Overview

Being a successful leader in complex technical organization requires being ultimately accountable for your team’s performance and meeting commitments to all your stakeholders. This second Leading Technical Organizations course, "Accountability and Employee Engagement", explores how organizational leaders use different decision-making processes for different situations and that they are ultimately accountable for all results. You will also learn how a company’s culture affects strategy, risk and meeting stakeholder commitments. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.

Syllabus

Personal Accountability, Team Accountability and Culture of Accountability

This module leads off the second course in the Leading Technical Organizations Specialization that is the third specialization in the University of Colorado’s (CU’s) Engineering Management Program (EMP) leadership progression. This module explorers personal accountability, team accountability and how those contribute to an overall culture of accountability. Learners will study how great leaders, who are truly personally accountable, not allow excuses to veil their accountability for their results.

Strategic Decisions and Big Picture Business Risks

This module examines the processes of making decisions both big and small. It will look at the biases that every individual has and explorer ways to detect biases and minimize their impact on your decisions. We will explorer a couple different models for making classifying different types of decisions and following a structured process for making strategic decisions. With big decisions comes risk, you will learn how to evaluate the likelihood versus consequences to enable informed risk management choices.

Leading Change and the Power of Culture

There is nothing more powerful in the workplace that its culture and changing culture can be one of the most difficult missions for leaders to undertake. In this module, Guest Speaker Brynn Watson will share her knowledge of Leading Change & the Power of Culture. Brynn retired in April of 2022 as Vice President of Enterprise Innovation & Digital Transformation for Lockheed Martin Corporation. We will then delve into strategies for changing culture by looking at a couple of ways to model and evaluate culture and culture change.

Mediation, Negotiation and Dealing with Challenging Situations

This module explores conflict in the workplace. Effectively resolving conflict and mediating solutions that find a middle ground is an extremely valuable leadership skill. Learners will be introduced to strategies for engaging in crucial conversations and will hear how empathy can build trust and lead to a better outcome to a challenging situation.

Being an Authentic Leader

In this final module of "Accountability and Employee Engagement", learners will delve into how being an authentic leader can greatly enhance trust with their team. Key to being an authentic leader is making ethical decisions. A guest speaker, T.J. Hasty, shares his views on ethical decision making in business that were shaped by years of military service followed by years of experience in corporate legal assignments. For learners taking the course for credit, the module ends with a culminating peer- reviewed paper.