EngineerHer

This week, we’re looking at the Backbone Leadership Load type. You can check out the Overcomer and the Carrier as well.

At some point in most women’s engineering careers, someone – a manager, a mentor, a well-meaning colleague – will say something like: ‘You should make yourself indispensable.’

It sounds like good advice. It sounds like a security strategy. If you’re the person they can’t do without, you’re safe. If you hold the knowledge nobody else holds, you’re protected. If you’re the one who keeps everything running, they’ll never let you go.

I want to gently, but clearly, challenge every part of that.

The indispensability trap

Here is what indispensability actually looks like from the inside, after a few years:

• You can’t take a proper holiday because things fall apart when you’re not there.
• You’re passed over for promotion because moving you would create a gap nobody knows how to fill.
• Your expertise is relied upon but not rewarded, because the organisation has quietly decided you’re more valuable where you are.
• Interesting new opportunities go to other people – people who are less embedded, more mobile, more available.

Indispensability doesn’t protect your career. It pins it in place.

The difference between valued and relied upon

This is the distinction that matters most, and it’s one that takes time to really internalise: being relied upon and being valued are not the same thing.

When you’re relied upon, the organisation needs you to stay exactly where you are, doing exactly what you’re doing. Your stability is their asset. Your movement is their problem.

When you’re valued, the organisation invests in your development, advocates for your progression, and thinks carefully about how to retain you. Not by keeping you in place, but by offering you something worth staying for.

A lot of women in engineering have spent years being deeply relied upon while never quite being fully valued. And it’s worth being honest with yourself about which one you’re experiencing.

What a better strategy looks like

If indispensability is the trap, the alternative is not making yourself dispensable. It’s making yourself strategic.

• Build knowledge that moves with you, not knowledge that pins you down. Deep expertise in a narrow, undocumented area locks you in place. Expertise that can be applied across contexts, combined with strong relationships and a visible track record, travels with you.
• Invest in your successor, even if you’re not going anywhere. The ability to develop others is a leadership skill. And frankly, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
• Be visible for your thinking, not just your doing. Start making the strategic thinking behind the operation visible: the decisions you make, the problems you anticipate, the judgement you exercise. That is the work that gets recognised.
• Have an honest conversation about your career trajectory. If you’ve been in the same role or on the same trajectory for longer than makes sense given your experience, that conversation is overdue.

Security comes from portability, not entrenchment

The most genuinely secure people I know in engineering are not the ones who have made themselves impossible to replace. They’re the ones who have built expertise and relationships and a track record that would make them attractive anywhere.

That kind of security doesn’t come from being needed. It comes from being good — and being known for it.

If you’re sitting with the uncomfortable realisation that you’ve been building the wrong kind of security, take the Leadership Load Diagnostic. It’s a useful mirror — and a good place to start thinking about what needs to change.

➡️ Take the Leadership Load Diagnostic