I conducted research on the most important leadership skills for engineering project managers using surveying as my primary means of collecting data. From the data, I learned that prioritization and communication skills were among the most essential abilities for successful leaders in engineering fields. My research also suggested that there are several characteristics that distinguish leaders from managers in engineering and make their teams more productive in the long run. These attributes included the ability to inspire a team by taking initiative, listening attentively, and facilitating the development of creative solutions to technical problems. I consolidated, analyzed, and ultimately transformed these survey responses into a five day leadership training program that combined interactive exercises with group discussions to prepare the future leaders in engineering.

Reflection: Conducting a research project of this scale was a new and valuable experience because I learned about applying the scientific method outside of the basic high school science fair setting. I had the opportunity to decide for myself how I would get answers for my primary research question which was "what leadership skills and qualities are essential to successfully lead an engineering or technical team?". During my investigation, I gathered answers to more than this one question, but it was the most important of those listed in the survey I created because it was the main driver for the training program's design. And it was after that point in the project that I ran into a road block. I had the data I was set out to acquire, but I had no clue how to turn it into the tangible and useful deliverable I imagined. To address this complication, I decided to use the problem-solving process I learned about in one of my major's analysis classes. The first step is to define the problem and to ensure that its core, instead of a mere ripple-effect, is identified. It was this step that led me to realize that the real problem was not that I was having trouble determining what to teach in my leadership program. Rather, the actual problem was that I did not understand enough about education to know how to teach. Therefore, I began looking through educational training documents and articles who's intended audience were educators. I learned from these sources that teaching is more effective if the students have the chance to share their thoughts about the material as well as being able to interact with it. This is why I included in almost every day of the leadership training program a discussion as well as a real-world application activity. In addition to this basic teaching skills I gained, I think that the experience was still beneficial for me because I grew in terms of my other abilities and knowledge. For instance, I now know how to become a better leader myself after researching what makes a great leader in my field. As a matter of fact, I have already seen how this knowledge impacted me and the teams I led the past few months in a positive way. To provide an additional example of my growth over the course of this project, I now proved to myself that I can effectively assess the needs of others on a group level and create my own development program to meet them in a concise and organized manner. Looking into the future, I could improve my research techniques by gathering a more balanced combination of qualitative and quantitative data and I could extend the invitation to fill out the survey to participants outside of the Cal Poly community.