent a massive reorganization from top to bottom and they were looking for people to fill this new role, section head role. And initially it’s not something that spoke to me, but I was partially recruited into the role, getting four or five calls from various levels of management at the organization encouraging me to take on the role. So I applied for it and got the position and very much had to learn as I go because managing people had never been part of what I did before.

ADAMS: So you went from actively rejecting leadership, the idea of becoming a leader, to now, sounds like maybe skipping a level or two in taking on a leadership role. I’m curious just how that has been for you How would you describe that transition?

SZYBIST: Well, it has not been smooth all the time. There’s certainly been some rough patches

you know, as an individual contributor, you could always sort of surround yourself by, you know, the people that you’re working with, you sort of had your work best friends, right? You could, you could sort of pick and choose who you had lunch with and how you interacted. And it was much less eyes on you in that type of regard in more of a people management role, there’s a constant, this constant idea of how I’m appearing, am I giving the appearances of being favorites to certain individuals versus others. So there’s not just what is my decision making process and making sure that I’m fair and even handed, but making sure that the appearance of how I interact with different people. So in some cases that’s made me go out and interact with certain people more and other cases it’s made me hold people more at arm’s length that I would be more chummy with per se. So there’s getting a handle on my own sort of behaviors and that point of view. And then,there were a couple of things that came up very early on after I was hired.

And there was a lot of attrition at the lab I had a very strong team around me and really good local management and it was more of a getting together and saying, We’re gonna figure out how to get through this. We’re gonna figure out how to make sure that everyone can be successful in their roles. So my relationships with the local management team, I think became quite a bit stronger and there was a lot of trust that was built during that time.

And, trust between me and the other leaders, but also trust with the team because sort of trying to message all of these changes through this reorganization process. When you sort of say, here’s what’s happening, here’s the best of my knowledge as to why it’s happening and you’re open and transparent about it, people understand sort of what you have a say in and what you don’t just being open and honest about the things that are, that you don’t have a say in, but you’re rationalizing the best way that you can. think that that goes a long way in building trust with your team.

ADAMS: Sounds like, you’re in your first leadership role, you had quite a bit of trial by fire. mean, first of all, you recognize that now you have to almost renegotiate your relationship with people who were formerly your peers and colleagues as an individual contributor

because you are in a completely different role and your authority over them changes things. And I’m sure it’s tough when maybe people that you even socialized with a lot, now you have to rethink how you might have those relationships because of your new role. And then it sounds like you also got to navigate through a huge reorganization that may or may not have been super popular with some of the folks that are on your team. And so that’s another leadership challenge that is not uncommon at all, but to come out of the gate in a role that sounds like you maybe took reluctantly, to begin with, to get that nice, as I said, trial by fire sounded like it was probably put you through the wringer there for a while, but you’ve come out the other end successfully.

ADAMS: All right, we are back here with Dr. Jim Szybist Jim, tell us about the situation you’d like to talk about.

SZYBIST: So this is actually before I was in a leadership role in the organization, but something that I think set me up to be seen as a leader within the organization. My research area, we participate in these program review meetings from DOE. the program managers from DOE essentially have twice per year, they have these meetings where people go and present their research at the five national labs that they sponsor research on, and they invite industry in to provide comments and just basically to get updates and as a way to participate.

And I’ve been participating in these since 2007. So this, I’ve been participating in these for many, many years. In the early days, there was another national lab that sort of owned this meeting and kept us at bay, limited our presentation slots. So it was a big deal when we were able to get in and get presentation slots. But over the five years or so after that, it…

of changed and it was more of a all the national labs present all of their research and I had noticed that a lot of the other national labs were getting more and more presentations, sending more and more people and folks within my own organization were pretty reluctant to go. They were doing research that they didn’t think fit well in that meeting, they didn’t want to travel, they just didn’t wanna be part of it. And to me, going to these meetings with maybe one or two other Oak Ridge researchers, I’d get questions. What about this project? What about that researcher? Cause the other national labs know who we are. So I went and I did an analysis of who’s participating in these meetings and who isn’t within our own organization.

And I set up a meeting with all of the people who were getting funding from the sponsor. And yeah, there was a little bit of public shaming involved in this, but I basically called out people and challenged them to step up and participate in these meetings more because we were…

We were losing our footprint in the program from the DOE sponsor. So I challenged everyone to step up and present at this meeting every chance they got. this is the main thing. When you have a project, you put it on the calendar. These are the meetings that you’re going to and that you’re going to present to. You’re going to plan your experiments to get results to be able to provide an update at these meetings.

So it was me as a peer of all of these people sort of calling them out as and challenging them to step up and do better and really deliver for our sponsor. our sponsor wants us to be there.

We need to be there. We need to change the meeting to be more applied. The only reason that it’s not as applied as you want right now is because we’re not going and presenting. And so I think that

That’s something that changed the way that other people in the organization saw me and changed my relationship with them in the organization.

ADAMS: So that’s really interesting. if I understand correctly, you were part of a group of people from various national labs who present regularly at a meeting for your sponsors, for Department of Energy sponsors. And you were noticing that the group at ORNL was underrepresented at this meeting. And you thought it was important that you be represented both to share your research, but also as a way to get visibility with important sponsors.

And so you took it upon yourself to try to close this gap by doing a few things. And it sounds like one of the things that you did was really make them acutely aware of how they were being underrepresented, how many people were actually presenting at this, how many of the people from your organization were presenting at this. And I’m assuming the numbers didn’t look good.

And so that kind of sparked, at least sparked some awareness. And then it also sounded like maybe you helped them to even understand some planning and scheduling and sort of cadence of their research such that they could actually be ready with important findings and summaries and presentations or whatever that could be potentially be available for these meetings. that correct? Am I describing this correctly?

SZYBIST: Yeah. Yeah. the other thing was I sort of changed the expectation. It’s not it’s not a situation where this is something where when you’re done with the whole study, you can go and present a finished study. This is an update meeting. You go and present an update of whatever it is that you have, but the expectation is that you go to this meeting. so I sort of changed the mindset of that. And to be quite honest, was one of the researchers in my group who just didn’t wanna do it. So he found funding from somewhere else in the laboratory and stopped it in this type of research.

ADAMS: Interesting. And what has been the outcome of the increased participation, increased visibility and awareness of the researchers that ORNL in this particular situation?

SZYBIST: So I think it’s reestablished us with our funding sponsors at the Department of Energy as a leader in this area. And it’s also an opportunity to sort of showcase our capabilities. So I think there was a positive outcome for our funding sponsors and just increased participation and just being part of the conversation, there was a positive benefit internally in my organization with sort setting the expectation and helping with the cadence of research.

Yeah, so I would say those are the primary things. And then for me personally, there was a, I think, an understanding of from my peers and also the leaders in my organization of here’s somebody who’s going to when he sees something that’s not going the way that he thinks it should be, he’s going to step up and do something about it. He’s not just going to let things go awry around him.

ADAMS: I think that’s critical. One of the key takeaways here is this idea of despite the fact that you didn’t have a formal leadership authority over this group of people that you wanted to influence, you saw an opportunity and chose to step up and try to influence this group to do something that you thought would be good for the whole group, for the whole organization, et cetera. And I think that’s really important because when you started, you said, I’m actually going to talk about something before I was in a leadership role. And I think so often influencing peers without authority is sometimes even more challenging than actually having the hat of the leader and being able to to influence things because of role power. So being able to do it as a peer through, one, having the initiative, but two, taking some very specific and clear and well-defined actions in order to try to make things happen. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of responses you get from your peers as you were trying to make this happen? Just talk a little bit about the reactions that you got and maybe if you had any objections how you overcame them.

SZYBIST: It was mixed. were some people in the organization who were there. Basically, their response was got it message received what you’re saying makes perfect sense. And maybe there was a little bit of miscommunication on their part of when it was appropriate to go to this meeting and present versus not. But it was a, know, seeing me, seeing someone that they’ve seen as their peer for many years, step up and sort of call everyone out on this and say, we need to do better.

I’d say probably half to two thirds was, got it message received, we’ll do better. Thanks for leading the charge on this. so that was the main, the main group. There was another couple of folks who say, who were of the mindset of, yeah, this meeting is not really for me.

This is not the audience that this work was intended for along those lines. And the main outstanding person eventually, over the next year to 18 months, found a different funding stream to do work on and stopped that type of research altogether. So he sort of disconnected from that type of work which is something that you can do in my organization. You can find different funding streams and work on different types of projects.

There were other maybe one or two other people that were a little more reluctant that that sort of said, okay, I see what you’re I’ll take the medicine and go but they weren’t they were definitely weren’t excited about it. And I don’t know that they fully agreed with my my perspective that this is something that we need to be doing as a condition of getting funding from this sponsor.

I’d say the primary response was agreement with my assessment of where we were at and 

this idea that, we’ll do better.

ADAMS: And I think that outcome is very typical. I mean, you often get people who, anytime there’s a change, right? This is a change management example. And so anytime there’s a change, you get people who enthusiastically, yeah, that’s great. And then you get people who are reluctant, eventually comply pretty quick, eventually. And then you have people who just refuse to do it and go their own way. And I think in your organization, there’s a mechanism to actually do that.

And in other organizations, there’s not. And those are the types of people that eventually leave the organization or maybe a leader may have to ask them to leave the organization depending on what change you’re trying to implement and whether or not there’s a way to fit someone who doesn’t want to get on board. I just want to comment on that. I think that outcome, as you described it as mixed, that’s the way change management works. Were there any key takeaways from this that you that you’ve taken with you or anything else that you think is a key takeaway that you might want to want to convey to our audience?

SZYBIST: So I think one of the key takeaways was that by the time I finally did this, this is something that had sort of been building for a year or two or three meetings. These are two times a year meetings. So probably two or three meetings prior to this is when I first started noticing this trend. So I probably waited too long and I was too anxious, too reluctant to say something about it. But when I did, it was ultimately a good outcome and I was happy that I did it.

I also talked to my supervisor about it beforehand saying this is what I wanna do. So I didn’t take my supervisor by surprise by saying something. I think there’s the, if you think you wanna do something like this, build support, start by talking to the right people, build support for it. But also don’t sit on things, don’t let things fester for too long because

Ultimately, when you lay out the way you see things, one of two things is gonna happen. Either people are gonna get on board with you and you’re gonna do it, or somebody else is going to lay out a convincing case as to why the way that I’m seeing it isn’t the right one. Either one, it’s better than letting it fester and just ignoring the problem.

ADAMS: those are great takeaways. mean, the two that I that I heard you say is one, make sure that you get support from your supervisor. taking the initiative is great and it’s important to understand that you’ve got the support at the right places higher up than you before you really try to implement a change with peers because it can completely backfire on you if you don’t. And then the second is don’t wait. Don’t let it fester. Don’t wait. If you’ve got an idea and something you see as an improvement opportunity, go ahead and start working towards it, start gaining the support, start putting your arguments together, start closing the gaps and moving things forward. Because if you don’t, then somebody else might come up with a different idea or even that same idea, or you may just not be able to see the benefits as quickly as if you went ahead and moved forward. I think those are two great takeaways from your case study. 

Thank you.

All right, we are back with Dr. Jim Szybist. Jim, what advice would you give to engineers who want to move into leadership roles but aren’t sure where to start?

SZYBIST: Well, I guess the first thing that I would say is make sure you know what the leadership role is. I think a lot of scientists and engineers get into the fields that they’re working in because they really like something about it. They like the science, they like the technology, they like the research area or the science.

And moving into a leadership role is a very different role. And there’s not necessarily a rush to do it. In fact, spent more time among the ranks as an individual contributor does lend more credence. I guess the first thing I would say is don’t rush it and make sure you know what you’re getting into when it’s time.

As you’re doing the science or the engineering before you have a leadership role per se, There are lots of opportunities for leadership sort of among your peers, professional societies leading a small team, leading a task. I’d say cut your teeth with those types of things ahead of time. Seek out those informal leadership opportunities ahead of time.

and really understand what it is because it’s It was a shock to my system for sure getting into a true leadership role I had some data points, that set me up for it, but it is a very different type of environment. So don’t don’t rush it. Make sure you know what you’re getting into and cut your teeth with some informal leadership opportunities before you go after a leadership role.

I think that is absolutely great advice. And before we close, are there any books, podcasts or other resources that you have found particularly helpful for yourself as an engineering leader?

One book and I had a training class associated with it called Crucial Conversations. because having difficult conversations and for someone whose conflict averse like me is something that did not come naturally. And I found that to be useful.

ADAMS: Excellent. Well, Jim, thank you very much for your time.

SZYBIST: Thanks.