Leadership characteristics within the making community

Makers are those who enjoy creating things and learning new skills, as well as interacting within a connected community¹. Through the analysis of Makers as part of a larger study² a researcher had noticed the emergence of leadership traits within the Maker community. Leadership is a key quality for the engineer of the future³. Proactiveness, confidence, motivation, communication, coaching will be important skills for engineers so that they can effectively lead teams, adjust to change, and synthesize⁴. In National Academy of Engineering's The Engineer of 2020³ future engineers are expected to be in position to influence "in the making of public policy and in the administration of government and industry." The Maker community offers a broad spectrum of individuals engaged in informal engineering and tinkering activities. This study explores leadership using a theoretical framework of competing values including relating to people, managing processes, leading change, and producing results⁵. The study relies upon artifact elicitation (based on photo elicitation⁶) with 40 of these Makers at four Maker Faires in the United States. The Artifact elicitation interviews were conducted at the Maker Faires in front of participants' inventions, where the Makers were asked to describe the invention and the process behind it. Using a theoretical framework of competing values^7,8 and through parallel inductive-deductive analysis, the emergent themes among our sample of Makers include that they express leadership qualities of (1) innovators - they utilize different skillsets to develop unique products and solutions; (2) monitors - they evaluate projects and respond to results; (3) directors - they set goals and expectations of their projects and processes; and (4) producers - they are determined and possess a personal drive.