MANAGEMT 7086 - Fundamentals of Leadership

North Terrace Campus - Trimester 3 - 2018

"To lead is to live with danger. Although it may be exciting to think of leadership as inspiration, decisive action, and powerful rewards, leading requires taking risks that can jeopardize your career and your personal life. It requires putting yourself on the line, disturbing the status quo, and working with organizational and political conflicts. Those who choose to lead take the risks and sometimes are neutralized for doing so." Ronald A Heifitz An essential skill of leadership in our time is the ability to work with people to tackle challenges and changes which are not only technical in nature but which require people (including ourselves) to change. In Fundamentals of Leadership, we will identify the challenges of leadership in the second decade of the 21st Century. We will explore habitual responses to many modern challenges and identify why they often do not work (John Kotter, a leading scholar on Change suggests that around 75% of change initiatives fail). We will explore other responses and use the classroom to help us to understand the role of culture, systems, authority and leadership in people-based change. Positioned at the beginning of the MBA, Fundamentals of Leadership encourages you to think about the nature of what you will study over the whole Program. It also encourages you to explore and develop personal skills central to leadership. By exploring self-awareness, and developing a personal leadership philosophy students will be well placed to broaden their understanding of other individuals and social groups at work.

  • General Course Information
    Course Details
    Course Code MANAGEMT 7086
    Course Fundamentals of Leadership
    Coordinating Unit Adelaide Business School
    Term Trimester 3
    Level Postgraduate Coursework
    Location/s North Terrace Campus
    Units 3
    Contact Up to 36 hours
    Available for Study Abroad and Exchange
    Restrictions Available to Certificate, Grad Dip and Master of Business Administration students only.
    Course Description "To lead is to live with danger. Although it may be exciting to think of leadership as inspiration, decisive action, and powerful rewards, leading requires taking risks that can jeopardize your career and your personal life. It requires putting yourself on the line, disturbing the status quo, and working with organizational and political conflicts. Those who choose to lead take the risks and sometimes are neutralized for doing so." Ronald A Heifitz

    An essential skill of leadership in our time is the ability to work with people to tackle challenges and changes which are not only technical in nature but which require people (including ourselves) to change. In Fundamentals of Leadership, we will identify the challenges of leadership in the second decade of the 21st Century. We will explore habitual responses to many modern challenges and identify why they often do not work (John Kotter, a leading scholar on Change suggests that around 75% of change initiatives fail). We will explore other responses and use the classroom to help us to understand the role of culture, systems, authority and leadership in people-based change.

    Positioned at the beginning of the MBA, Fundamentals of Leadership encourages you to think about the nature of what you will study over the whole Program. It also encourages you to explore and develop personal skills central to leadership. By exploring self-awareness, and developing a personal leadership philosophy students will be well placed to broaden their understanding of other individuals and social groups at work.
    Course Staff

    Course Coordinator: Dr Chad Habel

    Chad Habel

    Chad has been learning and teaching in all three South Australian universities for over 20 years, and has been teaching in the MBA since 2017. With a PhD in English Literature, he has taught in English, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, and held positions in Student Development and Academic Development. He has developed two businesses from the start and held various middle-management positions supervising up to 25 staff across multiple business units in an academic setting. In his private and personal life he has had extensive opportunities to apply the insights of adaptive leadership and enjoys the lifelong learning opportunities it offers.

    Lois Whittall


    Lois Whittall has been an Adjunct Lecturer in the University of Adelaide's MBA program since 1998. She has extensive experience in facilitating management education around the world - in Australia, the UK, and a wide range of Asian countries, particularly in Adelaide University'€™s postgraduate management program in Singapore. Currently, she teaches the core course, Fundamentals of Leadership (FOL) but she has also taught Managing Contemporary Organisations in the MBA programs both on and off shore, and she teaches Organisational Behaviour, HRM and the Management of Change at undergraduate level.
    She also works extensively in Adelaide University'€™s Executive Education program running short workshops in Leadership, Change and
    Appreciative Inquiry.  Lois has a distant background in finance and completed the Chartered Management Accounting qualification in 1982. She no longer teaches in finance.

    Lois recently completed Ronald Heifetz’s course at Harvard: The Art and Practice of Teaching Leadership. As well as Leadership, her research interests are Change, Appreciative Inquiry and Social Entrepreneurship. She currently uses Action Research to explore these topics across her teaching and consulting and in the complex diverse culture of Cambodia.

    Lois has worked at Executive Director and senior management levels in a variety of public and private sector firms in roles encompassing Organisational Development, Human Resource Management and Finance. Her last full time role was as Executive Director of a small company with about 40 employees. In the five years before she left she worked with her team to more than double the size of the business. At present as well as teaching for the university she designs and delivers Leadership Development programs for a number of large and small firms. Her consultancy experience has been with global companies working in the oil sector, electronics, pharmaceuticals, software development, and government corporations.

    In 2005 Lois started a project in Northern Cambodia which provides resources so that young women living in remote communities can finish high school and (if they do well enough) continue with higher education. The aim is to enable confident young women to return to their villages, some of them as teachers, doctors, nurses and business people. Working with some of the world’s poorest people in a province still infested with landmines involves a lot of learning especially about culture and leadership and creates an interesting life balance.
    Course Timetable

    The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from Course Planner.

  • Learning Outcomes
    Course Learning Outcomes
    Fundamentals of Leadership, positioned at the beginning of the MBA program, encourages students to explore issues and develop personal skills central to leadership.  By developing analytical skills and self-awareness, students will be well placed to broaden their understanding of others thoughout the MBA program.

    At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:
    1 Distinguish between ‘authority’ and ‘adaptive leadership’, identify examples of ‘authority’ and ‘adaptive leadership’ and reflect on their relative effectiveness in specific contexts
    2 Identify, diagnose and analyse complicated and complex systems in the workplace and shift analytical focus from individuals towards these systems as well as separate the processes of observation and interpretation and resist quick interpretations leading to misguided actions
    3  
    Undertake a process of personal transformation through the development of a wide array of leadership skills

    4 Propose ‘safe-to-fail’ experiments designed to help understand systems, themselves, and others and guide the way towards more effective leadership
    5 Gain and develop insights on self and others in a workplace context and ask deep, probing questions and provide courageous feedback to colleagues that helps them to learn
    6 Identify, source, evaluate, interpret and analyse both primary and secondary data to inform small scale research task
    University Graduate Attributes

    This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attribute(s) specified below:

    University Graduate Attribute Course Learning Outcome(s)
    Deep discipline knowledge
    • informed and infused by cutting edge research, scaffolded throughout their program of studies
    • acquired from personal interaction with research active educators, from year 1
    • accredited or validated against national or international standards (for relevant programs)
    CLO 1
    Critical thinking and problem solving
    • steeped in research methods and rigor
    • based on empirical evidence and the scientific approach to knowledge development
    • demonstrated through appropriate and relevant assessment
    CLO 1,2,5,6
    Teamwork and communication skills
    • developed from, with, and via the SGDE
    • honed through assessment and practice throughout the program of studies
    • encouraged and valued in all aspects of learning
    CLO 1,2,4,5
    Career and leadership readiness
    • technology savvy
    • professional and, where relevant, fully accredited
    • forward thinking and well informed
    • tested and validated by work based experiences
    CLO 1,2,3,4,5,6
    Intercultural and ethical competency
    • adept at operating in other cultures
    • comfortable with different nationalities and social contexts
    • able to determine and contribute to desirable social outcomes
    • demonstrated by study abroad or with an understanding of indigenous knowledges
    CLO 1,3,5
    Self-awareness and emotional intelligence
    • a capacity for self-reflection and a willingness to engage in self-appraisal
    • open to objective and constructive feedback from supervisors and peers
    • able to negotiate difficult social situations, defuse conflict and engage positively in purposeful debate
    CLO 1,2,3,4,5,6
  • Learning Resources
    Required Resources
    Required Reading

    Heifetz RA & Linsky M 2002, Leadership on the line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

    Heiftez RA, Linsky M & Grashow A 2009, The practice of adaptive leadership, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
    Recommended Resources
    Recommended Reading

    Kegan R & Lahey L 2009, Immunity to change: How to overcome it and unlock potential in yourself and your organisation, Harvard Business Press, Boston: Massachusetts.

    D’Souza S & Renna D 2014, Not knowing: The art of turning uncertainty into opportunity, LID, London.
    Online Learning
    MyUni is used extensively in this course in a blended learning format, meaning that it is an impootant aspect of your learning prior to and in between your formal class activities. The most important information for your daily engagement with the course can be found on MyUni, especially information relating to your prepartion for each class and your assignment information. MyUni is also where you will submit all your assignments and receive your feedback and grades on them. You should get in the habit of visiting MyUni several times a week for updates and activities.

    Also, important communications will be transmitted both via MyUni and to your student email addres, so please ensure you check your student email regularly or set up a reliable forwarding system to your primary email address.
  • Learning & Teaching Activities
    Learning & Teaching Modes
    My teaching of Fundamentals of Leadership is based on 20 years of experience teaching, learning, and leading in academic contexts, as well as my own busness experience. Like many of the most important things, leadership might not be able to be 'taught', but it can be learned. This means that my role is to create an environment where learning can happen, to monitor the learning that is occuring and shape it according to how you are experiencing the course.

    The key elements of this environment are the readings and other course materials that are set for you, the conversations you have in class and outside it with your colleagues, friends, family, and others; and the assignments you write including the feedback that you receive on them. Crucially, your learning is only relative to your own previous knowledge and mindset, and much more than simply learning 'stuff' (information or knowledge) you will hopefully develop as an individal and as a leader. This kind of learning is often referred to as 'transformative learning'. We are also engaged in 'lifelong learning', meaning that this course will be only the beginning in a much longer journey of discovery.

    For some the course is challenging – both the style of learning and the workload. My request is that you ‘hang in there’ – much of what we do becomes clear over time: there is learning from the heart as well as in the head and this sometimes takes time to work through.

    Workload

    The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

    This is a standard ‘3 Unit’ MBA course which requires about 156 hours of student effort. These 156 hours includes preparation time including readings, the time spent in class, working in your groups and undertaking assessment. Of course all these tasks will take a different amount of time for different people, and just like workload in the workplace it is best appraoched adaptively ratehr than technically. You could well find yourself engaged in thinking and practicing what you are learning for many more hours.
    Learning Activities Summary
    Fundamentals of Leadership classes in this trimester are framed as a single intensive followed by eight workshops.

    Intensive: Friday 1pm-7pm & Saturday  9am-4pm
    Workshop 1:
    Tuesday  5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    Workshop 2:
    Tuesday  5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    [break]
    Workshop 3:
    Tuesday 5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    Workshop 4:
    Tuesday  5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    [break]
    Workshop 5:
    Tuesday  5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    Workshop 6:
    Tuesday  5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    [break]
    Workshop 7:
    Tuesday 5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite
    Workshop 8:
    Tuesday 5pm-8pm Nexus 10, 706, MBA Suite

    Further details on workshops content are available on MyUni.

    The three breaks throughout the trimester have a very important purpose: they are designed to allow you time for you to meet with your group to undertake the Case Consultations that comprise the core of your assessable activity. Therefore it is strongly recommended that you set aside these dates well before the beginning of the trimester so that you and your group an commit to meeting at those times, in order to avoid the complications of managing multiple schedules. The easiest thing is for you to consider yourself fully committed to this course each Tuesday night until the 20th of November.

    Apart from the required text, all readings are provided in your MBA folder and links to electronic resources and everything else you need will be provided on MyUni.


  • Assessment

    The University's policy on Assessment for Coursework Programs is based on the following four principles:

    1. Assessment must encourage and reinforce learning.
    2. Assessment must enable robust and fair judgements about student performance.
    3. Assessment practices must be fair and equitable to students and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned.
    4. Assessment must maintain academic standards.

    Assessment Summary



    Assessment Task Task Type Weighting Learning Outcome
    Part A: Case Study Formative, Individual n/a (formative) 1,2,3,4,5,6
    Part A: Consultation Report 1 Formative/summative, Individual 5% 1,2,3,4,5,6
    Part A: Consultation Report 2 Formative/summative, Individual 10% 1,2,3,4,5,6
    Part B: Sustainability Essay Formative/summative, Individual 20% 2,5,6
    Part B: Peer Feedback on Sustainability Essay Summative, Individual 15% 2,5,6
    Part C: Final Group Report Summative, Group 15% 1,2,3,4,5,6
    Part C: Final Individual Report Summative, Individual 35% 1,2,3,4,5,6
    For specific information about assessments please refer to MyUni; this is also where you will submit all of your assessments.
    Assessment Detail
    Please refer to MyUni for all assessment detail.

     



    Submission
    Please submit your assignments via MyUni on the date due.

    Students are expected to submit their work by the due date to maintain a fair and equitable system. Extensions will generally only be given for medical or other serious reasons. All requests for extensions must be emailed to the lecturer in charge of the course before the due date.  Each request will be assessed on its merits. A late assignment (without  prior arrangement) may be penalised by a 5% mark reduction for each day that it is late.
    Course Grading

    Grades for your performance in this course will be awarded in accordance with the following scheme:

    M10 (Coursework Mark Scheme)
    Grade Mark Description
    FNS   Fail No Submission
    F 1-49 Fail
    P 50-64 Pass
    C 65-74 Credit
    D 75-84 Distinction
    HD 85-100 High Distinction
    CN   Continuing
    NFE   No Formal Examination
    RP   Result Pending

    Further details of the grades/results can be obtained from Examinations.

    Grade Descriptors are available which provide a general guide to the standard of work that is expected at each grade level. More information at Assessment for Coursework Programs.

    Final results for this course will be made available through Access Adelaide.

  • Student Feedback

    The University places a high priority on approaches to learning and teaching that enhance the student experience. Feedback is sought from students in a variety of ways including on-going engagement with staff, the use of online discussion boards and the use of Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys as well as GOS surveys and Program reviews.

    SELTs are an important source of information to inform individual teaching practice, decisions about teaching duties, and course and program curriculum design. They enable the University to assess how effectively its learning environments and teaching practices facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes. Under the current SELT Policy (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/101/) course SELTs are mandated and must be conducted at the conclusion of each term/semester/trimester for every course offering. Feedback on issues raised through course SELT surveys is made available to enrolled students through various resources (e.g. MyUni). In addition aggregated course SELT data is available.

  • Student Support
  • Policies & Guidelines
  • Fraud Awareness

    Students are reminded that in order to maintain the academic integrity of all programs and courses, the university has a zero-tolerance approach to students offering money or significant value goods or services to any staff member who is involved in their teaching or assessment. Students offering lecturers or tutors or professional staff anything more than a small token of appreciation is totally unacceptable, in any circumstances. Staff members are obliged to report all such incidents to their supervisor/manager, who will refer them for action under the university's student’s disciplinary procedures.

The University of Adelaide is committed to regular reviews of the courses and programs it offers to students. The University of Adelaide therefore reserves the right to discontinue or vary programs and courses without notice. Please read the important information contained in the disclaimer.