MEL #052 | The Podcast Built for Students and What It Became with Dr. Angelique Adams

Angelique Adams (00:00)

Hi everyone, Angelique here.

As we reach the end of the year, I wanted to share a more personal episode. This is the story behind the Mastering Engineering Leadership podcast. why it exists, what I learned along the way, and how it has shaped my approach to teaching and supporting engineers.

This show began as a teaching solution. It became something much bigger.

Let me start at the beginning.

I launched this podcast when I stepped into directing the Leadership and Engineering and Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Tennessee. I knew I would be teaching a leadership course for engineers, and I also knew one thing for certain, that I did not want my view of engineering leadership to be the only point of view in the class.

I wanted students to hear real stories from real engineers at different stages of their leadership journeys.

Now, the traditional way to do that is through guest speakers. And while that sounds ideal, it comes with some real logistical challenges. I have been a guest speaker at several different universities. And I know that the faculty and their staff had to do quite a bit of work to sync up schedules, to arrange my travel, to make sure that what I was going to talk about fit into their syllabus.

On top of that, I really didn’t have much of a local professional network at the time because I had been working globally most of my career. And so I really thought I was going to have a hard time finding people to come into my classroom.

as a new instructor building a course from scratch, I knew that that would be a heavy lift. On the other hand, something you may not know about me is that I have years of experience interviewing people. That’s actually how I’ve written two books based on interviews. And so I knew how to conduct a strong structured conversation. I also knew how easy it was to send people a calendar link and get them on a Zoom call and interview them and record those interviews.

And I knew how much value there was in capturing stories in a format that people could actually revisit over and over again. And so the podcast idea began to take shape and it really seemed like a practical solution for me. And then a former student, actually we were just sitting there one day talking about podcasts and he mentioned a podcast producing software, which is what I actually use now.

that makes this extremely easy in terms of producing and editing a podcast. So when I put all of those things together, actually producing a podcast made a lot of sense. And my original goal was pretty small. I wanted to have five or six episodes that students could choose from as part of homework assignments. Listen to an episode, reflect on why it resonated with you, and analyze the leadership lessons through the frameworks that we study in class. And that was really it. But then something

unexpected happened. Before the podcast even launched, I already had 15 interviews lined up.

And so very quickly, what was meant to be a handful of interviews started to look like it could be a weekly show.

And that brings me to what I’ve learned about being a host. So hosting this podcast taught me that interviewing is not simply asking questions. It’s about deep listening.

It’s about noticing when a guest shifts from describing what happened to revealing what they learned. It’s about creating space for engineers to reflect on decisions they may have never talked about publicly. And it also taught me a lot about my own energy. These conversations are mentally demanding because I’m paying such close attention and trying to connect dots.

to what they’re saying, my own experiences, and also what I’m teaching in the classroom. And so my follow-up questions are designed to help my own students better understand what these leaders have actually gone through and how it connects back to some of the things that we’ve talked about. And so I learned that I cannot do back-to-back interviews, and I need time to decompress.

process what I’ve heard, prepare for the next one. And so respecting that rhythm has made me a better host.

And one of the biggest surprises has been how much engineers actually like telling their stories when someone creates a thoughtful and structured space for them. Many guests tell me the conversation was fun and meaningful, and that has been a real gift.

Now let me shift to what I learned about producing a show.

I designed this entire workflow around something that I teach in my course, and it is called PECS It’s an acronym that stands for Preferable, Enjoyable, Convenient, and Sustainable. And I teach it when I talk with students about how to develop robust action plans. And I actually learned this acronym from my fitness coach.

he talks about it with respect to designing nutrition and workout programs. He says, look, we all know we need to move more and eat less. And there’s an infinite number of ways that you can kind of go about achieving those fitness goals. And what’s most important is that you stay consistent. And so in order for you to stay consistent, you have to pick the combination of things.

that you actually enjoy doing that you will do on a regular basis. And that is what I did when I approached this podcast. knew that for me, the only way that I was going to do this consistently was if it was very low tech,

and mobile. my work environment is very mobile. I spend some times on campus. I spend some time in my home office. I’m out on the road working with clients. And so what I have is a mobile solution. I have a microphone that’s here in my home office. I have another microphone that I can take with me anywhere I want to go.

I use my laptop and I use some software and that’s basically it. these interviews are the exact same format. It makes it easy for me to prepare. It makes it easy for my guests to prepare.

you all know what you’re going to get. It makes it very easy to produce because I just chop it up into these three sections and I put the transition music there. And my hypothesis was that if I stayed consistent and I really focused on having a real connection with my guests, that the audience would appreciate that more than having a perfectly produced podcast. And so far,

the evidence is supporting my hypothesis.

Another lesson that I saw play out in real time that I teach in my class is about communicating goals. So I tell my students that if you want support for your goals, you have to make your goals visible even when you’re not even sure yourself that you’re going to be able to reach your goal. And the same thing happened with this podcast.

As soon as I had the idea in my mind, even though I really only had one interview and that first interview was my husband and he allowed me to use him as a guinea pig, even though I only had one interview, I had a vision for the podcast and I started to talk to my colleagues at the University of Tennessee. And immediately they said, yep, I think that’s a good idea. And they started making introductions for me to alumni.

that’s when this really started to build momentum And that’s also how I’ve been able to sustain this weekly schedule. the interviews that I’ve done so far are a pretty much 50-50 split between my own personal professional network and alumni or the alumni’s network that my UT colleagues have opened up for me.

And so producing this show reinforced a belief that I hold about leadership, which is that good systems support good intentions and sustainable systems make it easier for others to support the work as well. So 50 episodes later, and that lesson still holds true.

Another surprise has been the impact in the classroom. So students are telling me that the episodes help them see leadership as something real and achievable. They appreciate hearing from people who look like them.

who think like them, who may have faced challenges they recognize.

The stories create context and meaning and they make leadership feel less abstract and more practical.

And the podcast allows me to model the frameworks I teach. So students learn to analyze leadership patterns, connect them to purpose, to people, to processes and performance, and imagine how they could navigate similar situations.

And now I have episodes that map directly to every single lesson in my leadership course.

And finally, I want to acknowledge something I did not see coming at all, which is the community that has formed around this show. People reach out when they hear a guest they know, alumni reconnect, colleagues share episodes with their students or teams, and new listeners discover leadership lessons through an engineer they admire. And this show created connections I never anticipated.

And it’s also opened up a new community for me personally, fellow engineering leadership educators. I created a guide to help them bring these episodes into their own classrooms, and it’s been well received.

And those conversations have shown me how much appetite there really is for practical story-based leadership teaching across institutions.

I’ve always known that stories carry wisdom. And I’ve also known that every engineer that I’ve ever met had a meaningful story to share, even when people who aren’t engineers buy into the stereotype that we’re not emotional or reflective. Now, I wasn’t quite sure that they’d be open with me in a podcast format, but they really stepped up.

Week after week, we got to hear engineers talk about leadership with honesty, vulnerability, and insight. And it has been a privilege to bring those stories forward.

Let me close with this.

When I started this podcast, I thought I was building a teaching tool and a way to bring engineering leadership voices into my classroom and not have to deal with busy professional schedules and getting parking passes.

I did not expect it to shape my identity as an educator or influence how I understand leadership development for engineers.

And it has become an open access resource that reflects my philosophy that leadership should be learnable, approachable, and grounded in real experience.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Thank you to the guests who have trusted me with their experiences. And thank you to the students, listeners, and colleagues who found value in these conversations.

We are not done. We will take a short break for the holidays and return in the new year with more stories and more lessons.

Until then, I wish you a happy new year.