Engineers have unique mindsets that give them the potential to be highly competent business leaders. As leaders, engineers have clear advantages: they are analytical, technically skilled, project-based, good with numbers and well-used to problem-solving.

However, engineers cannot rely on this skillset alone when exercising leadership in today’s world. The problems business leaders are required to deal with are often unstructured and lack a single correct solution. The increasingly non-hierarchical nature of our world complicates this further. Problems have to be solved within complex networks of actors, each with their own interests and perspectives.

In this business and management course you will learn how to develop and apply a new mindset for leadership – a process-based mindset – through mastering captivating concepts and engaging in challenging assignments. There are risks associated with this new type of mindset and the course will show how they can be managed effectively. An integrated approach combining elements of the more common project-based and the process-based mindsets will be presented.

You will learn how to lead in an organization of autonomous knowledge workers and find the answers to questions such as: “How should you deal with information asymmetry?” “How can you deal with resistance?” “How to build trust with players with other interests?”

You will gain experience of leading groups and learn to define roles and norms as well as how to deal with group dynamics such as conflict and cooperation. Furthermore, you learn how to motivate group members to ensure successful group performance.