Strategic Leadership

Description
The world is in constant change, and as each year goes by these changes occur faster and are becoming more complex. Today it is not sufficient to have a wealth of knowledge regarding ones business area, we must know how to use this information to move people inside an organization toward a more efficient and comfortable work environment. Leading can be dangerous. Even though it may seem romantic and attractive to think of leadership as inspirations, decisive actions and powerful rewards, leading requires taking risks that can put in danger a person?s professional and personal development. It demands putting oneself on the line edge, challenging the status quo and working with hidden conflicts. And when people resist and fire back, the temptation is there to withdraw and return to a safer place. Those who opt for leading take on the risks, and sometimes get hurt. That is why the exercise of leadership must be seen as something strategic that, despite the resistance and danger that comes with it, allows those who assume it to fulfill the bigger goal of producing the required changes in the organization.
Taking a prescriptive and practical approach, the course covers three main issues: a) evolution and adaptation b) daring to be a responsible efficient leader and 3) who am I as a leader, strengths and weakness.

Aims
Using different learning methodologies, this module aims at:
1. Teaching a model of what exercising leadership in a strategic way means, within a social or organizational system.
2. Mobilizing students to not only understand the model theoretically, but to assimilate it through case analysis and the practice of its elements.
3. Exposing students to an interdisciplinary work, that allows them to understand reality from a different perspective from those that were learned in his or her own profession and experience.
4. Empowering students in the use of leadership abilities, allowing them to challenge themselves in a real environment.

During this module, students will learn to:
1. Identify opportunities and problems that demand leadership, inside and outside the organization.
2. Think systemically and act strategically to produce effective changes in an organization or in its environment.
3. Find the internal barriers that limit the personal leadership potential.
4. Focus attention in the adaptive elements of a problem more than in its technical aspects.
5. Make diagnosis of reality and use leadership theories, strategies, dynamics and tactics to intervene in an effective way in social and organizational systems.

Methodology
The course is designed to enable students to learn by a variety of means: lectures, case analyses, readings and experience. A very distinctive characteristic of this course is that students analyze the dynamics common to many social systems facing adaptive work by analyzing the dynamics of the class itself as a case-in-point.
In this line, the participation of people coming from different backgrounds and experiences is highly valued. To take the most out of this strength, the course is structured under the idea of active learning, that is, a permanent interaction among participants, where the professor becomes a facilitator of the process.

Schedule of Topics
1. What is leadership about?
- Facing expectations.
- Understanding what leadership is.
- Different ways that the word ?leadership? is used
- Course description and rules
Readings:
- Heifetz, Ronald and Laurie, Donald, ?The work of leadership?, Harvard Business Review, 2001.
- Gill, Roger, ?Leadership Development in MBA Programmes?, Business Leadership Review, July 2004.

2. Technical and adaptive problems
- Different problems one must face
- The process that is change

3. Adaptive and technical challenges.
- Resistance to learn.
- Adaptive and technical problems.
- Work avoidance.

4. Diagnosing a social system.
- What needs to be looked at in a social system?
- Assumptions.
- Roles.
- Group process.
Readings:
- Kegan, Robert and Lahey, Lisa, ?How the way we talk can change the way we work?? Chap.
1: What do you really want and what will you do to keep from getting it? Pag. 1-10.

5. Personal leadership skills

6. Resistance to change.
- Fear of the unknown
- Morning what was

7. The value of a conflict
- Leadership values
- The value of tension

8. Authority and Leadership.
- Formal and informal authority.
- Expectations on authority.
- Charismatic authority and dependence.
- Exercising leadership without authority.
Readings:
- Linsky, Marty, ?Why CEOs don?t always lead??, 2004.

9. Personal leadership cases presentation

10. Intervention strategies.
- Conflict as a transforming agent.
- The importance of a holding environment.
- Boundaries.
- Pacing the work.
- Forms of intervention.
Readings:
- Heifetz, Ronald and Linsky, Marty, ?Leadership on the Line?. Pages 135-139.

11. Authority: Formal and informal
- Different kinds of authority
- Expectations regarding each

12. Personal leadership case presentations

13. Moving beyond the past.
- Why exercising leadership?
- The importance of self containing.
- And now what?
Readings:
- Steve Jobs?s speech at University of Stanford?s Commencement, June 2005.

14. Progress and avoidance
- Cohesion and progress
- Adaptive avoidance mechanisms
- Comforting environment

15. The risks involved in leading
- Daring to
- The need for strategic actions

16. Personal leadership cases presentation

17. Observation
- Components of a social system
- System analysis as a leadership tool

18. Interpretation
- Recognizing a challenge
- Allies, opposition and neutrals

19. Looking back
- Overview of the process
- Final essay Q and A

Evaluation
- Class participation, 20%
- Quizzes, 20%
- Leadership case presented in class, 20%
- Final essay, 40%

Class participation: It is based upon both an individual's effort and the quality of one's leadership in the class, and not the quantity or volume of comments. The key consideration is how much and how well each student mobilized learning for fellow students in the class. This grade consists in 50% that is defined by the teacher and the other 50% is a personal evaluation.
Quizzes: There will be total of 5 quizzes during the semester and will be in reference to the complementary reading material given for each class.
Leadership case presented in class: Each student must present a personal leadership case to the class for discussion. The purpose of this presentation is to help develop critical thinking regarding one?s own leadership skills and be able to look for new solutions to problems that were faced.
Final essay: Based on the personal leadership case presented, the discussion in class and the material read each student must present a final essay where he explains his personal experience, recognized his strengths and weakness in that leadership opportunity and understand the underlining premises that led him to make those decisions. This essay must conclude with a hypothetical ?new ending? for the situation if another leadership strategy had been used.
An attendance to 75% of the classes is necessary to approve the course.Bibliography
· Steve Jobs?s speech at University of Stanford?s Commencement, June 2005.
· Heifetz, Ronald and Linsky, Marty, ?Leadership on the Line?.
· Linsky, Marty, ?Why CEOs don?t always lead??, 2004.
· Kegan, Robert and Lahey, Lisa, ?How the way we talk can change the way we work??
· Heifetz, Ronald and Laurie, Donald, ?The work of leadership?, Harvard Business Review, 2001.
· Gill, Roger, ?Leadership Development in MBA Programmes?, Business Leadership Review, July 2004.