MEL #040 | From Accidental Tourist to Trusted Operator through Humility and Hands-on Learning with Dr. Srijib Mukherjee

MUKHERJEE (00:00)

If you have a problem and you want to address that with management, go with the problem, but also have a solution to the problem.

ADAMS (00:32)

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Srijib Mukherjee, senior scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Srijib entered engineering as an accidental tourist, switching from physics to electrical engineering in India before earning a master’s and PhD in the United States. He built a career across utility operations, trading, consulting, and teaching and now works in research with a joint appointment mentoring graduate students. His through line is curiosity, humility, and seeking broader impact across engineering, business, and academia. 

In our leadership segment, Srijib discussed how early in grid operations he had to earn credibility with tough, highly experienced operators. He chose humility, listened, learned the system hands-on, and focused on team trust and shared problem-solving. That mindset carried into later roles where he emphasized ownership, ethics, and mentoring. 

Srijib’s advice to leaders: treat leadership as a responsibility, not a status. Balance IQ with EQ, take ownership for outcomes, and let peer respect validate your readiness. Prepare to make unpopular decisions, stay authentic, and build teams that elevate the whole organization. 

Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio, key takeaways, transcript, and recommended resources in the show notes at drangeliqueadams.com/podcast.

Without further delay, here’s my conversation with Dr. Srijib Mukherjee.

ADAMS (02:05)

Hi, Srijib. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

MUKHERJEE (02:09)

Thank you.

ADAMS (02:09)

I’m so glad to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

MUKHERJEE (02:15)

Thank you for that wonderful question, Dr. Adams. I chose engineering as I call it as an accidental tourist. I entered engineering almost 41 years back. So it’s a long, long time. And my father was an engineer.

He was a merchant in the merchant navy. So he was an engineer for a merchant marine cargo ship. And then eventually he managed a tea garden or a tea estate in the Himalayas. So my father would often speak about engineering and go to his factory to help out, rewire a generator or…

do some auto work once in a while here and there. But the vocational skills I did learn at boarding school were sound but not resounding. So I had a concept of engineering, but not a very deep concept of engineering. But growing up in the 70s and 80s, Dr. Adams, the emphasis in a place like India.

grew up in India was the career choices were very limited. And it was a very patriarchal society when I was growing up. So the society demanded you either go into medicine or engineering, or you don’t have much of a future going ahead. And through high school, I absolutely loved sports. I wasn’t much of a bookish person.

And my mother and father were extremely worried about my future. So when I graduated, I initially entered doing physics. But in India, you have to compete significantly for what they call the IITs. And I did not make into engineering in the first try, which much to my dad’s disappointment.

But six months later, I did retry and I and then got into engineering and eventually transferred from physics into engineering. the two choices I had was electrical engineering or civil engineering. And my father’s comment was the funniest ever. He said, well, he can’t build any bridges, so maybe we can make something electrical out of him.

So I said, I just trusted my father’s word. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. So the minute I got into ⁓ electrical engineering, by the time I reached my sophomore year of undergraduate electrical engineering, I had found my niche. I absolutely loved it. It came easy to me. It came naturally to me.

I loved the logic behind logic and reasoning behind engineering. My classmates were so fun. then I was a very middling student in high school. But when I reached my undergraduate, I think a light bulb might have gone off in me, a portion of a maturity factor. I call it a maturity factor. And I did graduate.

you know, turn my class with distinction. so I had, and then of course the first concept when I finished my ⁓ undergrad was I asked my father that, you know, all my friends are going to the United States. Do you mind if I go? And

my dad’s mom’s response were completely different. My dad’s first response was, how much is it going to cost me? my mother was very, very, very proactive and forward-taking. And she was like, no, I think you should go and seek opportunities. And I did land up getting a full scholarship to Florida.

ADAMS (05:57)

That was…

MUKHERJEE (06:14)

And eventually I had gone down to Miami where I continued on with my master’s degree. And eventually I couldn’t even find a job after my master’s at the time between 1989 and 90. So somebody posted a fellowship opportunity. So I said, hey, why not give that a shot? So I finally landed doing my PhD. Because my initial thought was to enter industry.

and not per se academia or research because I wanted to build things and have an idea how to innovate and get better towards that. that’s how ⁓ my career path started off. And then eventually when I graduated, I did end to industry. So it was very, very fulfilling. My journey had been very, very fulfilling to that particular.

ADAMS (07:05)

Yeah, that’s amazing. And I think you’re the first person that I’ve met who said that the electrical engineering came naturally to them. Certainly, so I’m a chemical engineer and certainly there were and there are plenty of people who are like, I don’t want to do the chemistry side. So lots of people don’t like the chemical engineering. then there’s some and I fell into the category of, I just don’t get it. Like I’m going to call all this stuff magic, even though I’m an engineer.

MUKHERJEE (07:28)

Yeah

ADAMS (07:29)

I’m pretty much just going to call all of it magic because, and I had one course and I, you know, I made, I got through it and it ended well, but it was just not something that I could, I didn’t have any intuition or anything about it. So I’m, I’m, I’m glad to hear that there are people out, people like you out there who just naturally grasp these concepts. Cause of course we need, we need that in society.

MUKHERJEE (07:50)

Dr. Adams, I have so much respect for chemical engineers because it is the toughest branch. The fundamental four branches of engineering are chemical, electrical, civil, and mechanical. And the rest of it are just offshoots. Biomedicals, computer software, those are just offshoots of the basis of these four. So those are the fundamental fields. And chemical engineers are definitely the heart surgeons of engineering.

ADAMS (08:19)

wow, I like that. Thank you, Srijib

So tell me a little bit about your path. know, once you got your PhD and you decided to go into industry, can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve done in industry over the years?

MUKHERJEE (08:32)

Sure, absolutely. So when I graduated, I was really an electrical power engineer. So my research was in power engineering. So I had done a lot of work in power systems with the electric grid, with electrical machinery, and then electrical delivery systems. So I was a natural fit to become a young engineer in the early 90s. Actually, I had first…

summer intern, my career started with a summer internship in 1989 with Florida Power and Light Company. And I got assigned to what they call the grid control center. And the grid control center monitors the entire electric grid for a particular area, a large area or a service territory that

monitors flows, monitors the direction in which equipment is switched in and out, how things are disbathed, all those kinds of activities. So it was very, very cutting edge as a young summer intern. So I absolutely fell in love with it. I just loved it. So the natural feeling was that, yes, I do want to go into industry.

And so I did enter Nevada Power Company at the time. Now it’s called NBA Energy Berkshire Hathaway. ⁓

company, but it was quite the transition from Miami to Las Vegas. But it was a wonderful, wonderful, I was just a young engineer with a PhD at a grid control center with military-based power system dispatches from the US Navy, Army, Marines. These are field people.

who operated nuclear submarines and then came on and these were vets and they were very, very hard on me to get their credibility. It took full five years and I’ve got plenty of jokes where apps and it was in those days things were a whole lot lighter. yeah, I learned actually I think I learned more from them than I learned at school.

So they would always tell me, get your hands dirty, roll up your sleeve, sit down and learn it. And I didn’t impose my views. So I just absolutely thought humility was the right way to go. So having career humility and willing to learn and accepting the fact that you don’t know everything. Oh, I’ve done all these fancy things in school, but I’m more than willing to learn really.

gets appreciation from your colleagues. So eventually when our first child was born, I got married and then our first oldest son was born and we had made some trips back east to New England and North Carolina and my wife absolutely loved North Carolina. So after five years she decided, I mean, if you can get an opportunity back

up here in the East. so lucky for me, one of the first electric utilities, most cutting edge electric utilities that put engineers as grid operators, the dispatchers, was a company called Carolina Power and Light Company, CPL. So Carolina Power and Light Company recruited me as a senior engineer at the time. So I came in, got hired by Carolina Power and Light Company and they’re very prestigious.

It’s called the AJ Scale Control Center, which is right next to NC State University. Controls the grid. This company is today called Duke Energy. So yeah, it’s a broader aspect of that is that it’s rolled into a, when it became Progress and then became Duke Energy, which is the larger conglomerate. But I got to dabble in different areas, whether it be transmission planning, whether it be generation engineering, whether it be resource adequacy planning.

So I got, whether it be distribution engineering and down to the retail side of the business and how load is served. So I got to experience each and every part, go to a nuclear power plant, go to a hydro power plant. And I got to roll my sleeves up. And there were many people who gave me such opportunities. But then what I discovered in a year, which happens with a lot of young engineers, especially people who’ve done all these degrees and things like that,

is I started getting bored and out came the California energy crisis, out came Enron, out came, and then I started realizing how little I understood the business aspect of doing things. I loved the engineering aspect and I certainly loved it, but I didn’t understand the engineering aspect. And for that, I needed to do an MBA.

So I initially thought I’d go as an engineer to NC State University and get my engineering degree. And then my wife said, why not also apply to Duke University? And I said, then I can approve that very high cost. And I said, my wife, she said, there’s no harm in asking. It’s like asking a beautiful girl for a date. The worst thing that can happen is a no.

MUKHERJEE (13:37)

So when I got into Duke, and I actually, can, if I reflect back on it now, almost 25 years later, I should have gone to NC State because I really wanted to be an engineer and not a hedge fund manager. So, but I don’t have any regrets. My wife said, take the Duke offer. And surprisingly, CPNL said,

ADAMS (13:50)

MUKHERJEE (14:00)

We’ll give you two years off and do it. we paid for it higher. $65,000 at the time. So I never paid a dime for it. And they were very generous, but they committed me to work for them for the next seven to eight years. didn’t ask for a feedback off it. So I got to go there. I absolutely loved my time at Duke. Two years getting my MBA.

ADAMS (14:04)

Wow, that’s great. Yeah.

MUKHERJEE (14:24)

with absolutely phenomenal classmates from all over the country, all over the world. And so I got to learn at time. I came back and at the time joined the energy trading and risks, the energy marketing group, which the US was opening its electric markets to the entire nation. where market economics started being driven into action. So that particular aspect

ADAMS (14:37)

Yes.

MUKHERJEE (14:49)

helped me go in and become a trader, a floor trader, a derivatives trader for Duke Energy, are they called? Progress Energy Venture at the time, to learn various aspects of that. And then I did do a little small stint and they had brought the utility down in Florida, in Tampa, Florida Power Corporation, which now became Progress Energy Florida, the Duke Florida, it’s called Duke Florida.

So I did spend a few, two years in St. Pete, Tampa, and then came right back to Carolinas. And then I got bored with that and decided, hey, I need to enter consulting so I can do more diverse projects, more diverse activities. And in consulting, I realized in the journey that I was a mid-career person at the time that I really enjoyed teaching also.

So I just like you, I love teaching and mentoring young people, but I was still not totally sure if I want to just roll my sleeves up and get into research at that particular point. So I did go back to the University of North Carolina, UNC Charlotte, and I started teaching undergraduate engineering for a good nine years, which I absolutely loved, along with consulting and traveling the world, which was just phenomenal. But then,

Once that portion of my career was over, I finally realized that my love is in research. It really is. Now I need to innovate because we’re coming into a new phase in our industry where cutting edge innovation, challenging projects, innovative thinking was needed. And lucky for me, one of our beautiful US national labs, one of the top.

cutting edge national lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory gave me the opportunity to come here. And then the University of Tennessee to kindly give me a joint faculty appointment to mentor young masters and PhD students to help them succeed, which was right up my alley. So it has been a very fruitful journey to this particular point.

ADAMS (17:04)

All right, Srijib can you give us an example of when you had to use leadership skills in your work?

MUKHERJEE (17:08)

Thank you for that wonderful question, Dr. Adams. I really appreciate it. It’s actually a very thoughtful question that you asked because leadership is not about a title. It is not about a position. Leadership moments happen in every aspect of your job. Leadership moments happen at every aspect at

home with your family, with your children. You have to show leadership, you have to show maturity and in handling leadership is very, very important. So the basis of leadership that I followed is from one of my favorite professors when I was at Duke Fuqua. And that was from Professor Sim Sitkin, who built this pyramid like six domains of leadership, it’s a little pyramid and

contextual relationship and relational leadership was the most basis foundational parts of relationship. Until you get to the top, the apex of the pyramid, which is really stewardship, which is integrity and ethics and having good values. So those are important aspects or steps being inspirational or being aspirational to what you want to do.

So my moments of leadership have really come in the form of mentorship. So my principle has always been for the people who I guide or help has always been your success is my success. So we have to figure out a way to make you successful. But there are a couple of pillars that are

are foundational pillars. That means I expect absolute honesty, absolute openness and transparency in whatever you do. Do not take credit for others’ work without giving them the nuclear credit. Do not cheat, steal, lie, all those qualities. And then open up to whatever you want. And then the great…

The other biggest step of leadership that I believe in is when you, we have people who I’ve seen my career complain about many things. Here, we have a problem here. We have an organizational problem there. This thing is not working initially. Those are absolutely accurate and relevant. But I tell people, if you have a problem and you want to address that with management, go with the problem.

but also have a solution to the problem. What is your solution to solving that problem? Don’t just take it randomly and whine about it. It doesn’t help anybody and it makes you look bad. that was the number one quality. Number two quality of leadership is excess. Do not excessively, I tell people,

when I lead them that do not excessively self promote yourself. mean, if you cannot do something, see, I cannot do it, but I’m more than willing to learn it. So if I see somebody on LinkedIn who’s 21 years old, self promoting saying I’m a project manager, that’s a red flag in my head right there. I mean, you don’t need to do it.

We know you’re learning. We know you’re drawing and you’re more than willing to accept it. As an educator, the classes I taught, would always put, solve my problem my way, but I would ask my class, is there a better way to do it? And my students have always been brighter than me. They are way, I might have experience, they’re brighter than me. And they would say, doc, I can do it better.

And they would show me a way that that can be more efficient. And I tell the class, let’s use this way that that’s a better way than my approach of taking it. So if a problem can be solved collaboratively, we’re a team work by respecting each other, then that is where you get true value. And then the last part is mentorship. Mentorship.

is not a lip service. It is truly a service where you take ownership for a young person’s success. That means it could be a life issue, it could be a career issue, it could be ⁓ an immigrant visa issue. It could be many, many things, but your job is to get the best advice or guide them to the right person that they can help get the best advice.

So my biggest steps of doing leadership is all, being an aspirational leader has always been guided by the derivatives or the formulas by two individuals that I’ve followed all my life and they are truly my heroes. One is Sir Ernest Shackleton. I don’t know if you have ever heard of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

He is the first person in 1937 of the conquest of the Antaric and his boat got stuck on a ice float for two years. And he survived his men through his captaincy. They almost started eating each other. And how we did, the story of Arnold Shackleton is unbelievable.

And the qualities of leadership he showed there were just absolutely out there. And then the second quality leadership person that I absolutely follow is a person called the Dalai Lama who has led, his nation was taken away from him, but he at his peacefully led his nation without violence and through conversation and agreement and collegiality and trying to find peace for how his people can live in peace. So those ideas.

are my ideas of aspirational leadership, of how a leader should.

ADAMS (23:03)

Yeah, that’s great. Thank you for sharing those insights with us. And there’s a couple of things I want to dive a little deeper on. So the first thing, and I love the way you said it, leadership moments. So this whole idea that, yeah, title or no title, there are opportunities to display leadership for everyone in almost any context. And I really love that idea. think it can, one, empower a lot more people who may not have the title or the role.

But it also has me thinking, I appreciate that idea of leadership moments a lot more now, I think as an educator, because my students are transient, right? I only get to see them for a little while. And so I feel like that short time with them, I’ve got my 15 weeks or however long the semester is to really try to impart something important on them that will have a lasting impact. And then I reflect back and I think, OK, well, when I was a leader,

of like the same organization for five years, I’m not so sure that I realized how many opportunities I could have had. I I think I did a decent job and the people that used to work for me said so, I just, in hindsight, I really liked this idea of actually there are lots of moments. So can you just talk a little bit more about just your sense of, or how you think about leadership moments as they’re presenting themselves to you?

MUKHERJEE (24:21)

I love that. So I had many leadership moments at home raising my two sons. You know, in in ninety nine point nine nine percent of the of any argument that I’ve had with my wife, who is far more intelligent than me. So I’ve learned to shut up. That’s just absolutely. She was right. I don’t argue beyond a certain point, but

Let’s say I get examples with my sons. They go, Papi, which college should I choose? A, B, or C? And I say, those are great choices. But here are the pros and here are the cons. Now, this is what you potentially will see out of the outcomes of your education. And it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with those outcomes.

So presenting, doing leadership is about presenting outcomes to people and not, you don’t have to have a Hitlerian authoritarian attitude. We see people with managers, title, director, I don’t care what they are VP, I don’t care. You can have the world’s most lofty title for all I care. But if you have, if those are just,

If you’ve got a functional attitude, I’m clocking, clock out, I don’t see you working, blah, blah, blah, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing, those are just functional procedures. I can get an AI robot to do that. Those are functional, that’s not leadership. Leadership is about engagement. It’s about empathy. It’s about collaboration. It’s about what context that you’re actually trying to deliver the message.

And it’s about if mistakes happening and taking ownership for it. For example, if ⁓ something goes wrong in my team, I do not point my finger at that particular person to upper management. I protect my team and I take ownership for it. It’s like publishing a paper with my student. I don’t take first authorship of it. My student wrote it.

the integrity, my student gets the credit. If they want to put my name, I tell them, if you want to put my name, it. If you don’t, you don’t have to. The choice is yours. And that is again leadership. You give that aspect to them. And, know, in the same aspect with my kids. Papi, want to play football. Well, I love the sport.

I grew up around it. You’re big, you’re strong, you can play it. I think you’re very cool, you know. If you don’t make the team this year, learn to work harder next year, get better at it. It’s all about, life is about adjustment. So there’s gonna be more failures before you start hitting success. So learning from your failures to get to success, teaching people to get to success is leadership.

ADAMS (27:14)

Yeah, well, I love what you just said in particular. I think you drew a really important contrast that is very timely, which is this idea of, you know, making sure people follow policies and procedures in their functional role is not leadership. And it’s definitely no longer going to be seen as leadership very quickly, because as you rightly said, an AI robot can do that, right? So leadership is now going to be much more focused on. I think it’s always been

an important piece of it and the people who are really good at it were always doing this. But now it’s going to be like table stakes. It’s going to be like the bare minimum about this engagement, about getting people to sort of think beyond, you know, understand there are other options and think beyond, you know, the basics and things like that. so I like what you say there. The other thing you said, and you use this word a couple of times and I love both contexts, you talk about ownership. So you talked about earlier, you talked about how mentors

take good mentors, take ownership of the success of their mentees. It’s not just about, you know, rattling off advice and telling people, you know, what they should do, but really investing, taking ownership over their success. And then you also mentioned leaders also take ownership of the outcomes, good or bad.

I love these contrasts that you’re making and you’re really, I think, doing an excellent job of helping us to see where leadership can stand out. particularly in the context of today, it’s going to have to be these types of skills and these types of behaviors.

MUKHERJEE (28:46)

You know, I forgot to mention one point the more authentic you are, the better it is. So present who you are. Don’t present somebody else. So the more authentic, the more genuine you are, you’re going to come across as somebody that can be trusted, that somebody has, that can be listened to. So listening skills are very, very critical.

unfortunately, I haven’t always been the best listener, but over time, my wife has taught me to be quiet and listen and then make statements. So listening is a very important part of leadership,

ADAMS (29:32)

All right, Srijib, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

MUKHERJEE (29:39)

Thank you, Dr. Adams. My advice to engineers, young engineers, mid-career engineers, and even coming into the upper end engineers, is evaluate what your expectations are.

Leadership requires responsibility. So a career leadership may come with additional responsibilities, additional values, but you can also be, you might be a group person leadership managing a team. That means functionally you are more aware and you’re taking care of things. Or you can even be an individual leader.

and act as an oversight guide to helping others get better. And that’s really sort of like a mentorship leadership type role. For young people, I would say there is no rush to getting to the top. So my comment is that life is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So there are going to be changes.

they’re going to be changes in organizations, they’re going to be changes in companies, you’re going to be jumping from point A to point B. It’s the non-linearity of life will start playing. It’s just life, it’s not something that’s against this person or against that person or against this company and that company, none of that. It’s just a fact of life that it will happen. But if you, for some reason, for some reason,

are a shining star, totally brilliant, and they push you off the ladder really quick, but you don’t have the emotional maturity, the EQ, along with your IQ, emotional quotient that goes on. You are destined to fail. So expect to be a leader when you’re ready to become a leader. So that means they’re showing maturity at home, you’re showing maturity at work, you’re showing that you can

own projects, you can deliver on them, you can manage finances and you understand them, you can surround yourself by choosing a team that is going to benefit the entire organization and you are also willing to say no to many, many things. That means leadership is not a popularity contest.

You are not going, you know what? It’s rather lonely being a CEO, believe me. He doesn’t have a ton of friends and go ra ra and having beer and a bar or any kind of that. It is very lonely there on the top and you have to make decisions that might be harsh, that may not be easy, that may be to a close friend, that might impact a family. But you’re gonna have to make the decision. Are you willing to do that? Do you have the maturity to handle that?

or to take the expectation to live up to that particular aspect. So those are the inroads to which you would actually take roles of becoming a leader. I tell people all the time that when you’re young, and I’ve told this to my own sons, if you’re educated, if you know your material and your things,

As you go along in your career, don’t chase money, let money chase you. So you don’t have to be running after this gold. mean, ⁓ look at the bonus so that you can keep up with the Joneses. That’s not life. It’s not reality. my comment is when you’re emotionally and maturely ready to take it on, then step into it and don’t feel afraid.

to address that with management in a performance review to say that I’m ready to take it and I’m willing to take it. Now, the other very important quality that often young people and mid-career people forget is it’s not your manager, your vice president, your director, senior vice, that you have to impress. Those are not the people you have to impress. It’s your peers. It’s your team. It’s your colleague who’s sitting in the next cubicle.

They are the ones that are gonna say, hey, Srijib is the one that can actually really do it. They’ll go up and tell their management, I think. So peer feedback, peers, getting their confidence is super, super important.

ADAMS (33:52)

Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

MUKHERJEE (33:55)

Most welcome, Professor Adams. You are just a wonderful human being. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to make my profession better.