A joint program for mid-career professionals that integrates engineering and systems thinking. Earn your master’s degree in engineering and management.
From day one, leadership is integrated into your entire MBA experience at MIT Sloan. From orientation to core courses to guest speakers, to clubs and activities, you’ll be immersed in MIT's approach to leadership.
The MIT Leadership Center has designed core and elective MBA courses and programs that give you the chance to dive deeper into your leadership development throughout your two years at MIT.
The Leadership Center's unique approach integrates science-based frameworks, executive leadership coaching, and practice, creating the ideal environment for your transformative leadership development.
MIT Leadership Center Designed Courses for MBA Students
15.336 ID Lab: Individual Development & Interpersonal Dynamics
The central thesis of ID Lab is that being an effective leader requires a deep understanding of what it means to be human in a complex world. The semester-long course requires both a commitment to personal transformation and a willingness to engage with others on a similar journey.
To maximize the opportunity for a positive, developmental experience, students in ID Lab work one-on-one with a professional executive leadership coach. Coaching is often critical to the process of translating the self-knowledge gained in class sessions into leadership behaviors and skills.
Teams Lab is designed to help you develop the skills and frameworks necessary to diagnose the key barriers and strengths that determine team performance and to intervene in ways that improve effectiveness.
To maximize the opportunity for a positive, developmental experience, students in Teams Lab work one-on-one with a professional executive leadership coach. Coaching is often critical to the process of translating the self-knowledge gained in class sessions into leadership behaviors and skills.
In Organizations Lab you will learn to connect specific interventions made by individual leaders with organizational and community transformation. It is a class about linking the individual actions you take to the collective outcomes you desire, whatever they might be.
15.002: Leadership Challenges for an Inclusive World
The drive for increased Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) provides an ideal setting to identify and tackle the challenges of being a “… principled, innovative leader who improves the world.” A commitment to understanding and then advancing DEI is increasingly a prerequisite and foundation for principled leaders to identify a problem and then create a change. The Leadership and DEI component of 15.002 allows you the opportunity to investigate this notion over a day of rich learning and discussion taking place in both plenary and small group formats.
MIT Leadership Center Designed Programs for MBA Students
Leadership Foundations
Self-knowledge is an essential component of great leadership. By participating in Leadership Foundations, students begin their leadership development path by gaining self-awareness, connecting with peers, and setting focus areas for their time at Sloan. Using a 360 assessment tool, students gather observer feedback and data from their own personal assessment to generate an individualized report of their leadership capabilities. After a critical reflection of the report, students meet with a group of their peers and a trained guide to discuss the patterns that they have observed from their reports and begin to set leadership development goals.
Orientation
During MBA orientation, we lead activities and programs that will introduce you to team and group dynamics. Common orientation activities you might take part in include the MIT Sloan 4-Capabilites Leadership Framework and an outdoor experiential team activity held off campus at the Warren Center.
Sloan Intensive Period
The Sloan Intensive Period (SIP) is a time of intense hands-on learning at the midpoint of each semester that will inject interactive and real-world leadership experience into your MIT education. With SIP, you’ll have the chance to expand how you think and who you know, as you interact with new peers and external practitioners on a wide range of real-world subjects, issues and challenges. SIP comes in many forms. You can sign up for online or in-person sessions, Action Learning labs, seminars, track hackathons or trips, or study trips. SIP can last anywhere from three days to two weeks, depending on the type of experience you choose. Check out the MBA SIP website for more information.
Leading on Purpose
Leading on Purpose is a 4-day experience for MBAs, which requires a high level of commitment towards transformation at an intrapersonal level, while deeply engaging on an interpersonal one. The central thesis of this workshop is that being an effective leader requires a deep understanding of what it means to be a human in a complex world. Leading on Purpose enables a deeper pursuit of self- and other-awareness in service of an improved ability to be intentional in how you present yourself, in how you interact with others, and in how you set your personal goals.
Final Reflection
The MIT Leadership Center and the MBA Program Office created Final Reflection to invite the graduating MBA class to spend time reflecting on their MBA experience. This is a highly interactive opportunity to consolidate critical learning, put the last two years in perspective, connect to classmates, and build towards collective memories.
—MBA Leadership Elective Courses
Course Title
15.269
Leadership Stories: Literature, Ethics, and Authority
Fall
| 9 Cr.
Leadership Stories: Literature, Ethics, and Authority
Fall
9 Cr.
This course first explores critical dimensions of leadership: exercising formal authority, leading people and institutions, distributing leadership, leading in opposition, and leading outside formal frameworks. The balance of the course explores factors that complicate but also enhance leadership: professionalism; the apparent relativity of values; the search for a good society; and the need to confirm our humanity in the relation of leader to follower. Story-telling emerges as a constant, universal method of communicating leaders' values.
15.270
Ethical Practice: Leading Through Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and System
Spring
| 6 Cr.
Ethical Practice: Leading Through Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and System
Spring
6 Cr.
Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and the Purpose of the Corporation” is designed as an introduction to ethics in business, with a focus on business management. Over 13 sessions, students will have the opportunity to explore theoretical concepts in business ethics, as well as cases that represent the challenges they will likely face as managers; they will also have the opportunity to work with guest faculty and business and other professional practitioners. Individual sessions will take the form of moderated discussion, with occasional short lectures from the instructor.
15.281
Advanced Leadership Communication
Spring
| 9 Cr.
Advanced Leadership Communication
Spring
9 Cr.
This advanced course both builds on the basic oral and written managerial communication skills (covered in 15.280) and goes well beyond them. The goals of this class are to provide opportunities for you to continue polishing your communication skills in different contexts, and particularly to provide practice in and feedback on the interactive communication skills essential to successful leaders. You will give various types of presentations, including impromptu presentations and a longer (12-15 min.) presentation. In addition, we will practice interactive communication (e.g., role play with hostile client, interactive presentation to a hostile audience) and communication in groups (e.g., running meetings, participating in group decision making). Writing assignments include self-analyses (including one individual self-analysis and one team self-analysis of your team project), a leadership analysis, and one short business document (see discussion of individual project, below). The course will be highly participative, with most class time being spent in hands-on communication exercises.
15.288
Tough Conversations: Science, Strategies & Skills for Communicating About & Across Difference
Fall
| 6 Cr.
Tough Conversations: Science, Strategies & Skills for Communicating About & Across Difference
Fall
6 Cr.
We know it can be challenging to talk about race and gender, and in particular, to talk about race and gender with others we see as different than ourselves. At work, this challenge often seems risky, at best, and insurmountable at worst. Yet, it is a mark of leadership to be able to engage in these crucial conversations—if leaders can’t do this, who can? This course gives us an opportunity to understand why it can be so hard to talk about race and gender and to explore what is at stake for each of us as we consider navigating these crucial conversations. It raises important questions about how who we are influences when and how we engage, if it all, in conversations about race and gender. We will explore strategies for approaching the topics that are hard for each of us to talk about. Most importantly, we will practice preparing for, participating in and assessing the impact of conversations about and across difference.
15.309
Leadership Lessons Learned from the Military
IAP
Independent activities period is four weeks in January for independent study.
| 6 Cr.
Leadership Lessons Learned from the Military
IAP
Independent activities period is four weeks in January for independent study.
6 Cr.
What is it about the military that so frequently produces adaptable and well-rounded leaders in a variety of civilian settings? How can we leverage military leadership principles to plan for our own leadership development here at MIT Sloan? In this seminar, military, government, and industry leaders, along with MIT Sloan faculty, will address the skills and leadership qualities that can help prepare you to lead in the 21st Century. The purpose of this seminar is to teach students the leadership practices, traits, and mindset that have been successfully used by military leaders and to show how those tools can be applied to civilian leadership and management challenges. Teaching will be done through a combination of methods including lectures, interactive case studies, guest speakers and training exercises.
15.318
Discovering Your Leadership Signature
Fall
| 9 Cr.
Discovering Your Leadership Signature
Fall
9 Cr.
This course address key challenges faced when attempting to lead a group, of any size, where authority to make decisions may be constrained or limited. It explores the distinction between leadership and authority and helps individuals to critically examine their willingness and capability to guide and make decisions when working in project teams, (such as on action learning projects) organizational groups or other business or community contexts. Students will use systems thinking tools to look at the complex leadership dynamics that can arise and will explore options for making decisions when dealing with the unexpected or when faced with potentially uncomfortable situations.
15.320
Strategic Organizational Design
Spring
| 9 Cr.
Strategic Organizational Design
Spring
9 Cr.
Focuses on effective organizational design in both traditional and innovative organizations, with special emphasis on innovative organizational forms that take advantage of new information technologies. Topics include when to use functional, divisional, or matrix organizations; how IT creates new organizational possibilities; examples of innovative organizational possibilities, such as democratic decision-making, crowd-based organizations, and other forms of collective intelligence. Team projects include inventing new possibilities for real organizations.
15.321
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Spring
| 6 Cr.
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Spring
6 Cr.
Designed to provide a practical understanding of the skills of improvisation and their application to leadership. Examines the essential elements of successful leadership, including creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and the capacity to develop effective influence strategies and build strong teams. Cultivates students' ability to respond to the unexpected with confidence and agility. Each class offers a highly experiential learning laboratory where students practice a wide variety of improvised business scenarios, interactive exercises, and simulations.
15.321
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Fall
| 6 Cr.
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Fall
6 Cr.
Designed to provide a practical understanding of the skills of improvisation and their application to leadership. Examines the essential elements of successful leadership, including creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and the capacity to develop effective influence strategies and build strong teams. Cultivates students' ability to respond to the unexpected with confidence and agility. Each class offers a highly experiential learning laboratory where students practice a wide variety of improvised business scenarios, interactive exercises, and simulations.
15.335
Organizations Lab
Spring
| 9 Cr.
Organizations Lab
Spring
9 Cr.
Organizations Lab addresses the question of how individuals can transform organizations and, in doing so, the communities in which those organizations reside. The centerpiece of the course is a semester long action learning project in which students will assist a local nonprofit organization in improving its efficiency and effectiveness. To support this effort the course introduces two complementary perspectives. First, Dynamic Work Design, a framework and supporting set of tools (developed at MIT) for designing and creating more effective and engaging work. Second, we offer several frameworks for thinking about the impacts, both positive and negative, that organizations have on their surrounding communities. The goal is to build your ability to link specific interventions to larger transformations, and, in doing so, build your capability to transform both organizations and your career.
15.336
ID Lab: Individual Development and Interpersonal Dynamics
Spring
| 9 Cr.
ID Lab: Individual Development and Interpersonal Dynamics
Spring
9 Cr.
The central thesis of ID Lab is that being an effective leader requires a deep understanding of what it means to be a human in a complex world. ID Lab enables the pursuit of self and other-awareness in the service of improved individual, team and organizational performance. The semester-long course, based on a successful spring 2019 pilot, requires both a commitment to personal transformation and a willingness to engage with others on a similar journey. ID Lab is designed for students in their first year of MIT Sloan who are committed to developing themselves and understanding their own motivations and who are open to sharing personal insights, experiences, ambitions, fears and challenges. The experience integrates an introductory retreat, 11 class sessions throughout the spring term, and individualized professional executive coaching to further your development as a principled, innovative leader capable of changing the world
15.337
Teams Lab: Leading Effective Teams
Fall
| 9 Cr.
Teams Lab: Leading Effective Teams
Fall
9 Cr.
Competitive advantage is often built on the quality of teamwork that happens within the organization. Great teams stimulate creativity and innovation, enable rapid adaptation to market changes, and produce breakthrough results. But building, developing, and leveraging effective teams is a complex process and success is far from guaranteed especially in a global and often virtual environment. Effective teams start with leaders who can objectively analyze and understand the inherently subjective experience of all of a team’s members. Enabling each participant to reflect on how they are contributing to both negative and positive team outcomes sets the stage for great performances. Teams Lab is designed to help you develop the skills and frameworks necessary to diagnose the key barriers and strengths that determine team performance and to intervene in ways that improve effectiveness. The course will be organized the following topics: Self-Awareness and Emotional Regulation, Perspective Taking and Perspective Getting, Conflict Management and Conflict Construction, and Context Awareness. Teams Lab will integrate weekly class sessions, facilitated experiential exercises, professional executive coaching (at the individual and team level), personal reflection, and assessments.
15.339
Developing Leadership Capabilities
IAP
Independent activities period is four weeks in January for independent study.
| 6 Cr.
Developing Leadership Capabilities
IAP
Independent activities period is four weeks in January for independent study.
6 Cr.
The three-day 4 Capabilities Leadership Workshop introduces students to the four capabilities central to effective leadership:
Visioning
Sensemaking
Relating
Inventing new ways of organizing
Dynamic, personal and interactive, each 4 Capabilities Leadership Workshop features role playing, case studies and group work. Participants learn more about their own values, goals and vision through introspective exercises. They engage one another, practice new skills and reflect deeply on leadership and life.
15.394
Entrepreneurial Founding and Teams
Spring
| 9 Cr.
Entrepreneurial Founding and Teams
Spring
9 Cr.
Explores key organizational and strategic decisions in founding and building a new venture. Through a series of cases, readings, and activities, students examine the trade-offs and consequences of early founder decisions: whom to include in the founding team, how to allocate equity among co-founders, how to determine founder roles, how to hire and motivate early-employees, and whether to involve external investors. Aims to equip students with tools and frameworks to help them understand the implications of early decisions, and to build enduring resources that enable the venture to execute even if the original plan changes substantially. Meets with 15.3941 when offered concurrently. Expectations and evaluation criteria differ for students taking graduate version; consult syllabus or instructor for specific details.
15.394
Entrepreneurial Founding and Teams
Fall
| 9 Cr.
Entrepreneurial Founding and Teams
Fall
9 Cr.
Explores key organizational and strategic decisions in founding and building a new venture. Through a series of cases, readings, and activities, students examine the trade-offs and consequences of early founder decisions: whom to include in the founding team, how to allocate equity among co-founders, how to determine founder roles, how to hire and motivate early-employees, and whether to involve external investors. Aims to equip students with tools and frameworks to help them understand the implications of early decisions, and to build enduring resources that enable the venture to execute even if the original plan changes substantially. Meets with 15.3941 when offered concurrently. Expectations and evaluation criteria differ for students taking graduate version; consult syllabus or instructor for specific details.
15.568
The Art of Leading: Experiencing Leadership in Practice
Spring
| 6 Cr.
The Art of Leading: Experiencing Leadership in Practice
Spring
6 Cr.
This hands-on course will integrate the 4-Capabilties Leadership model with arts processes using cases, discussion, and experiential sessions that translate the capabilities into practice. There will be a strong focus on developing individual practices that maintain and nurture these capabilities. The course is structured for students to immerse in visioning, relating, sensemaking, and inventing activities through experiencing arts processes that facilitate effective individual and collective perspectives, enable adaptive collaboration in a changing world, and generate connections between diversity and creative outputs.
15.661
Building Successful Careers and Organizations
Fall
| 6 Cr.
Building Successful Careers and Organizations
Fall
6 Cr.
This course is specifically designed to help you learn more about your individual strengths, and how you can utilize these strengths to manage your own career and professional growth. We will draw on the latest research and practices, experiential exercises, and cases studies – all with the goal of helping you deepen your understanding of the forces and dynamics that shape careers. In so doing, we will cover the most important aspects of talent (and career) management. We start the course by covering the basic tools and principles to help you learn about who you are, where you are going, and how to successfully decide what to do career-wise. We next focus on how to apply those basic tools and principles to the process of job searching and to designing and developing your career. Finally, we examine how by building a successful career, you can also contribute to managing successful teams and organizations.
15.671
U-Lab: Transforming Self, Business and Society
Fall
| 6 Cr.
U-Lab: Transforming Self, Business and Society
Fall
6 Cr.
This interactive and experiential class is about leading profound innovation for pioneering a more sustainable economy and society. It focuses on the intertwined relationship of the following three questions:
Transformation of Capitalism: How can capitalism and society evolve from its current forms to an emerging future form that creates well-being for all (society 4.0)?
Multi-stakeholder innovation: What leadership does it take to create profound innovation at the scale of the whole eco-system of stakeholders and partners?
Presencing: How can people access their authentic self — their highest future possibility — and “act from” that heightened state of awareness in the now?
The class facilitates a journey of profound self-knowing and change and is organized around personal reflection practices, relational practices, and well-being economies.
15.674
Leading Creative Teams
Spring
| 9 Cr.
Leading Creative Teams
Spring
9 Cr.
Prepares students to lead teams charged with developing creative solutions in engineering and technical environments. Grounded in research but practical in focus, equips students with leadership competencies such as building self-awareness, motivating and developing others, creative problem solving, influencing without authority, managing conflict, and communicating effectively. Teamwork skills include how to convene, launch, and develop various types of teams, including project teams. Learning methods emphasize personalized and professional skill development.
15.674
Leading Creative Teams
Fall
| 9 Cr.
Leading Creative Teams
Fall
9 Cr.
Prepares students to lead teams charged with developing creative solutions in engineering and technical environments. Grounded in research but practical in focus, equips students with leadership competencies such as building self-awareness, motivating and developing others, creative problem solving, influencing without authority, managing conflict, and communicating effectively. Teamwork skills include how to convene, launch, and develop various types of teams, including project teams. Learning methods emphasize personalized and professional skill development.
15.941
Leadership in Real Estate
Fall
| 6 Cr.
Leadership in Real Estate
Fall
6 Cr.
Designed to help students deepen their understanding of leadership and increase self-awareness. They examine authentic leadership styles and create goals and a learning plan to develop their capabilities. They also participate in activities to strengthen their "leadership presence" - the ability to authentically connect with people's hearts and minds. Students converse with leaders to learn from their insights, experiences, and advice.