Coursera

A Technical Leader's Qualities and Effectiveness (Coursera)

Offered by University of Colorado Boulder,

This course describes the traits of Great Leaders who combine fierce resolve with personal humility. Indeed, they might be described more as “plow horses” as opposed to “show horses”. They see themselves as servants to the team and to the organization. They “hold the line” when faced with tough decisions and “do what must be done” when the time comes. Their leadership is based on solid ethical principles and they act with quiet, calm determination.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience.
Course 1 of 3 in the Principles of Leadership: Leading Technical Teams Specialization.

What You Will Learn

Understand and apply the principles of establishing a vision for an organization.
Understand the value of collaboration in bringing a team together under one vision.
Understand why stakeholders are important to any leader's actions and how to manage them.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Vision, Courage, and Resilience
Understand the value of vision, courage, and resilience as a leader.

WEEK 2
Positive Outlook, Responsibility, and Collaboration
Understand the value of positive outlook, responsibility, and collaboration as a leader.

WEEK 3
Growing as a Leader and Avoiding Difficulty
Understand the value of continuing to grow as a leader while avoiding pitfalls.

WEEK 4
Personal Effectiveness as a Leader in the Workplace
To survive as a leader in today's workplace, it is necessary for the leader to have some proficiency in various specialties. These include negotiation, office politics, stakeholder management, and having a mentor. Each of these helps the leader to negotiate the environment in which they will find themselves.

Go to Class

MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Coursera

Northwestern University

Leadership Through Design Innovation (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Today’s workplace calls for a new style of leadership to embolden and accelerate innovation. Design offers a novel way of discovering opportunities and bringing new approaches to life in ways that benefit all stakeholders. Learn how to engage with end users, effectively frame problems, identify potential solutions, and build prototypes to test assumptions and learn what works (and doesn’t). Then dive into a range of ways large and small to bring design innovation into your organization.

Aug 17th 2026

4 Weeks

Prototyping Leadership Organizational Leadership

Coursera

University of London,London Business School

Managing the Company of the Future (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

The aim of the course is to provide you with a comprehensive framework for understanding both the traditional principles of management inside companies today as well as the alternative principles that are becoming increasingly important. It provides both theoretical and practical perspectives on the nature of management in today’s organisations.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Management Leadership

Coursera

Università Bocconi

Management of International Development: Towards Agenda 2030 (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

Welcome! This course provides participants with the opportunity to explore the multifaceted concept of international development in order to be able to interpret and lead its challenges, opportunities and constant evolutions. Starting from an in-depth analysis of the current international development architecture, its key actors and trends, the course then illustrates the main international organizations' governance systems; identifies their funding and financing tools necessary to implement development programs and achieve sustainable development goals; and explains how to effectively leverage on human capital to drive organizational success and be ‘fit for purpose’ in an ever changing international development scenario.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Management Leadership

Coursera

University of Pennsylvania

Managing Social and Human Capital (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change the your organization’s architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization.

Aug 17th 2026

4 Weeks

Management Leadership Motivation

Coursera

University of Michigan

Leading Diverse Teams & Organizations (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

In this new course, you'll gain evidence-based knowledge and practical tools to help you design and lead diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) teams and organizations. You’ll better understand yourself and your personal identity in the workplace and gain new skills to identify privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions in your organization and to take action as an active ally and change advocate. After hearing from experts representing a diverse array of real-world perspectives, you’ll understand best practices for equitable organizational processes and norms and inclusive behavioral practices in teams.

Aug 17th 2026

4 Weeks

Business Management Workplace

Coursera

University of Geneva

Water Cooperation and Diplomacy (Coursera)

Sci: Environment

If you are a student, a professional, an academic, or policy/decision maker involved in water cooperation and diplomacy, this MOOC is addressed to you. It enhances your scientific knowledge and capacities to engage in water cooperation and diplomacy processes; it also gives you ammunition to contribute to the public debate and discourses on shared waters. Finally, it connects you with other professionals, students, decision and policy makers as well as academics from around the world, and offers you opportunities to exchanges views, experiences and knowledge with them.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Cooperation Negotiation Diplomacy

Coursera

Rice University

Writing Skills for Engineering Leaders (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Engineering leaders must write extensively for their jobs, and their writing needs to be professional, reader-focused, and error-free. What leaders write in particular can affect productivity and the bottom line, so the written communication that leaders create must be clear and concise. In this course, you’ll learn essential writing skills that you can apply in your daily activities on the job as an engineering leader.

Aug 17th 2026

4 Weeks

Management Engineering Writing

Coursera

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Management of Urban Infrastructures – part 1 (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Sustainability, Resilience and Efficiency are fundamental considerations for city managers in managing urban infrastructures. Today, more than 3.9 billion people, making up more than 54% of the global population, live in cities. Urbanization is expected to continue in the coming years, raising the urban population to 6.0 billion by 2045. This dramatic increase in urban populations will inevitably increase the demand for energy, mobility (transportation), water, and other urban services in every city around the world. Without functional governance and management structures that ensure efficient, resilient and sustainable performance in cities, the current urbanization growth might become a catastrophic risk threatening the quality of life of the humanity.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Sustainability Management Project Management

Coursera

University of Geneva

International Organizations Management (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

This course provides an introduction to International Organizations and the United Nations, and explores how business and management tools can be applied in these settings to achieve better, more effective results. With a focus on cross-sector partnerships in a changing world, the course offers you insights into the inner workings of international organizations and the challenges they face today.

Aug 10th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Management Marketing

Coursera

Measure What Matters

OKR Certification: Leadership and Goal Setting (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.” -John Doerr. In this one-of-a-kind OKR Certification, John Doerr builds on his New York Times best-selling book, Measure What Matters. The chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) can lead to exponential growth.

Aug 17th 2026

4 Weeks

Planning Leadership Business Strategy

Coursera

Arizona State University

Business English: Finance and Economics (Coursera)

Languages & Literature

Do you work in finance or interact with finance professionals? Is it necessary to speak, write or understand English in your career? Follow the authentic characters in this course as they work through common business situations in finance and economics. Learn from your successes and failure, and think critically about your own communication options.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Finance Language English

Coursera

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA)

Leadership Skills (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

Welcome to the Leadership Skills course! In our increasingly complex world, understanding the practice of leadership is critical. In simpler words, leadership is the practice of influencing people to meet the challenges that will enable them to achieve important individual and organizational goals. This course provides a foundation for leadership practice and aims to take you on a journey of self-discovery. You will also gain insight into building inner stability and developing your leadership skills.

Aug 17th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Leadership Communication Mindfulness