Accepting Responsibility - Something Any Successful Engineer Must Learn

One of the difficulties for many young engineers is the acceptance of responsibility. Even though they start as assistants to older men, they hesitate to offer positive opinions. They often make reports of observations and leave the boss to draw his own conclusions. If they happen to be in a position where they are not reporting to a senior engineer, and it is necessary to take the final responsibility for a decision, they try to get someone to help out and either assume or share such responsibility. Generally this is the result of want of confidence in one's self and fear that something may happen to go wrong and bring about criticism. Frequently diffidence is the principal factor. Young men come to me with reports on work that has been well done and well written up, who are evidently laboring under an intense desire to drop through the floor or to make a rapid' exit in some other way because of want of confidence. In my own early experience a consulting job came in that required considerable investigation. The man who was handing his place over to me mentioned my good fortune and I replied that the work would be interesting and I could handle it all right but feared the responsibility, which seemed considerable. He was an