Creative Leadership Skills

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
Course name: Creative leadership skills
Course code: MGMT 3030
Total contact hours: 48 hours

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This is a course designed to give the student the concepts and tools for the understanding of the science and arts of CREATIVE LEADERSHIP. In it, we intend to explore concepts such as human behavior, leadership, positive mental attitude, organizations, managers, management versus leadership, leadership ethics, planning, group control, etc.

Leadership is a dynamic discipline, and a course on the subject must constantly undergo changes to stay current. Particular attention will be given to globalization and the use of technology in creative leadership.

OBJECTIVES
A. General Objectives
1. Understand the concept of creative leadership and organization and identify their main elements.
2. Identify some major pre-twenty-first-century contributions to management and leadership.
3. Define the leader?s terrain.
4. Define and understand the concepts of leadership and creative leadership.
5. Define and apply sociological and psychological concepts to leadership.
6. Understand the essence and main aspects of human behavior.
7. Be able to understand and use the goals, tools, methods and techniques of leadership
B. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
? Explain the value of studying leadership history.
? Summarize the contributions of the scientific leadership advocates.
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? Identify some present trends and how they are affecting leadership practices.
? Identify cultural aspects in leadership practice.
? Define creative leadership and identify its main elements.
? Understand the difference between management and leadership from a global perspective.
? Become aware of the importance of social responsibility and leadership ethics.
? Understand and apply the steps of the decision-making process.
? Understand the importance of planning.
? Distinguish between management and leadership.
? Understand the importance of strategic leadership.
? Understand groups and teams.
? Learn how to maintain high productivity among employees.
? Learn how to motivate employees.
? Study the essence and main aspects of leadership.

CONTENTS
A. Introduction.
1. Outline of the course objectives, contents, activities, assessment, etc.
2. Management and organizations.
3. Brief history of leadership study as a discipline.

B. Defining leadership.
1. Management versus leadership.
2. New discoveries about leadership.
3. Leadership in a global environment.
4. Social responsibility and leadership ethics.
5. The decision-making process: New methods for making the right decisions about people.

C. Defining creativity.
1. What is creativity.
2. Creative methods.
3. Negative methods that block creativity.
4. Characteristics of a creative person.
C. PMA: A positive mental attitude.
1. PMA versus NMA.
2. Elements of PMA.
3. Why do good leaders need PMA?

D. Prognosis and planning in leadership.
1. The essence of prognosis.
2. Elements of planning.
3. Strategic leadership.

E. Human resource management.
1. Organization and leadership.
2. Human resource management.
3. Managing change and innovation.
4. Managing creative people.

F. Leadership techniques.
1. The essence of human behavior: Understanding how people act.
2. Predicting behavior.
3. Groups and teams.
4. How to motivate employees. How to get workers interested.
5. Communication in creative leadership.

G. How to make yourself a manager today?s workers will follow.
1. Foundations of a leadership style.
2. How to get the right kind of upward communication.
3. Keys to establishing your leadership.

H. Negotiating techniques.
1. The cooperative process.
2. Creative-alternative attitudes.
3. Labor relations and creative alternatives.

METHODOLOGY
1. Lectures on each topic, trying to generate class discussion.
2. Presentation by individual students of specific topics that he/she will do research on to enlarge his/her knowledge of it. The individual presentation can be a case application.
3. Case studies assigned to groups of students to be solved at home and presented in class for discussion with the rest of the students.
4. Each student will write a term paper on a specific topic of his/her choice.
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5. It will be of extreme importance that the student read each new topic before the respective lecture and discussion so that active class participation can be accomplished.
6. Reading and discussion of articles and books other than the textbook will be recommended to the students and done in class whenever possible.

TIME TABLE
Week 1
Activities
* Syllabus analysis.
* Distribution of research topics to individual students and of case studies to the groups.
* Introduction to leadership and creative leadership.

Week 2
Activities
* Brief history of leadership theory.
* Present trends.
* Leadership schools.
* Case application

Week 3
Activities
* Management versus leadership.
* New discoveries about leadership.
* Leadership in a global environment.
* Individual presentations.
* Case application

Week 4
Activities
* Social responsibility and leadershiip ethics.
* The decision-making process. New methods for making the right decisions about people.
* Individual presentations.
* Case application.

Week 5
Activities
* PMA versus NMA.
* Elements of PMA.
* Why do good leaders need PMA?
* Case application

Week 6
Activities
* Strategic leadership.
* Planning tools and techniques.
* Individual presentations.
* Case application.

Week 7
Activities
* Partial test.

Week 8
Activities
* Organization and leadership.
* Human resource management.
* Case application

Week 9
Activities
* Groups and teams.
* How to motivate employees.
* Individual presentations.
* Case application

Week 10
Activities
* How to get workers interested.
* Communication in creative leadership.
* Foundations of a leadership style.
* How to get the right kind of upward communication.
* Keys to establishing your leadership.

Week11
Activities
* The cooperative process.
* Creative-alternative attitudes.
* Labor relations and creative alternatives
* Case application

Week 12
Activities
? Final exam.

EVALUATION SYSTEM
Class participation (including attendance) 10%
Case applications 30%
Individual presentations 30%
Final exam
Total 100%
30%

Class participation. The student is expected to participate actively in class with comments, questions, answers to questions, group discussions, etc. Needless to say, presence in class is a fundamental prerequisite to get the full 10 points of class participation.
Midterm project. The student will choose any of the subject areas covered in the syllabus or closely related to them and do a more detailed analysis by using additional bibliographical sources or direct investigation. The project has to be presented in writing in no more than 10 pages but not less than 5, double space. Due date is week 11.

Final exam. The final exam will include the totality of class material, including newspaper and magazine articles, references to other books, students? presentations, case applications, etc.

Audience
This course is structured for International Students attending the Study Abroad program at Universidad Veritas. However, courses are not exclusive to foreigners so a few native student could enroll in this course.

Attendance
Students are only allowed 2 absences (justified or not). The student will fail the course if he/she has more than 2 absences. Students will have a 0 on any assignment evaluated in class (presentations, evaluations, field trips, etc.) if he/she is absent in this class, unless an official document is presented to justify the absence the class after the absence. In this case the assignment will be done this day. An unjustified absence to a fieldtrip will immediately mean failing the course. You can only have two total absences in your elective courses HOWEVER, if you miss more than one day of class in a given month, YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE CREDIT for that particular course.

Behavior Code
Professors have the right to expel a student from the classroom should he / she:
be disruptive in the classroom
be under the influence of alcohol or even smell like alcohol
Behave in a disrespectful way.
If you tend to be late for class, you will lose 25% of your total grade

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Textbook:
McCauley, Cynthia. The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development. Amazon Books, 2003.
Reference books:
Dichter, Ernest. How Hot a Manager Are You? New York: McGraw Hill, 1990.
Feinberg, Mortimer, et al. The New Psychology for Managing People. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1975.
Gitman, Lawrence, and Carl McDaniel. The World of Business. 1992
Griffin, Ricky, and Ronald Ebert. Business. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Uyterhoeven, Hugo, et al. Strategy and Organization: Text and Cases in General Management. Homewood, Illinois: Richard Irwin, 1977.