MEL #020 | From Solo Climber to Thoughtful Leader through Unexpected Mentors with Anthony Andrews

ANDREWS (00:00)

I think you’ve got to get with people who are a little bit ahead of you on the path, and talk to them about what is it like And while I forged my own path out of that, it was not a surprise when I got to certain steps it gives you an idea that in year two, year three, five, seven, you know, oh, these are the things that they were talking about.

ADAMS (00:48)

In this episode, I speak with Anthony Andrews, senior manager at CMTS, a professional services firm specializing in project program and construction management. Anthony Andrews began his path to engineering thanks to high school counselors who saw his math and science aptitude. He chose industrial engineering for its creative focus on systems and processes and attended the University of Tennessee through a diversity driven program. After early roles in manufacturing,

Layoffs prompted a reinvention that led him into project and program management in the construction and consulting sectors. Anthony’s leadership style evolved over time, from being the loudest voice in the room to becoming a thoughtful listener. He realized that effective leadership involves understanding others, facilitating growth, and embedding development into daily routines. His structured use of Harvard Business School articles and staff meetings exemplifies this approach. He encourages aspiring leaders to connect with those further along the path not necessarily as formal mentors, but as sources of insight into what lies ahead. Understanding multiple leadership journeys allows you to anticipate key moments and craft your own path with greater clarity and empathy. Without further delay, here is my conversation with Anthony Andrews.

ADAMS (02:02)

Hi, Anthony, welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

ANDREWS (02:05)

Thank you for having me.

ADAMS (02:06)

Very glad to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career field?

ANDREWS (02:11)

High school counselors suggested that my grades in calculus or trigonometry and the rest of those things in science were good. I was thinking about being a graphic artist. Fortunately, we had computers at school and I was able to determine that I didn’t necessarily want to be a starving artist and that engineering would give me the lifestyle I wanted, at least a great beginning from that standpoint was fortunate enough to have our counselor identify University of Tennessee as a good school that had an engineering system at the time that was set up based on diversity that was in its 10th year. High school classmate and I became roommates, graduates, fraternity brothers, and helped me get through University of Tennessee.

ADAMS (02:55)

Oh, that’s great that you had that. You had a partner, partner in crime, if will, but you had a partner to kind of go through the process with. That’s great. And you chose industrial engineering. Can you talk a little bit about that particular choice of engineering field?

ANDREWS (03:07)

Yeah, I think because I was leaning in more creative field initially, the idea of the creation and processes and procedures related to industrial engineering, manufacturing in particular, kind of drew me in. have to admit later on after I spent a little bit of time there being in a mechanical lab and breaking metals and everything else was pretty cool too.

I was all in into industrial engineering. Dr. Kirby, Dr. Claycombe just enjoyed those classes.

ADAMS (03:38)

And are you from Tennessee or did you find the University of Tennessee, just as you mentioned through your counselor, but I’m just curious about geographically, was that close to home or did you have to?

ANDREWS (03:48)

Yeah, it was a little bit of travel born and raised in Atlanta. so I always tell the story that Knoxville was close enough to home, but far enough away that my parents wouldn’t just drive up on me and see what I was doing. So but yeah, it was it wasn’t that far straight down 75 to get home. So enjoyed it. I have to admit living here and Dallas, which is a totally different terrain than Tennessee and Georgia. have to admit going to Tennessee was very, I very comfortable because hills and trees and we don’t have a lot of that here in Dallas. So it’s a little bit different.

ADAMS (04:23)

Okay, yeah. so my son is 17 and he started to look at colleges and I can see, he hasn’t said it out loud, but I can see in his mind thinking, UT Knoxville too close, like too close to home. he’s like, how about Minnesota? And I’m like, come on, can you give me a break here? Can we meet in the middle? Can it least be someplace you can drive to?

ANDREWS (04:42)

Exactly. And that’s the one thing I think he has to consider is that, yeah, as much as I enjoy being away from my parents, have to admit there was one, maybe it was one Thanksgiving that I think I had a big exam coming up right after Thanksgiving. I decided to stay home and I called home. Everybody was at my house. Every cousin, every aunt, every uncle, everybody that I ever loved was at my house. And I just cried on the phone. because I wasn’t there. So that’s the advice I would give Mr. Adams. It’s considered the idea that you can be home. And that’s a wonderful thing.

ADAMS (05:18)

Thank you, I will highly encourage him to listen to you, because he’s not going to listen to me. So you mentioned Dallas, so can you talk a little bit about after you graduated and then kind of the work that you’ve been doing in Dallas for many years?

ANDREWS (05:32)

Yeah, after I finished university, I had a wonderful co-op experience through the Minority Engineering Scholarship Program, MESP under Fred Brown and Pipkin. But worked at Tennessee Eastman Company there in Kingsport. I have a fond memory of Kingsport. Loved that place and loved the company. But decided I wanted to be in a bigger place.

moved here to Dallas, was in manufacturing, worked there in manufacturing for three years. Unfortunately, right about that time, manufacturing started to leave the shores, worked in one manufacturing drive, got laid off, worked at another manufacturing job, got laid off all in the same year. Decided it was probably time to reinvent myself and take advantage of the fact of my engineering background. So from that standpoint, moved into

construction related work with asbestos abatement consulting eventually transition into construction, more project controls, and eventually into project management and program management.

ADAMS (06:29)

You said a really important word about reinventing yourself and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that because I think a lot of students think that they’re gonna have this predefined career path. And there’s lots of reasons why that doesn’t actually end up happening. There’s market forces, there’s your own life, you meet somebody and they take you halfway around the world, you never know. But there will highly likely be instances where one has to reinvent themselves. And so I’m just curious how you approached that.

ANDREWS (07:00)

mean, most of this is born out of necessity. Yeah. You’re right, because we do dream about being saved in somewhat Disney-like standpoint that it’s always going to be exactly perfect. And you’re right, there are things that came about. And for me in particular, it was not necessarily a bad company or bad performance on my part, but just the fact that there was a reinvention in regards to the industry. So therefore, you know, they was leaving our shores. It wasn’t needed as much. So therefore it was like, okay, I’m not a half bad student. I think I’m pretty competent person. I think I know how to interface with people and get things accomplished. Because of my engineering background, I can see concepts. I can see skills. I was a graphics tutor at Tennessee, so being able to envision things was a big thing for me. So it had me start to think about, what are the skills that I have that I gather? What are the things that I feel like I want to be engaged in? And as a student at Tennessee, I knew I wanted to be in management, so I took some management courses as some of my electives. So it gave me some concepts, not necessarily, I won’t say all the tools, but at least gave me some concepts to build upon.

be able to say, these are things that need to be put into place. These are aspects of understanding concepts and how to apply the concepts, which is truly engineering.

ADAMS (08:29)

And as you’ve grown and ascended into different roles and you’ve gone into project management, now program management, I’m curious how you think about those different career transitions. Is it similar to the first pivot that you made out of manufacturing? do you have any other things that you think about in terms of thinking about the skills that you might need to either develop or hone as you’re taking on these different roles throughout your career?

ANDREWS (08:53)

Um, you know, it’s interesting in the sense that I am really blessed in particular, as I mentioned, the MESP to have some great role models. Some of my, some of my best friends, in particular, Melvin Kirk, who suggested that I get with you. Um, you know, this talking about some of the things they’ve gotten into and recognizing the fact that you’re right, you know, the concepts and the ability to be able to understand scope and be able to build upon it and envision a different vision of those things. It starts as an engineering concept, but it really is a management skill. And it is something that you grow through and you understand. So you start to look at, how can I apply these skills in different ways? I have to admit, some of it is a little bit of a race.

as well. There’s people that passion the race you want to keep up. And as you mentioned before, there’s different aspects to what you want to accomplish. it a function of… What did I tell my kids? Sometimes you work to live or you live to work. So it’s a function of where you are in regards to your steps in life. For the most part, I think most of us enjoy what we do.

We enjoy being engaged. enjoy, as engineers, we enjoy a problem, something to solve in that standpoint. And that kind of drives us to get into so many different things.

ADAMS (10:26)

All right, Anthony, can you give us an example of when you’ve had to use your leadership skills?

ANDREWS (10:30)

Wow.

Yeah, leadership skills. know, it’s interesting. I was kind of as I was prepping for this, I was thinking about, you know, what are truly leadership skills? You know, when I was an undergrad, I thought that was the person who yelled the loudest, you know. I also considered later as a young engineer, leadership skill was taking charge, you know, of a task.

As I’ve grown into management leadership skill lends itself more into listening and understanding concepts and ensuring that people are in the right place to be able to accomplish the collective goal. So in order for me to now to get my team in a good place where they understand what needs to happen, I have to do a lot more listening.

I do have to understand, you know, their concept because I have to recognize I’m not the smartest person in the room all the time or that somebody else needs a little win on in a their sales to be able to keep pushing through. So, yeah, leadership skills are just a function of. Time and place and growth, some of it is lack of hair or gray hair that comes with it, you know, as you you get into those things. But I think if you’re

In particular, of the things I do with my team with the staff meetings, we’ve been using the Harvard Business School newsletters for two or three page read. It gives different concepts in regards to leadership, diversity. It helps. honestly, I ask people to read it. They’re not required to read it. I ask them for any input.

today or any takeaways that got from it, we discuss it briefly. Because, you know, beyond our work, you know, we’re talking about development. Ideally, you know, people want to come to work and they would realize that the time is worth something. So I think as you lead people, as you’re leading the group, you got to recognize what they need in background. And obviously what I need is a product and service back out from them, but it’s a mutual relationship.

ADAMS (12:34)

love this idea of using this Harvard Business School newsletter. mean, first of all, it’s got great. It’s got interesting content and great topics. But what I love more is you saying, I have a structured way that I will regularly engage my team in maybe different topics. Because too often, leaders get your blinders on. You get focused on the tasks, the problems, the objectives of the business.

This sort of first of all broader conversations amongst each other and then the development side can often fall through the wayside. So I love that you have embedded into your staff, your recurring staff meetings this touch point of saying, nope, let’s take a step back. Let’s talk about something that’s not necessarily directly related to the day to day business. And then I imagine they can oftentimes result in some pretty interesting discussions amongst your team.

ANDREWS (13:25)

It does. And I can’t say that I was the originator of this. Actually, a prior manager did it for me. And I have to admit, I would say there’s a bottom-up view and a top-down view. There’s a bottom-up initially. was like, you want me to do extra work and read? You know, I got to come to work and give you eight hours plus. Yeah. And as I have to admit, when I saw other coworkers being engaged and excited about it, like, Well, maybe, maybe I should do some of this. Yeah. And my engagement got me, you know, got me more thoroughly interested in it because some of it was engineering based, some of it was leadership based, some of it was personality based. So it helped kind of develop a little more well-rounded thought of who I am. And that’s the kind of thing I wanted to give my team is this idea that, beyond the work that is out in front of us, we need to understand that.

If we understand personality traits of different people and what inspires them, we might be able to get to a place where we can get to the end of this project.

ADAMS (14:34)

The other thing you mentioned that really resonated with me was, first of all, the concept of listening. But you also said sometimes, so you’re hearing your team, a certain team member maybe saying, you know, I actually need a little bit of a pep talk or motivation. I think the term you used was they needed a little wind in their sails to get them through. And I’m just curious how you approach that. Can you talk a little bit about when you see somebody that might needs to be lifted up a little bit, what are some of the tactics that you use to try to help them?

ANDREWS (15:01)

I guess I look at it from a selfish standpoint and think about what what I do like for my boss to give me You know and try to translate that through some of that is one one time some of that is Understanding when things didn’t go quite so well And honestly, I just had that applied last week I had a team members put out a report not quite up to the standard I had hoped that we would identify. And I was a little warm, but fortunately I came in and said, hey, you know, let’s talk about where we are with this. And they explained it and they gave me little bit of a pushback. And then as I explained it in a more calm manner and talked about the concepts and how this affects them, not necessarily how it affects our group, how it affects them, how people see their work.

They understood it more and they were like, I see your point. Let’s move forward on it. So I think, you know, just understanding, I guess, empathizing is one of the bigger things. There’s always the other tools in the toolbox that are typically a little more restrictive and discipline related that, you know, ideally you don’t necessarily want to use because

Sometimes those things can drive a wedge. People don’t really see the concepts that you’re trying to put in place.

ADAMS (16:18)

The other thing that really resonated with what you said is I love these sort of, when you talked about when I first, when I was in school and I thought about what leadership was, it was the person who yelled the loudest. And then I thought it was a person who took charge. And now I know it’s really about listening. I’m curious how you made those transitions. mean, was it through just, you talked a lot about role models that you can observe and get feedback from.

Maybe you got some feedback in your assessments or performance feedback that was sort of like, you know, that’s not quite what we’re looking for. I’m just curious in your own journey, how you came through those three, those three different transitions in your own personal view of leadership.

ANDREWS (16:54)

I’d say it’s a combination. You know, it wasn’t any particular one thing. Me hitting in my own walls in a lot of cases. have to admit, as I started to understand that the loudest person wasn’t always getting things accomplished because I turned into the loudest person, but my message was lost because I was yelling. Look at me, look at me.

As I started to model some things I saw from others that were doing well, that were listening, being engaged in a conversation and helping develop a concept as opposed to just selling an idea. You know, I started to recognize that, okay, there’s some things I need to understand that if it’s better, man, think you’re a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

ADAMS (17:44)

Yeah.

ANDREWS (17:44)

You know, do more listening, seeking to understand first, before I’m understood. And also, you’re right, having a couple great mentors along the line. One boss that came in and hit me upside the head with a wet bat, you know, initially. But as I finally understood the concepts he was trying to lay out, became one of my biggest supporters from that standpoint. you know, it’s a blend. I’m not sure if it’s one particular thing, but I think the idea that I understood that I needed to grow to get where I wanted to go and I needed to adjust.

ADAMS (18:19)

Yeah. And do you have any sort of, I don’t know if I want to call it like a self-reflection practice or any strategies you use. And the reason I ask that is because there are plenty of people and I’m sure that you could, when I say this, you’re probably going to think of specific names, but there are plenty of people who are the people that yell in the room and hadn’t figured out that that’s not actually how you get to the next level, right? They stay that way. And so, but in your case, you were like, yeah, that was me for a while. And then

You I got some feedback and I, you know, you knew that you need, somehow you knew and accepted that you needed to do something different in order to get yourself to the next level. And so just kind of that self-awareness and that ability to acknowledge that you need to do something different. I’m curious how you manage that and how that works for you.

ANDREWS (19:10)

I think going through, you know, this personality trait test recently at church that was in a gram.

So there’s some self-reflection, of course, doing some of those articles and seeing concepts about yourself in there that are working and some concepts in there that are, you you like to sharpen. I think what I’ve realized is that one size does not fit all. So I had one boss that was a great, he was a guy that inspired me to get my PMP was pushing me for growing in the company. And he liked the fact that I was calm in the middle of a storm.

ADAMS (19:49)

Mm-hmm.

ANDREWS (19:50)

I had other bosses that were like, why are you calm in the middle of this storm? So one size does not fit all. You have to understand who you are and understand what is it that makes you fit. Sometimes you have a client and the client has a desire. You got to meet the client’s needs from that standpoint, whether that’s an internal or external client. But

I have to understand that the concept is that in the end, when I leave all of this, when I’m finished and retired from this field, I got to be comfortable with who I am. And so for me, that was just me understanding that, okay, either I’m going to do more yelling, be more frustrated and what comes with all of that and how am I comfortable with that or am I going to do it my own way and reflect on it and and move forward. And so far, you know, I like my way a little bit better, but I’m not opposed to an occasional yell, especially if it’s at the right person. But I’m thinking of some some old classmates right now when I say that.

ADAMS (20:48)

Okay, we’ll make sure we send them this podcast and then see if can self-identify.

All right, Anthony, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

ANDREWS (21:06)

Think kind of like what we’re doing right now, it’s hard for your peers to tell you how to get ahead. I think you’ve got to get with people who are a little bit ahead of you on the path, give you an idea for their concepts. As a young man, as a new husband and soon to be father, I sat down with three men in my church individually and talk to them about what is it like to take care of your career and your family. And while I forged my own path out of that, it was not a surprise when I got to certain steps. it’s same kind of advice I would give for those who want to get into leadership is pick out some people that don’t necessarily have to be straight mentors for you, but sit down with some people, talk through what is it that you did that did well, what is it that you wish you had done, any advice for someone getting involved? Because it gives you an idea that in year two, year three, five, seven, you know, oh, these are the things that they were talking about. These were the opportunities that came up. Did I step up? Did I get involved in a professional society? I take a leadership role? Did I take an opportunity to do something that was a little bit outside of my norm?

Did I do something special that I probably would never ever tried? So I think those are the advice that I would give them is, know, seek some people that are on the path that you are.

ADAMS (22:33)

I’m really having an aha moment here based on what you said because the idea of seeking out other people who have done something similar or seeking out mentors, that part is advice that lots of folks give. What you said, which is really an aha for me, is that you don’t necessarily have to take their advice per se or do things the way they did.

Let them describe to youwhat the path is like, and then you can decide what you want to do because you know what’s coming. And I think that’s such great advice for a bunch of different reasons. One, to get the knowledge, but two, I do find that a lot of folks really struggle to find their perfect mentor or their unicorn mentor. Somebody who has the exact same, you know upbringing, has exact same demographics, has exact same current situation. And I try to tell people, you’re not gonna find that. You’re not gonna find that ever because we’re all so unique. And also it can be, can see people sort of turning off some of the advice because they’re like, that person doesn’t understand my situation. But they can definitely, everybody who’s been ahead of you can describe describe the path and you can even sort of crowdsource how what it might actually look like. And I love that idea because it really opens up, I think that almost the candidate pool for people who you might be willing to talk to, to learn about their experience. And I just love that because I think it actually helps with this, what you were talking about before about empathizing, right? Kind of the more you can sort of learn about other people’s experiences, the more you can realize, like people are really different from me and and they choose to do these things the other way. And so that also helps with the empathy. So I just, yeah, as I said, I just had a real aha moment based on what you said, and I really appreciate that.

ANDREWS (24:19)

You say that and it reminds me of Armin Cruz, who’s an engineer, West Point graduate, Hispanic brother, that was the vice president of parking at DFW. Nothing to do with what I was doing, but I interviewed for position under him. We got to talking a little bit and I said, well, can I come in and talk to you another time? He said, sure, sure. We sat down. He did give me some reading.

And he said it gives his reading to all of his leadership route. And he highlights it, doesn’t really mark it up. And then he says next year when he comes back through, he reads it again. I highlight a different section. After I think I had left DFW and I moved on to a different airport and I asked to meet with him again, he brought himself and his three AVPs to lunch with me.

Which I thought was major that he would invest not only his time, but some of his leadership staff with me. But in regards to, I wouldn’t have naturally picked him as a mentor because I didn’t think we had a lot of baseline in common. But in regards to someone who advocated for me, who supported me, who wished me well and said, hey, there are greater things ahead of you.

I didn’t necessarily follow this path, but I took so much away from the idea that you can invest in and find people that you see that need some support, that need some effort. And I guess I’m doing some of the same things. My daughter, it’s passed on engineer here that I’ve been trying to help push into some concepts and into some jobs and get into right contact. So,

Armin paid it for me, so I’m trying to pay it back.

ADAMS (26:04)

That’s incredible. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

ANDREWS (26:08)

No, thank you. I appreciate it. Again, want to thank Melvin Kirk, MESP Group 10.