In order to be effective, leaders need a high tolerance of complexity. Beyond this, they need to inform their people and the outside world of their strategies, policies and decisions. Effective leaders are often inspiring communicators – their own high tolerance of complexity helps them reduce this complexity to a concise and powerful message. This course introduces the sensemaking mindset. Your sensemaking mindset is of critical importance in motivating others to follow and support you. Your communication ability to inspire and convince is largely dependent on the way you frame your message, and on your skills at playing the game of framing and reframing. You will learn from a large variety of (video) cases and analyze a large number of situations where leaders’ communication and sensemaking skills are tested and probed. The course is designed so that you are introduced to communication by reviewing public figures and politicians to bring awareness to communication techniques. Then you will see the same techniques being utilized with public figures in the engineering field. This enables you to visualize how to best utilize these communication techniques in your career successfully. Upon completion of this course you will be introduced to the sensemaking mindset, and will have learned how to use framing essentials, debating methods and pitching methods, in order to frame your communication to your team and supervisor. This will ensure that you are equipped to build winning coalitions in your own organization.
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
edX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an online course is within the sole discretion of the school. edX offers a variety of ways to take courses, including verified courses where students have the option to audit the course (no cost) or to work toward an edX Verified Certificate (fees vary by course). edX also offers XSeries Certificates for completion of a bundled set of two to seven verified courses in a single subject (cost varies depending on the courses).
An edX learning programme under Other Experiences
