Research Paper - Engineering Tomorrow’s Leaders: How Team Coaching is Transforming Leadership in Engineering Education
Summary
This research explores the effect of team coaching on engagement levels in leadership development courses within an engineering school and research center in France. By employing a structured team coaching framework, the study investigates how diverse and psychologically safe learning teams influence the overall quality of the learning process. Data collected from engagement and psychological safety surveys, PERILL team coaching diagnostics, and participant reflections support the hypothesis that working in “emotionally intelligent and psycologically safe teams enhances both engagement and learning outcomes. The findings suggest that the integration of team coaching in engineering leadership education could significantly benefit the development of future engineers.
Introduction
Engineering schools are facing a critical challenge: fostering leadership skills among their students in an increasingly complex and collaborative work environment. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, only 23% of employees are engaged and thriving at work, while 77% are either silently or loudly quitting. Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, global employee engagement fell by two percentage points to 21%.
This means that the percentage of engaged and thriving employees actually decreased from the 23% reported in 2023.
Key findings from the 2024 report also include:
Employee wellbeing declined for a second consecutive year, with only 33% of employees thriving overall.
Manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27%.
Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy around $8.9 trillion (or 9% of global GDP).
Stress levels remain high, with 41% of employees reporting experiencing a lot of stress daily.
This highlights the urgent need to cultivate engagement and leadership capabilities in students before they enter the workforce.
Our research is centered around a team coaching experiment conducted as part of a Team Leadership course at an engineering school in France. The central question guiding this research is: How can engagement in team leadership classes be increased through team coaching? We hypothesize that forming and nurturing emotionally intelligent and psychologically safe learning teams will not only boost engagement but also enhance the overall quality of the leadership learning process.
Literature Review
Leadership development in engineering education is a growing field, with top institutions around the world investing in programs that combine technical expertise with leadership skills. These programs help future engineers not only excel in their disciplines but also take on leadership roles in solving complex, global challenges. Schools like MIT, Stanford, Berkley, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, Institute Polytechnique de Paris, NUS Singapore and Tsinghua University in China are at the forefront, offering comprehensive programs that prepare students to lead in diverse engineering fields.
The importance of leadership in engineering and research has gained increasing attention, especially as engineering challenges have become more complex and interdisciplinary. Engineering schools and research centres are recognizing that leadership skills are critical for engineers to succeed in navigating technical, social, and organizational issues. Several thought leaders have been contributing to the understanding of how leadership can be effectively developed in the context of engineering. Here are some key contributors and their work in this area:
Scholars like David Niño – Senior Lecturer and Leadership Expert at MIT
· Research Focus: Niño’s work focuses on leadership development for engineers and scientists. He is particularly interested in how leadership skills can be cultivated in technical fields through curriculum design, experiential learning, and practical leadership experiences. His work bridges the gap between technical skills and leadership competencies in engineering education.
· Notable Work: "Engineering Leadership Development Programs: A Comparative Analysis of the Learning Experience," where Niño and colleagues compare various leadership programs and their outcomes for engineering students.
David A. Kolb - Case Western Reserve University
Research Focus: Kolb’s work on experiential learning and leadership development has been widely influential. Although not specific to engineering, his framework is often applied to leadership development programs in engineering contexts. His experiential learning theory highlights how engineers can learn leadership through real-world problem-solving, reflection, and feedback.
Notable Work: "Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development."
Deborah Ancona - Professor of Organization Studies at MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the MIT Leadership Center.
Research Focus: Ancona’s research centers on leadership in dynamic and uncertain environments, specifically how leaders can drive innovation in complex, rapidly changing contexts. She is known for her work on distributed leadership, team dynamics, and systems thinking, which are all highly relevant to leadership in engineering and technology settings.
Notable Work: "X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed," which emphasizes how leaders in technical fields can foster high-performance teams.
David Rooke and William R. Torbert
Research Focus: Although their work spans leadership more broadly, Rooke and Torbert’s Seven Transformations of Leadership model has been influential in discussions of leadership in engineering. Their framework has been used to understand how engineers can develop through different stages of leadership maturity.
Notable Work: "Seven Transformations of Leadership" (Harvard Business Review).
Other Scholars like Daniel Kahneman and Barry Oshry have highlighted the importance of understanding cognitive processes involved in decision-making and complex human systems which are crucial for leadership. Books such as the classic "The Wisdom of Teams" by Katzenbach and Smith, "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman, “Coaching the Team at Work” by David Clutterbuck and Horizontal Leadership by Adriaan Bekman further underscore the need for effective teamwork and emotional intelligence in leadership roles.
Our research aims to contribute to this field by providing empirical data on the impact of team coaching on engagement and leadership development in an engineering context.
Methodology
The research was conducted over two years, involving four cohorts with 140 participants, including both master's students and PhD researchers. The course spanned 14 weeks, with weekly three-hour sessions, individual and group assignments (learning labs) focused on developing all aspects of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness, self-management, empathy and relationship management.
Participants were divided into self-organizing learning groups of 4-6 students, each with a self selected representative. These representatives formed a "team of teams" and underwent a structured coaching process using Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions, Hawkins 5 disciplines Clutterbuck’s PERILL team coaching model. The coaching sessions focused on developing the representatives' leadership qualities and behaviors (LQB), which they were then expected to model and disseminate within their respective groups.
Data was gathered through multiple channels, including:
Engagement, emmotional intelligence, trust and psychological safety surveys administered at the start and end of the course.
PERILL diagnostic survey, Captain’s learning logs, and team reflection documents.
The analysis focused on comparing engagement levels before and after the intervention and examining how the coaching process influenced the development of functioning learning teams.
Results and Discussion
The findings from this experiment are compelling, demonstrating the significant impact of team coaching on engagement and learning outcomes in leadership courses at engineering schools. Across all four cohorts (140 participants total), the representative groups (the class leadership teams) that received direct team coaching showed a marked increase in engagement levels. Crucially, as psychological safety improved within these learning teams, so did their engagement, with the class average rising from 72% to 79%. Most learning groups reported heightened engagement, highlighting the benefits of breaking routines and participating in more dynamic, interactive learning activities. This observed ripple effect, extending from the directly coached representative teams to the other learning teams, strongly validates our hypothesis and underscores team coaching's potential to foster a broader culture of leadership and collaboration among students.
Complexity and Leadership Approach: An Interesting Correlation
An interesting observation emerged regarding the number and size of learning teams within the cohorts. In the two larger cohorts (50-60 participants structured into 8 self-organizing learning teams of 6-7 members), the representative group (the overall leadership team) opted for a fixed membership approach. Conversely, in the two smaller cohorts (15-20 participants structured into 4 learning teams of 4-5 members), a circular shared leadership approach was adopted for the representative group. Our hypothesis suggests that with a greater number of teams and larger team sizes, the process of developing competencies for a circular shared leadership approach becomes more complex and time-consuming.
The PERILL diagnostic tool provided valuable insights into the strengths and areas for development within each learning group. These diagnostics, coupled with participant reflections, suggest that team coaching not only facilitates the formation of high functioning teams but also enhances individual leadership development.
Conclusion
This study validates the hypothesis that team coaching can significantly enhance engagement and learning outcomes in leadership courses at engineering schools and research centres. The ripple effect observed from the representative groups to the other learning groups underscores the potential of team coaching to foster a culture of leadership and collaboration among students and researchers. This adoption of circular leadership with the representative group shifted the overal capacity of the class to deal with complex tasks.
Future research will explore the long-term impact of such interventions and consider expanding the coaching process to include all learning groups. Additionally, developing a coaching culture within engineering schools could further enhance the effectiveness of leadership development programs, preparing students to thrive in their future careers.
References
Gallup (2023). State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Oshry, B. (2007). Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Senge, Klieiner, Roberts, Ross, Smith. (1994).The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
Hawkins, P. (2017). Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership
Clutterbuck, D., Turner, C., & Murphy, M. (2010). The Team Coaching Casebook. McGraw-Hill Education.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books.
Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Bekman, A. (2010) The Horizontal Leadership Book
Clutterbuck, D (2020) “Coaching the Team at Work” 2nd edition
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