Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders - MIT GEL

About GEL

Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders

The Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) and Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership (GradEL) programs at MIT are designed around a core set of capabilities that effective leaders possess and deploy throughout their lives.

This set of capabilities was initially developed through a series of workshops held on MIT’s campus involving a wide array of academics, industry professionals, and advisors. It has been refined and expanded over the program’s years of operation.

Here’s the full white paper that describes each of the elements in greater detail.

Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders

Core Values, Character, and Accountability+-

Develop and grow your personal values, embrace a growth mindset, and strengthen your sense of responsibility and accountability to build foundations for leadership effectiveness.

  • Taking Initiative
  • Making Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty
  • Upholding Responsibility, Sense of Urgency, and Will to Deliver
  • Exercising Resourcefulness, Flexibility, and Resilience
  • Committing to Ethical Action, Integrity, and Courage
  • Exercising Self-Awareness, Self-Reflection, and Self-Improvement
  • Developing Vision and Intention in Life and Career
  • Fostering Trust, Loyalty, and Team-Building
  • Including and Embracing Diverse Backgrounds and Experiences on Teams
​Relating+-

Learn to develop key relationships and networks within and across organizations, and strengthen your ability to understand others’ views and to advocate for your positions. Build skills in both interpersonal and formal communication.

  • Inquiring and Dialoguing
  • Developing and Deploying Structured Communications
  • Negotiating, Compromising, and Managing Conflict
  • Advocating and Influencing
  • Building Diverse Connections and Communicating across Cultures
  • Interacting Constructively; Providing and Receiving Feedback
  • Building Relationships and Networks
  • Managing Your Relationship With Your Boss
  • Developing and Empowering Others
Sensemaking+-

Become adept at making sense of the world around you and understanding the context in which you’re working. Develop skills in making mental maps of complex environments and using models to communicate complicated ideas clearly and straightforwardly.

  • Understanding Group and Organizational Cultures
  • Maintaining Awareness of Societal and Natural Context
  • Ascertaining the Needs of Customers or Beneficiaries
  • Exercising Business Context Awareness and Financial Acumen
  • Tracking and Assessing New Technology
  • Exercising Systems Thinking
Visioning+-

Build the capacity to create purposeful, compelling, and transformational images of the future. Learn to identify possibilities and solution concepts. Strengthen your ability to use such strategic visioning to motivate technical teams.

  • Creating Motivating Environments
  • Creating and Communicating a Shared Vision
  • Identifying and Defining Issues, Problems, or Paradoxes
  • Thinking Creatively and Depicting Possibilities
  • Defining the Solution
  • Architecting the Solution Concept
Delivering on the Vision+-

Learn to design and execute processes and approaches to deliver on your vision—moving from abstraction to implementation. This transformation (e.g., “getting engineering done”) is the conversion of inventive ideas and innovative concepts into realized, deliverable solutions.

  • Forming and Implementing Working Groups and Teams
  • Aligning Organizations Toward a Vision
  • Understanding and Leveraging Power in Organizations
  • Planning and Managing a Project to Completion
  • Exercising Project/Solution Judgment and Thinking Critically
  • Inventing
  • Innovating
  • Deploying and Operating Solutions
Technical Knowledge and Reasoning+-

During your time at MIT, you will develop a deep working knowledge of a technology or discipline. This technical knowledge is essential for an engineering leader; it includes an ability to understand, decompose, and recombine different elements of a technical problem through the application of a deep understanding of technical knowledge, engineering reasoning, and problem-solving. GradEL complements your technical disciplinary education at MIT, enabling you to better harness its full potential to make an impact on the products and technologies that will change the world.