Pillars

Knowing how to set personal goals, allocate resources accordingly, monitor progress, and achieve results

• Has a personal and professional vision
• Sets SMART goals
• Takes initiative
• Plans, monitors, and manages goal achievement
• Develops drive, perseverance, and resourcefulness
• Achieves measurable results and learns from the process

The ability to make effective decisions using rational and creative methods

• Understands common decision-making heuristics and biases
• Defines problems, generates alternatives, evaluates alternatives, and implements solutions
• Is comfortable with ambiguity; does not rush to reach a decision
• Makes decisions with confidence
• Practices practical ingenuity
• Practices open-mindedness
• Learns from problem-solving experiences
• Builds capacity for creativity and innovation

The ability to cultivate and grow technical and financial expertise

• Developing technical skills that distinguish one from one's peers
• Developing a working knowledge of business finance

The ability to initiate, create, and maintain mutually satisfying and beneficial relationships and social ties

• Develops perceptivity regarding others' emotions and social styles
• Builds mutually satisfying and beneficial relationships
• Acts with compassion
• Builds trust and credibility
• Assesses current networks for personal and professional purposes
• Builds and manages networks
• Speaks and acts with civility; promotes an environment of civility
  

The ability to promote fairness through inclusive practices

• Speaks and acts in ways that affirm the value of all people
• Promotes fairness
• Encourages input from all group members
• Understands how historical factors influence participation
  
• Deploys strategies to build an inclusive organization
  
• Acts as an ally for people who may feel excluded

The ability to effectively work with others to achieve goals

• Works effectively within a group to accomplish the group's goals
• Facilitates good teamwork processes
• Deploys strategies for capturing, discussing, and evaluating ideas
• Uses established techniques to manage group discussions
• Makes sure all members of a group feel free to contribute

The ability to experience and manage differences in constructive ways

• Diagnoses sources of conflict
• Manages emotions surrounding conflict
• Understands one's preferred conflict management approach
• Matches appropriate conflict management approaches to situation

The ability to communicate ideas effectively

• Chooses appropriate communication strategies
• Crafts the message to fit the audience
• Designs effective visual aids
• Is confident and articulate when speaking in public
• Uses effective written communication practices

Coordinating and working with team members to achieve goals

• Effectively composes and launches project teams
• Coordinates the efforts of team members
• Stays aware of the actions of other team members
• Engages in backup behavior as needed
• Documents team practices and processes; stores and disseminates information appropriately
• Encourages shared leadership practices within a team
• Promotes team-level learning
• Acts in ways that promote and improve the team's overall capacity for leadership

Assessing and selecting individuals for specific roles

• Identifies the skills needed to meet the team's objectives
• Assesses the skills and interests currently possessed by team members
• Recruits and selects people for roles, based on team needs and individuals' interests and strengths
  

The ability to implement plans, assess projects, and react accordingly

• Understands principles and tools of project management
• Creates plans to achieve goals and objectives in accordance with organization's vision
• Implements and updates plans to achieve desired results
• Coordinates group members' efforts
• Understands budgeting, can manage financial resources
• Can deliver a project on time, on budget, and to specification

Understanding and acting upon the importance of mentoring and training

• Shares knowledge and expertise with others
• Coaches others
• Mentors younger or less-experienced students

Enabling others to have the authority, control, and voice in achieving shared objectives and making group decisions

• Diagnoses situations where empowerment or delegation is appropriate
• Deploys strategies for enabling others to become empowered and confident in their roles
• Uses delegation strategies appropriately in decision-making situations
• Employs good follow-up practices
• Practices effective group decision-making

Creating an environment that enhances the ability, motivation, and opportunities among members to achieve outstanding results

• Communicates a clear and meaningful vision
• Understands intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• Builds a work environment that fosters intrinsic motivation
• Uses rewards and recognition appropriately to enhance motivation
• Uses rhetorical strategies to enhance the effectiveness of communications
• Diagnoses performance problems
• Deploys appropriate strategies for resolving performance problems

Using a repertoire of different leadership styles to meet the specific situational requirements

• Understands and relates to people as individuals
• Understands one's natural or preferred leadership style
• Selects behavioral strategies to meet specific situational needs
  • i.e., balancing a focus on relationships versus delivering results
    

Understanding the existence and necessity of power and building power for ethical and shared purposes as well as the ability to gain others' attention, commitment, and cooperation

• Understands the relationship between power and influence
• Diagnoses sources of personal, positional, and non-positional power and influence
• Diagnoses situations to select appropriate influence strategy
• Knows how to influence upwards
• Builds and manages personal sources of influence
• Manages positional sources of power
• Knows how to convert power into influence

Boundary spanning is "politically oriented communication that increases the resources available to the team and networking communication which expands the amount and variety of information that is available to the team."*

• Works with stakeholders, suppliers, sponsors, and other organizations to increase the group's personnel, material, and/or financial resources
• Understands the political environment of the larger organization
• Builds connections between one's group and other groups

* Burke, C. S., Stagl, K. C., Klein, C., Goodwin, G. F., Salas, E., & Halpin, S. M. (2006). What type of leadership behaviors are functional in teams? A meta-analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 288-307

Creating and implementing positive and lasting changes

• Identifies a need for change
• Imagines new possibilities
• Works with others to effect change
• Becomes comfortable with the chaos associated with change
• Creates and implements a process for sustaining improvements

• Understands the communication patterns characteristic of high-context and low-context cultures
• Can adapt one's own communication style to better work with people of other cultures
  

• Understands how engineers from different countries/cultures frame problems and pursue solutions
• Works effectively in teams of engineers from different countries and/or cultures

• Works effectively with people from non-technical backgrounds
• Values the contributions of team members from non-technical backgrounds