Leadership Principles for Scientists, Researchers, and Engineers (LASER) is a four-course online program for technical professionals that will empower you with the essential skills needed to solve problems, innovate, and drive change, via MIT’s conceptualization of problem-led leadership and the three perspectives on leading change: formal, relational, cultural.
This program is well-suited for busy, ambitious technical professionals looking to advance their soft skills and add more value to their teams and organizations. Individual contributors as well as early to mid-career managers intent on architecting successful, collaborative, and happy teams will gain the skills needed to be successful leaders and to influence their teams to accomplish shared objectives within the organization.
Course 1
Course 1, Understanding Organization Strategy and Capabilities, is a 4-week online course that will explore the strategic perspective on leading change, teaching formal strategic thinking, dynamic work design, and visual work management.
This course will introduce you to MIT’s honed concept of “Dynamic Work Design”, which allows teams to drive an organization's mission forward successfully while prioritizing products that create value for the end-user. You will develop new processes by using the Four Principles of Dynamic Work Design to decompose your product systems into individual tasks, relationships, and entities to more effectively organize and conceptualize your work.
The course is well-suited for ambitious technical professionals and entrepreneurs in business, industry, government, and other organizations at all levels looking to advance their soft skills, add value to their teams and organizations, effectively lead change, and perform to their highest potential.
Course 2
Course 2, Negotiating and Applying Influence and Power, is a three-week online course that will empower you with the essential skills needed to solve problems, innovate, and drive change within your team and organization through a proven negotiation method for achieving results advantageous to all parties.
The course teaches the Mutual Gains Approach, a negotiation method developed by MIT and Harvard, co-led by Larry Susskind, and well-proven through extensive research. The method allows all involved parties to both maximize their gains and maintain positive, long-term business relationships. You will learn to Prepare, Create Value, Distribute Value, and Follow Through in negotiations.
The course is well-suited for professionals and entrepreneurs in business, industry, government, and other organizations at both the managerial and individual levels. Specific positions that may be particularly well-suited are directors of sales and account representatives. However, professionals from any area interested in improving their negotiation skills to maximize negotiation outcomes while maintaining long-term relationships will benefit from the course.
Course 3
Course 3, Navigating and Leveraging Culture and Networks, is a 3-week online course that will analyze the reality and function of how networks and culture operate in organizations and how they affect the ability to lead.
The course teaches you to accurately analyze, diagnose, and understand an organization's culture, utilizing Schein's three levels of culture—Artifacts, Espoused Values, and Basic Underlying Assumptions. It will increase your ability to operate within an organization and navigate organizational barriers to change in order to implement successful initiatives.
The course is well-suited for professionals and entrepreneurs in business, industry, government, and other organizations at all levels who want to function effectively and efficiently within an organization, lead change efforts, and perform to their highest potential.
Course 4
Course 4, Discovering and Implementing Your Leadership Strengths, is a 3-week course that will guide you through the process of building a personalized roadmap to develop, deepen, and broaden your leadership capability and confidence.
This course teaches you how to utilize critical self-reflection to discover & develop your unique leadership strengths. It will provide you the opportunity to optimize your leadership style and skills, and to see your leadership in context by providing peer insights into how others view your leadership strengths.
The course is well-suited for professionals and entrepreneurs in business, industry, government, and other organizations at all levels who want to realize and develop their strengths and more effectively and efficiently lead and function within teams and organizations to perform to their highest potential.
If you are interested in augmenting the skills you will learn in this program, we recommend reviewing some of our Leadership Principles elective courses.
These courses include: