The Leadership Experience GL

Description

The events of the past few years have challenged today’s leaders as they’ve never been challenged before. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting economic conditions, supply chain crisis, and widespread social and political unrest have forced leaders in all organizations to adapt to new ways of working and examine their assumptions about the best ways to help followers and organizations succeed. Leaders are struggling to make sense of the shifting environment, keep up with fast-changing events and learn how to lead people in their companies effectively and successfully in the midst of turmoil. The Leadership Experience addresses themes and issues that are directly relevant to the current environment. This course is a comprehensive view of what leadership is like in today’s world. The Leadership Experience integrates the most recent leadership ideas and applications with established scholarly research in a way that makes the topic of leadership come alive. Organizations are undergoing major changes, and this course addresses the qualities and skills leaders need in this rapidly evolving world.

Recent chaotic events combined with factors such as a growing need for creativity and innovation in organizations, the widespread use of social media and AI, the growth of e-commerce and mobile commerce, the use of virtual and remote teams, and other ongoing transformations place new demands on leaders that go far beyond the topics traditionally taught in courses on management or organizational behavior. While retaining the value in traditional leadership concepts, The Leadership Experience also highlights the importance of including new ideas and applications

The Leadership Experience thoroughly covers the history of leadership studies and the traditional theories that go beyond that to incorporate valuable ideas such as leading hybrid work and remote teams, igniting individual purpose, follower engagement, and the leader’s duty to followers, fixed versus growth mindsets, the importance of trust, challenges of diversity and inclusion, leadership vision, shaping a healthy versus toxic culture and values, leadership courage, and the importance of moral leadership. This course expands the treatment of leadership to capture the excitement of the subject in a way that motivates students to challenge them to develop their leadership potential.

The primary focus for The Leadership Experience is to relate leadership concepts and theories to real events in today’s organizations. It gives students opportunities to practice and build leadership skills while bringing in current issues and events that leaders are facing.

Topics and application examples include:

• leading agile teams

• hybrid work and remote teams

• using fixed versus growth mindsets

• leading with humility

• the rise of mindfulness and meditation

• positive leadership

• leading with love versus fear

• moral awareness

• optimism bias

• the meaning of courage

• leading with grit

• enhancing follower engagement

• the leader’s duty to followers

• igniting individual purpose

• addressing microaggressions

• becoming an ally for inclusion

• collective activism

• toxic versus healthy cultures

• leadership coaching and feedback

• the change leadership iceberg

This course has several special features that are designed to make the material accessible and valuable to students.

Real World Examples: The Leadership Experience is loaded with nearly 250 new examples of leaders in both traditional and contemporary organizations. Each chapter opens with a real-life example that relates to the chapter content, and several additional examples engage students. The many examples in each chapter spotlight real leader activities within a wide variety of organizations including education, the military, government agencies, businesses, financial institutions, and nonprofit organizations.

Put It into Practice Mini Exercises: This significant feature challenges students to take a small first step in practicing leadership thinking and behaviors. Each chapter contains about 8 exercises that help students apply the chapter concepts in their own lives and challenges them to take a small step to practice a leadership behavior, mindset, or influence to develop leadership thinking and skills. These mini exercises provide reflective practices by analyzing their own experiences, using mental imagery to visualize new behavior, encouraging taking a first step toward a new leadership behavior, or by taking a step toward influencing others when in a team or leadership role.

Each chapter contains a Think on This box that is personal, compelling, and inspiring. This box may be a saying from a famous leader or wisdom from the ages. These Think on This boxes provide novel and interesting material to expand the student’s thinking about the leadership experience.

This course contains Leader’s Bookshelf Reviews, a unique feature of The Leadership Experience. Each chapter includes a review of a recent book relevant to the chapter’s content. The Leader’s Bookshelf connects students to issues and topics being read and discussed in the worlds of academia, business, the military, financial institutions, education, and nonprofit organizations.

Know Yourself: An important aspect of learning to be a leader involves looking inward for greater self-understanding and this course provides many opportunities for this type of self-reflection. Each chapter includes 3 short questionnaires that enable students to learn about their own leadership beliefs, values, competencies, and skills. These exercises help students gauge their current standing and connection to the chapter concepts and examples for expanding their own leadership abilities. A few of the Know Yourself topics involve engagement, networking, ethical maturity, grit, leading diverse people, communicating with candor, leadership courage, and positive leadership. Know Yourself assessments also relate to basic leadership abilities such as listening skills, emotional intelligence, motivating others, and using power and influence are also included.

Team Focused Experimental Exercises: The practice-based focus of this course is enhanced with 15 new experimental exercises called leadership skill building exercises. These will involve students in applying chapter concepts in small groups while gaining new self-insights. Many of these exercises are designed so students can complete them on their own or specifically designed to use in class or online as part of a group activity.

Case for Analysis: This tool provides two short problem-oriented cases for analysis. These cases test the student’s ability to apply concepts when dealing with real-life leadership issues. While exercises and feedback assess the student’s progress as a leader, the Cases for Analysis challenge the student’s cognitive understanding and problem-solving application of leadership ideas.