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Home Courses Influencing Stakeholders: Dealing with Power and Dynamics in Teams and Networks

Overview

Engineers have unique skills 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. Problems have to be solved within complex networks of stakeholders, each with their own dynamics, interests, perspectives and power.

In this course you will learn how to develop and apply an additional mindset. You will learn about power and interests in networks of autonomous actors. You will gain experience in leading groups and learn to define roles and norms. You will learn how to deal with group dynamics such as conflict and cooperation and how to motivate group members to ensure successful group performance.

This course helps you to answer questions such as: How should you deal with information asymmetry? How can you deal with resistance? How to build trust with stakeholders with different interests? We call this the influencing mindset – because you will have to operate in such a way, that your teams and stakeholders are motivated to support you.

The content of the course is diverse and includes videos, real-world assignments and practical skills such as negotiation and dealing with group issues.

What you will learn

  • How to encourage multiple stakeholders with different interests to cooperate
  • How to recognize team dynamics, define roles and norms, and handle both individual and team issues, including motivating group members
  • The tacit ‘rules of the game’ of interacting in a complex world
  • How to develop and apply an influencing mindset to create a strategic plan
Creative Commons License
Influencing Stakeholders: Dealing with Power and Dynamics in Teams and Networks by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/influencing-stakeholders-dealing-with-power-and-dynamics-in-teams-and-networks/.
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