IEEE Center for Leadership Excellence

Author: Nastassja Lewinski

We all find ourselves picking up new hats – presenter Charles Lord mentioned how IEEE leadership positions are great opportunities to get involved, meet new people and pick up another "hat."

When volunteering in IEEE leadership, such as becoming a chapter or section chair, volunteers were historically handed "the box" which felt like a 4 drawer filing cabinet because it was all paper forms – remember those pre-internet days? Essentially the training manuals told volunteers who to call in IEEE but still left the more important question "what do I do?" a bit unclear.

The IEEE Center for Leadership Excellence (CLE) is not only trying to simplify the form process by going electronic but also provide leadership training such as strategies on how to lead and inspire people. In a way, IEEE volunteerism can be considered the "best kept secret" in engineering management. As some may already know, the “do it or you’re fired” tactic doesn’t work for volunteers so you really can learn how to get people motivated.

A bit of history, CLE started as a project / ad-hoc committee in 2009 under the MGA (Member and Geographic Activities) board but is meant to provide resources for all IEEE members. These resources are geared towards answering the concerns of new leaders. For example, you may be thinking, “I was just elected chapter chair. Now that I’m chair what does that mean?”

CLE has developed a web and email based "quick start" resource to make the first 30 days of office run smoothly. This includes modules for officers (chair, vice chair, treasurer, secretary, technical chapter chair) which take about 30-45 min to complete. Essentially they provide “job descriptions” and cover common ground for each volunteer such as

• Understanding your members – A very important task since how can you lead your fellow members if you don’t know them?
• Getting organized through tools – vTools, SAMIEEE, e-Notice, etc.
• Documentation management

These initial resources are already online and there is more to follow.

For those that are interested in more information, please check the IEEE Center for Leadership Excellence page.