Master a repertoire of techniques for addressing challenges that commonly arise within engineering research groups, teaching staff, and other technical academic environments. In this two-day, in-person course, designed for senior and junior faculty, department heads, and higher education administrators involved in engineering and the sciences, you will acquire proven leadership strategies and techniques aimed at boosting your team’s effectiveness and productivity.
Course Overview
This course focuses on human-centered strategies for leading effective teams in technical academic environments. Through a series of interactive role-playing activities, self-assessment instruments, and group discussions, you will develop a repertoire of techniques for addressing issues that commonly arise within engineering research groups and teaching staff.
The workshop promotes awareness of the participants’ own styles of leadership and offers them new approaches to explore. Since leadership styles are highly individual and situational, the instructors do not judge styles as “good” or “bad,” but provide a nonjudgmental yet structured environment in which you can discover what works for you. No dogma.
Participant Takeaways
- Recognizing and describe your own brain-dominance profile and how it affects personal leadership style and effectiveness
- Applying the skills of visioning and mentoring to create opportunities for yourself and others
- Applying situational-leadership concepts to the various challenges encountered when developing students in an academic environment
- Defining and use techniques and approaches for conflict management and for handling interpersonal dynamics more creatively
- Understanding and articulating how leadership styles affect research, education, and the learning process
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for those who wish to enhance their leadership potential by learning more about themselves. As we grow and gain experience in our work and life, it's valuable to pause when possible and take a look at who we are becoming. In addition, a brave assessment of the skills and attributes we have accumulated may assist us in striking out to build new personal options.
This course is designed for faculty at institutions of higher education. Nonacademics and students may not attend.
Government Grantees: The cost of tuition for this workshop may be eligible for direct charging to a sponsored research project, because workshop activities can be identified specifically with the participant’s particular project and benefit the project directly. Please check with your university’s office of sponsored programs.
Requirements
Please note that a self-assessment questionnaire will be due approximately 10 days before the course starts. Laptops or tablets with word processing software are required for this course.
Program Outline
Class runs 8:30 am - 5:45 pm each day. This program is highly experiential, discovery based, and full of mutual "air time" for all to share ideas and insights. We use short videos, case examples, role-plays, group work, short lectures, and lots of dialog to investigate the topics below. The idea is to keep participants engaged and interacting throughout the entire course. Discussion topics will include:
- Group culture
- Team leadership
- Conflict resolution
- Student advising and mentoring
- Motivation
- Emotions
- Diversity
- Balancing work and family
- Reputation and tenure
Using an array of behavioral models, along with a set of easy-to-use assessment inventories, we investigate key aspects of the self knowledge that makes leaders successful, including:
- The techniques and substance behind creating driving visions and missions for our lives and work
- Ways to further understand what motivates us (and others), and successful ways to leverage motivational energy for success
- How our individual and highly unique brain works and how we are similar and different because of our thinking preferences
- Various ways we communicate and solve problems
- Specific styles of leadership we most like and most frequently display
- The several behavioral options we have available to us when dealing with conflict and other emotional aspects of relating to others
COVID-19 Updates
We fully expect to resume on-campus Short Programs courses during the Summer of 2022. Please read more here.
Links & Resources
News/Articles:
- Leadership Training in Academia - MIT Faculty Newsletter, March/April 2017
- 3 Reasons Science Faculty Need Leadership Training - eCampus News, January 6, 2017
- Business Principles for Basic Researchers - Science, October 7, 2016
- The Art and Science of Teaching Teachers - MIT Professional Education, May 12, 2016
- Professor Leiserson elected to National Academy of Engineering - MIT News, February 9, 2016
- Lifelong learning: Science professors need leadership training - Nature, July 15, 2015
The type of content you will learn in this course, whether it's a foundational understanding of the subject, the hottest trends and developments in the field, or suggested practical applications for industry.
How the course is taught, from traditional classroom lectures and riveting discussions to group projects to engaging and interactive simulations and exercises with your peers.
What level of expertise and familiarity the material in this course assumes you have. The greater the amount of introductory material taught in the course, the less you will need to be familiar with when you attend.