Short Programs

Challenges of Leadership in Teams [10.10s]

Date: July 23-27, 2012 | Tuition: $4,600 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 2.8
Application Deadline »

Overview  |  Who Should Participate  |  Learning Objectives  |  Course Topics  |  Schedule  | 
Participants' Comments  |  Biographies  |  Location  |  Updates

Overview

Successful team-based organizations require leaders to be collaborative and empowering and to transform organizations from a traditional leadership environment to a shared leadership environment where the importance of empowering team members is recognized. This course covers twelve specific challenges that are identified under Course Topics below. These challenges prepare leaders to negotiate and facilitate the complexities of leading teams throughout their life cycle. Once leaders have faced these challenges, their capabilities will improve in specific management areas.

Learning to use these new capabilities in a team environment will enhance a team leader's ability to self-assess and to select the most effective management style for a specific situation. Judging one management style relative to another is ineffective; instead participants learn to assess their own and others' management styles in order to enhance task performance.

The challenges in leadership of teams covered in this course are easy to apply in any management situation and will enable formation of teams that organize faster, think collaboratively, and are productive. They help create an environment where leaders can successfully support their teams in a competent professional atmosphere. Participants learn how to manage a team by providing structure and developing trust during the life cycle of a project. The team development model employed allows teams to organize and execute complex projects without the stress of miscommunication and distrust.

Learning how to strategically integrate the twelve leadership challenges will support development of the skills and techniques managers need to navigate organizational transformations of work in order to effectively guide project teams and to communicate effectively with senior management, CEOs, and Boards of Directors. These challenges are included in our research-based instructional program that utilizes training exercises for introducing the concepts of facilitating and coaching into a science or engineering culture, with a particular focus on the need for collaboration and empowerment of all team members. By incorporating a hands-on interactive approach, each participant should have a significant opportunity to expand his/her competencies by receiving both feedback and insight from the faculty throughout the various stages of the group process.

Who Should Participate

This course is appropriate for a general audience including, but not limited to: managers, CEOs, CFOs, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, governement and military personnel, financial managers, and project managers in any field.

Learning Objectives

• Assess yourself as a team leader/manager by understanding your strengths and weaknesses, choosing three or four areas in your leadership abilities you wish to develop.
• Learn to manage a team through assessing yourself in the following areas: team dynamics, effective communication, facilitation, leadership style, negotiation skills, conflict resolution, and coaching skills.
• Learn to analyze the interactions between your personal thinking style and others, understand your emotional intelligence and utilize it to manage others.
• Evaluate outcomes of exercises in facilitating and coaching in a science or engineering culture.
• Learn how to transform your leadership to a more adaptive leadership style that fits your organizational culture.
• Learn the fundamentals of project management in different environments.

Course Topics

Self-Assessment
Team Formation
Situational Leadership
Team Communication and Socialization
Emotional Intelligence
Positive Criticism
Diversity Issues
Mindset Management
Leading in an Intercultural Environment
Conflict Management
Project Management in Different Environments
Strategic uses of Self-Assessment Strategies

Course schedule and registration times

View 2012 Course Schedule

Class runs 9:00 am - 5:00 pm every day except Friday when it ends at 1:00 pm.

Registration is on Monday morning from 8:15 - 8:45 am.

Please note that there are nightly readings assigned each day of class. Before the first day of class, please read the following article, Turn Strategy Into Action.

Participants' Comments

Program Manager, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
"This course reminds you that you can still be the best leader regardless of the environment. [It] pushes you to think, which is rare these days."

ASE-Trainee, TATA Consultancy Services
"The best part of the program was the interaction with the staff. They were just amazing. They were really helpful and I could approach them at any time and they would just help out. Personally I approached every lecturer to get my problem solved and everyone provided their perspective. I was really impressed."

Program Integration Manager, NASA
"The class was the most diverse group of students I have ever been a part of. And the instructors engaged and included all of us in discussions and conversations aimed to improve our understanding of the material. I got a tremendous benefit from taking this class and am grateful to the staff of your institute and the instructors for letting me participate."

Biographies

Lori Breslow, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the Sloan School of Management where she teaches courses in managerial, professional, and intercultural communication. She is also the Director of the Teaching and Learning Laboratory at MIT. TLL works with faculty, administrators, staff, and students to strengthen the quality of education at the Institute. Dr. Breslow's research interests are in interdisciplinary education and peer learning.

Bonnie Burrell van Stephoudt is co-director of this course. She is a lecturer in the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT and has her Master's degree in Management from Harvard University. She is presently teaching team development to Chemical Engineering students. In collaboration with Dr. Colton, she has been developing the integration of interpersonal communication and team building skills into undergraduate and graduate engineering education. She conducts research in the areas of interpersonal business communication including collaboration, leadership skills, and assessment methods. Her publications include Conflict Management Theory and The Team Development Model.

Clark K. Colton is co-director of this course and is a professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Dr. Colton has written over 200 publications in chemical engineering and bioengineering and has received many awards. In collaboration with Bonnie Burrell, he teaches interpersonal business and technical communication skills to students in Chemical Engineering in addition to other technical courses, and is working to expand interpersonal communication and team building training into undergraduate and graduate engineering subjects.

Keith Dionne received his M.S. in Technology and Policy and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT. He was one of the initial scientists in the founding of CytoTherapeutics Inc., where he led the effort to develop immunoisolation systems for the treatment of diabetes. Dr. Dionne later moved to Alza, where he led the research and development group for implantable drug delivery systems. In that role, he developed the DurosTM technology, which is now marketed as ViadurTM for the treatment of prostate cancer. Keith grew the Technology Solutions group at Millennium Pharmaceuticals into a $100M/yr business. He was the CEO of Alantos Pharmaceuticals, a private transatlantic drug discovery company that was sold to Amgen for $300M in 2007. Keith Dionne is currently CEO of Surface Logix, a Metabolic Disease discovery and development company.

Dr. Ralph Katz is a Professor of R&D Management at Northeastern University's College of Business and Principal Research Associate at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. He received his M.B.A. and Ph.D. Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. For more than twenty-five years, Professor Katz has been carrying out extensive management research, education, and consulting on technology-based innovation with a particular interest in the management and motivation of technical professionals and high performing groups and project teams.

Dr. Katz has conducted numerous workshops and seminars on Research, Development, and Engineering management topics to technical staff professionals, managers, and senior executives in many organizations both within and outside the U.S. He has worked with many companies to improve their management of technology practices and innovation processes. Among his more recent clients are many major industrial corporations, including Dupont, Motorola, Procter and Gamble, Atofina Chemicals, Lockheed-Martin, Sparta, Panasonic Technologies, Goodrich, Abbott Labs, UCB, EMC, NRO, Master Foods, Inc., NASA Glenn Research Center, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Dr. Katz is also the Faculty Leader and Coordinator of the 3-Day Management of Technology and Innovation Executive Program at California Institute of Technology. For more than ten years, he organized and led the Management of Technology and Management of Technical Professionals Courses at IBM's Corporate Technical Institute. Professor Katz has also taught within the Executive Programs of Columbia, Berkeley, Chalmers, St. Gallen, IESE, Copenhagen Business School, Emory, and Carnegie Mellon Universities and was a visiting scholar at INSEAD in Paris during the 2003-2004 academic year. He has published several books and numerous articles in leading professional journals. His most recent book is entitled The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2003.

In 1981, Professor Katz was awarded the "New Concept Award" by the National Academy of Management for that year's most outstanding contribution to the field of organizational behavior. He was also the 1986 recipient of the R&D Management Journal's "Best Paper" Award and the 1990 and 1991 recipient of the Academy of Management TIM Division's "Best Paper" Awards. Prof. Katz serves on several journal editorial boards and is currently the R&D/Innovation and Entrepreneurship Departmental Editor for Management Science.

Harold V. Langlois For the past 30 years Dr. Harold Langlois has spent his career with one foot firmly anchored in the day to day leadership responsibilities of managing complex organizations and the other rooted in the theoretical world of academe. Beginning in the early 1990’s Harold held senior executive positions at various financial firms, where he was responsible for constructing a Division of Wealth Management, designing and implementing innovative education programs for financial advisors and overseeing the cultural integration of these firms as they became acquired. These experiences have given him an understanding of the challenges and mindsets of advisors, whether working in global firms in the investment or insurance sectors or providing advice within the independent sector.

Since 2006 Dr. Langlois has dedicated his efforts to lecturing and coaching business executives on improving their leadership skills. His approach is highly interactive, and he concentrates on providing the latest research in the areas of leadership, teamwork communications, change management and neurobiology.

Harold holds a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, and for the past fifteen years he has been a member of the graduate faculty at Harvard University teaching courses on managing change, leadership, and teamwork. In Fall 2007 he offered a web-based graduate course streamed worldwide each week as part of Harvard’s distance learning initiative. He was the recipient of the Joanne Fussa Distinguished Teaching Award at Harvard in 2002.

Alethia Bess Mariotta After attending the Washington College of Law at American University and becoming a member of the New York State Bar Association, Alethia Bess Mariotta began her legal career in the Litigation Department at Paul Weiss, a firm focusing on complex financial litigation. While working as a litigation attorney, she worked on cases involving Enron, Citigroup and Worldcom. As a Forensic Accounting Manager at KPMG in Zurich and London, Alethia lead fast-paced, highly confidential forensic accounting investigations, while working with international teams. Prior to becoming an attorney, Alethia began her professional career as a facilitator. She designed and facilitated trainings in the areas of diversity, leadership, and negotiation skills. She has facilitated numerous international trainings including representing, Harvard University, The Fulbright Commission and MIT. Alethia is currently consulting to the Basel Institute on Governance in Basel, Switzerland.

Terry Schmidt is an international management consultant, strategic thinker, entrepreneur, and educator who specializes in leadership, strategic management and change. He has 30 years experience assisting corporations, governments, and research organizations in 32 countries worldwide. He earned his BS in engineering from the University of Washington, and his MBA from Harvard University.

Terry is president of ManagementPro (USA) and a global partner in the Centre for Strategic Management. Before starting his own company, he worked for Boeing, NASA, the US Department of Transportation, Management Analysis Centre, and the US Embassy in Thailand.

His U.S. clients include eBay, Boeing, Sony Electronics, Grumman Aerospace, Walt Disney Imagineering, Nokia, Cargill, PATH, Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Transamerica Insurance, and the LA Times. Terry teaches strategy at the UCLA Technical Management Program and is on the faculty of the Los Alamos Laboratory Management Institute.

He has seven published books; his most recent is Turning Strategy Into Action. Co-authored with Dr. Hendrie Weisinger, his next book, The Emotionally Intelligent Project Manager, will be published in the fall of 2007. Terry is the winner of the esteemed Theodore von Karman trophy from AIAA and the Charles T. Main Award from ASME. His career is listed in Who's Who in International Training and Development (3rd ed), Who's Who in Finance and Industry (23rd ed), and Who's Who in the World (6th ed).

Location

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please contact the Short Programs office for further details.

Updates

There are no updates at this time.