Self Awareness and the Effective Leader

Overview

Class Central Tips

Part of being an effective leader is learning how to play to your strengths and overcome characteristics that don't lend to good leadership practices. During the course, you will examine your own strengths and learn ways to use them in a leadership role. Learn to manage stress and solve problems creatively. Throughout the course, you will also build a tool kit of useful techniques that you can begin using right away in your engineering career. This course is designed for engineers who are interested in and have the desire to advance into leadership and management roles. You don't need any leadership experience to do well in this course. We ask you to reflect on your personal experiences pretty often, so some work experience will help you in that aspect, but we hope that most of what you learn here will be applicable to many areas of your life. Looking to advance even further as an engineering manager & leader for Industry 4.0? Rice University's top-ranked School of Engineering now offers a Master of Engineering Management & Leadership, 100% online for your convenience. Visit www.rice.edu/engineeringleaders to learn more.

Syllabus

Welcome
Introduction to Leadership

Outline a leadership competency framework, explain a methodology for assessing skill level and begin developing your leadership toolbox with an introduction to networking.

Engineering Profession

Discuss the challenges that engineers will face in the future and continue developing your toolbox with strategies for managing your time and how to prioritize.

Self Awareness

An introduction to self-assessment tools that allow you to identify strengths and weaknesses and how they could impact your leadership style. This week's tool for your leadership toolkit is developing your statement of life purpose.

Stress Management

Develop strategies for limiting or leveraging stress to improve your leadership style. The tool of the week teaches you to practice effective techniques for controlling stress.

Creative Problem Solving

Discuss the differences between analytical and creative problem solving. Develop techniques for encouraging creativity in solving problems while recognizing and overcoming conceptual blocks. We add mind mapping to your toolbox this week for a way to foster personal creativity.