Completing the Pass: Leadership 'On' and 'In' the Field

Abstract

Throughout the university community, opportunities abound in extracurricular activities to develop professional skills, specifically, leadership and team skills, and these provide unique crossover experiences for engineers. Our pilot program partners with the university's football team where scholar athletes, i.e., the engineers, are coached in leadership skills that apply to group situations on and off the field. Each participant in the program completes both the Klein Group Instrument for Effective Leadership and Participation in Teams (KGI)® and the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI)®. Specifically, the KGI provides each individual with a personal profile, identifying their strengths and areas for improvement. Our study looks at two different populations of engineers, highlighted by our three senior football captains, who receive intensive leadership coaching, and our ten freshmen players, who participate in our regular training provided to all freshman engineers. We examine the impact of the intensive training for the upperclassmen and the influence of the more general training on the first year students. This study shows how the process of leadership development can be strengthened by a dual application-participation on the football team and involvement in professional training in labs and in the workplace. Through personal interviews and surveys, the results show the captains' intensive training has significantly increased their awareness of their own behaviors and that of others. They have learned to analyze group dynamics in a more astute manner and make interventions that promote higher team performance. They have refined their observational, communication, and interpersonal skills. Their qualitative feedback indicates they have also applied these new skills on their engineering teams, and with their engineering internship experiences. With our freshman engineers, highlighting the connection between their team interactions on the gridiron and their first engineering design has heightened their awareness of the value of formal leadership training. Lessons learned here will benefit future development of our program and provide scholar athletes with ability to transfer leadership and teaming skills between the two 'fields', thus, completing the pass!