How to Fix Poor Culture at Work: Six Must-Read Books for Engineers

Save Time, Boost Your Leadership Skills, and Build Happy and Winning Teams!

Image generated with Imagen3-fast by the Author.

I once chatted with a professional violinist about two schools of musical upbringing (and the upbringing of any art professionals) — Eastern and Western. While in the Eastern school, much of the learning is based on hierarchy and fear of underperformance, the West is taking a different approach — harnessing motivation through interest in the profession.

Broadly, both approaches define two different cultures that result in different outcomes. While Eastern artists are praised for their technique, Western musicians are widely recognised for their interpretation of the emotional undertones of the musical pieces and creativity.

For that sake, I would argue that creativity and long-term performance of the engineering teams are often more critical than pure technique, and hence, certain learning from the Western musical school can be picked up by engineering teams.

Here, I am talking about six books that helped me build healthy engineering team cultures and figure out the most important pillar of the work culture — right ways of giving and receiving feedback.