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  • 1.  Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-07-2018 11:41

    Dear OB-netters,

    I will be teaching a course on Leadership this year (Master's level, a mixed group of people with industry experience and people who come straight after their bachelor degree) and I am collecting various ideas about best practices.

    I am particularly interested in various interactive methods, e.g., simulations, case studies, role-plays, etc. that would fit the course. If you have any activities to recommend, I would be very grateful. Also, I would appreciate if you have a syllabus to share, or your preferred textbook or set of readings.

    I would be glad to share the responses with the group,

    With many thanks in advance

    Tatiana



    ------------------------------
    Dr. Tatiana Andreeva
    Senior Lecturer in Management and Organisational Behaviour
    Maynooth University / School of Business, Ireland


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  • 2.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-08-2018 08:24
    Hi:

    One thing to do with my EMBAs (I have done it for MSc level leadership
    development too) is get them to do a speech that is recorded in groups
    of 3 or 4 (I randomly assign them to groups). This is the assignment
    brief I use (they can use mobile phones too for recording):

    "We will use the iPads to record the speech. Each person records their
    own speech. Assume one of following scenarios for your speech (if you
    wish you can do another realistic scenario and each person can do a
    different scenario if they wish???I am just giving you some ideas to get
    you thinking of what you could do). Imagine that you are a manager of a
    division of a multinational company???

    ???One of your managers is underperforming. You are pulling him/her in to
    give them a ???pep??? talk and put him/her back on track. Prepare a four
    minute speech, where you ???lay it out.???

    ???The new product launch has been a disaster. You are addressing your
    team with the goal of turning around the situation. Prepare a four
    minute speech, where you explain your thinking.

    ???The CEO wants to transfer you to another division. You have much to do
    still in your current division and cannot imagine leaving; try to
    convince your boss to not transfer you. Prepare a four minute speech,
    where you inform your boss of your position.

    ???Because of economic justifications, you have to relocate with your team
    to another city that is 100km away. Prepare a four minute speech, to
    convince them.

    Note: each student in each group records a speech individually for 4
    minutes; you have plus or minus one minute leeway. The maximum time for
    a speech is 5 minutes (if you are not in the range you will lose marks).
    This speech will be delivered in English. You only need to deliver the
    speech--no Powerpoints or overheads are needed--and only one person is
    visible on the film at any time.

    Please use a realistic scenario and realistic names. Also, you are
    talking non-stop for 4 minutes. Do not have any interaction with the
    supposed person/s you are talking to. Just deliver a speech without
    pretending to receive interaction feedback from anyone.

    When filming your talks, please ensure that the upper body (chest and
    head only) of the person being filmed is visible. That is, I would like
    to be able to see the person from the upper abdomen upwards (anything
    below the upper abdomen must not appear in the camera). To achieve this
    outcome, have the person sit while giving the talk; they can be sitting
    at the table, on a sofa, in an armchair, or whatever. They can also
    stand if they wish, but please zoom on them such that only the abdomen
    upwards is visible."

    Then they code it groups for aspects of charisma as indicated in the the
    following HBR, which they find an easy read:

    Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2012). Learning charisma:
    Transform yourself into someone people want to follow. Harvard Business
    Review, June, 127-130.

    They code the speeches for each other using the "other sheet" and then
    put all together in the "reconciliation sheet". I usually ask them to
    score the signaling tactics 0 (did not demonstrate convincingly) or 1
    (demonstrated convincingly); however, you can give a more interval level
    score to use if you wish.

    You could first brief them on the elements of charismatic signaling and
    then get them to do the speech; else, they could do it "dry" without
    knowledge of them, so you can get a baseline score, then let them read
    the article, then get them to record the speech again, leaving the
    decision intact but peppering it with more charismatic signaling. In
    this way they can see their improvement.

    In teaching them film scenes that they can look at the following (which
    show a lot of the verbal charismatic signals):

    Dead Poet's: https://youtu.be/KczFTdnJ99s
    The contender: https://youtu.be/b24YF3DPiWM
    Queen Elizabeth I: https://youtu.be/l8bFVZAeoN4?t=2m35s
    Any Given Sunday: https://youtu.be/m_iKg7nutNY
    King Henry V: https://youtu.be/A-yZNMWFqvM

    If you are interested in the science behind all this see (see also
    exercises in the Towler and Frese study)--there are nice examples too in
    the Den Hartog, and in the Shamir et al. papers, which the students also
    appreciate reading (the other papers are academic and useful only to you).

    Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2011). Can Charisma Be Taught?
    Tests of Two Interventions. The Academy of Management Learning and
    Education, 10(3), 374-396.
    Antonakis, J., Bastardoz, N., Jacquart, P., & Shamir, B. (2016).
    Charisma: An ill-defined and ill-measured gift. Annual Review of
    Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3(1), 293-319.
    Den Hartog, D. N., & Verburg, R. M. (1997). Charisma and rhetoric:
    Communicative techniques of international business leaders. The
    Leadership Quarterly, 8(4), 355-391.
    Frese, M., Beimel, S., & Schoenborn, S. (2003). Action training for
    charismatic leadership: Two evaluations of studies of a commercial
    training module on inspirational communication of a vision. Personnel
    Psychology, 56, 671-697.
    Jacquart, P., & Antonakis, J. (2015). When does charisma matter for
    top-level leaders? Effect of attributional ambiguity. Academy of
    Management Journal, 58, 1051-1074.
    Shamir, B., Arthur, M. B., & House, R. J. (1994). The rhetoric of
    charismatic leadership: A theoretical extension, a case study, and
    implications for research. The Leadership Quarterly, 5(1), 25-42.
    Towler, A. J. (2003). Effects of charismatic influence training on
    attitudes, behavior, and performance. Personnel psychology, 56(2), 363 -
    381.

    HTH,
    John.



    --
    __________________________________________

    John Antonakis
    Professor of Organizational Behavior
    Director, Ph.D. Program in Management

    Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC)
    University of Lausanne
    Internef #618
    CH-1015 Lausanne-Dorigny
    Switzerland
    Tel ++41 (0)21 692-3438
    Fax ++41 (0)21 692-3305
    http://www.hec.unil.ch/people/jantonakis

    Editor in Chief:
    The Leadership Quarterly



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  • 3.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-21-2018 11:28
    ​Hello,
    I teach Organizational Leadership to MA and Doctoral students.  The field of leadership is very outdated and relies on a few key theories that were researched decades ago.  There theories start with trait theory and  situational leadership and stops with the "full range model" transformational leadership.

    There is a whole new and exciting area of leadership theory / research called NeuroLeadership.  This term was coined by David Rock in 2009 and has expanded to include Neuroscience and Leadership.  Check out the NeuroLeadership Institute.  David Rock also blogs for Psychology Today.

    I attached a few resources to get you started.  One of the key themes in leadership today is that the skills that used to be important for effective leadership no longer work in todays volatile and uncertain time.  If  you Google "Disruptive Leadership" or "Agile Leadership," you should be able to find some excellent resources.

    Sharon Pappas, Ph.D.
    Spappas@thechicagoschool.edu

    ------------------------------
    Sharon Pappas
    Associate Professor
    The Chicago School
    Skokie IL
    (847) 361-2724
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    Attachment(s)

    pdf
    8_Quiet_Leadership.pdf   274 KB 1 version
    ppt
    Quiet Leadership.ppt   1.25 MB 1 version


  • 4.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-12-2018 10:25
    Dear Tatiana,

    Leadership is more than a charismatic and inspirational style, although this is very important too and is possibly the hallmark of true leadership. A few years ago, we published the article about the interpersonal circumplex, applied to leadership. I also published a book on leadership, summarizing the literature on leadership up to then. I spent 270 pages discussing all 8 styles from the leadership circumplex (Around Leadership: bridging the scientist-practitioner gap). It is often used here in Belgium in higher education.

    In our trainings of business leaders, we largely rely on the methodology of Behavioral Modeling Training. The effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Training has been confirmed in one general meta-analysis (Taylor et al., 2005) and one specific meta-analysis on safety behaviors (Burke et al., 2006). These are the practices that have the largest effects:
    • Learning points or rule codes, which are very specific descriptors of the behavior (d= 0.82);
    • Observing both negative and positive modeling (d= 0.30);
    • Having trainees practicing their own scenario (d= 0.30);
    • Mental rehearsal during and after the training (d= 0.39);
    • Discussions (d= 0.55);
    • The participant's leader has also had the same BMT training (d= 0.53).


    Of course, as your target audience seems to be students rather than actual leaders, working with their own real-life cases seems impossible. To be specific on some aspects:
    • We created a booklet with 60 rule codes (describing various situations - to my regret I only have this in Dutch and French): this serves as a quick reference guide.  we have only translated a few. See attached

    • To train behavioral skills (e.g. conversations with employees), we work with an actor, and we do both negative and positive modeling (e.g. simulating a corrective feedback conversation) and have the participants try out the conversation, with possibilities to interrupt (time out), ask questions and directions, and resume the conversation or start all over again.

    Hope this can help!

    Patrick

    ------------------------------
    Patrick Vermeren
    PerCo bvba
    Kontich
    32 478 315 402
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  • 5.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-20-2018 08:39
    Dear John and Patrick,
    thanks a lot for your ideas! very much appreciated!

    With kind regards
    Tatiana

    ------------------------------
    Tatiana Andreeva
    Maynooth University
    Maynooth
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 09-23-2018 15:47
    Great question and ideas on updating leadership courses to better represent the modern-day challenges facing managers and leaders once they leave MBA or leadership programs! If it is helpful I just released a textbook from Academic Press to help bridge the gap between leadership theories that traditionally derived from rational economic assumptions to leveraging the newfound human insights from behavioral economics. My hope is it will help generate leadership conversations in classrooms as leaders navigate newfound complexity through the growing adoption of advanced technologies and alternative workforce arrangements. We need to equip our future leaders with an entirely new set of tools to leverage worker's intrinsic motivations.  Hope it might be helpful to you and your class!

    How Behavioral Economics Influences Management Decision-Making - 1st Edition
    Elsevier remove preview
    How Behavioral Economics Influences Management Decision-Making - 1st Edition
    Purchase How Behavioral Economics Influences Management Decision-Making - 1st Edition. Print Book & E-Book. ISBN 9780128135310, 9780128135686
    View this on Elsevier >


    ------------------------------
    Dr. Kelly Monahan
    Regent University
    kam1331@gmail.com
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  • 7.  RE: Ideas for a course on Leadership

    Posted 10-07-2018 11:54

    Tatiana,

    I suspect by now you have received some significant input for your class.  I want to suggest an additional technique.  In addition to the theoretical classroom learning for your class, please do not forget about the practical application of leadership.  Since you are working with relatively young students at the MBA level, I believe they would benefit from practical applications of the art of leadership.

    I am working on my dissertation that deals with leadership under extreme conditions.  Shared leadership is a team/group level construct.  In my business experience as a project management team leader, I found stress to be omnipresent-deadlines, technical risk, personnel issues, etc.  I believe that young students must supplement their classroom instruction with "hands-on" leadership training where they can experience first-hand the "fog" of leadership."  Interacting with other humans in a team setting introduces them to the vagaries, confusion, and challenges of getting people to work together to accomplish a team or organizational objective.

    Attached is an example of what one university in the United States is doing to give the students first-hand experience in team leadership.  It is based on a training event used by the US Army in training young military leaders and is called the Leadership Reaction Course (LRC).  Emory University is one of several universities to use this technique.  Please that these institutions have access to military training facilities on the weekends.  To see others, go to youtube.com and search for "Leadership Reaction Course."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb_zVorV0jY

    Although based on typical military scenarios, the training event is more about getting leaders to think under time pressure to formulate a plan, communicate the plan with the team, and direct the team in the completion of the exercise.  The goal is the successful performance of the team.  The team leader can use directive leadership to influence the team and tell everybody what to do, or a collaborative leadership manner where the leader solicits information for team members on how to accomplish the task.  It is entirely possible that the leader may use a combination of the two leadership techniques.

    You may not have access to such a facility in the UK, but you may be able to develop some type of outdoor or interactive activity where students <g class="gr_ gr_31 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-del replaceWithoutSep" id="31" data-gr-id="31">plan,</g> and conduct an event with a group.  You may find access to commercial team building facilities, rope courses, etc.  During my military service many years ago, not only did I go through this event, I later was an instructor for this event in training young officer cadets.  I guarantee the students will walk away from the course with a much different appreciation of group leadership.

    I hope this helps.

    Terry



    ------------------------------
    Terry Whittington
    University of South Alabama
    Lawrenceville GA
    ------------------------------