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SYLLABUS STRAUSS Lead From Where You Are 2022 Summer v 2.0
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ICS Calendar Title: Lead from Where You Are: Making a Difference in the Face of Tough Problems, Big Questions, and Organizational Politics

ICS Course Code: ICSD 132504/260003 S22

Instructor: Gideon Strauss, PhD

Term and Year: Summer 2022

Last Updated: March 4, 2022

1. Course Description

2. Course Learning Goals

3. Course Requirements and Evaluation

4. Course Schedule

5. Required Readings

6. Recommended Reading

Students with diverse learning styles and needs are welcome in this course. In particular, if you have a disability or health consideration that may require accommodations, please approach Gideon Strauss (gtrauss@icscanada.edu) and the Academic Registrar, Elizabet Aras (academic-registrar@icscanada.edu), as soon as possible.

1. Course Description

Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in widely different situations. Leadership can be practiced with varying degrees of authority, from any position, at varying scales of influence, and with varying access to different sources of power. Leadership is the work of motivating a group of people to act in certain ways as they shape what they share.

In this course we will explore two kinds of leadership, positional leadership and contributory leadership, and two kinds of leadership practices, algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices. Positional leadership is the kind of leadership that comes with a particular, recognized position in a group, and contributory leadership is the kind of leadership that you can contribute regardless of your position in a group. Algorithmic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals, and heuristic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are not (or not yet) clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals and that demand imaginative discernment. We will attend to leadership with regard to both making beneficial change happen and ensuring needed maintenance.

Participants in the course will read from a carefully curated selection of texts on the practice of leadership, will engage one another in asynchronous online forum discussions about their own leadership experiences in relation to these readings, will meet in a series of six synchronous online video sessions (starting late in April and concluding in an intensive series of sessions on three consecutive days early in August), and will draft and workshop two papers on topics oriented towards the leadership practice and professional development of the participants. Participants are encouraged to take a complete break from coursework during the month of July. The course will conclude with each participant organizing and reflecting on a celebration of learning done in the company of their own confidantes.

2. Course Learning Goals

By the end of this course participants will be able to:

  1. Diagnose the challenges in response to which they are called to leadership;
  2. Identify the leadership they are able to contribute to addressing these challenges;
  3. Discern the honest vulnerability and appropriate authority necessary for their leadership contributions; and,
  4. Invest in their own long-term professional development as reflective leadership practitioners.

3. Course Requirements and Evaluation

Participants in Lead From Where You Are will:

  1. Participate in six 3-hour online, interactive Zoom sessions
  1. Read the required five articles and four books;
  2. Write weekly responses to the assigned readings (April 25 - June 30);
  3. Participate in ten weekly forum discussions (April 25 - June 30);
  4. Write two papers of 1,500 to 2,500 words each;
  5. Respond to the draft papers of other course participants; and,
  6. Plan, facilitate, and report on an online celebration of your learning in this course with an authentic audience beyond the course participants.

If you are auditing this course, please note that the Zoom sessions are designed as workshops instead of lectures, and that you will learn best if you participate in all the activities, except for getting graded.

If you are taking this course for credit, the course elements being evaluated are weighted as follows:

  1. Participation in the Zoom sessions                                25%
  2. Written responses to the assigned readings                25 %
  3. Responses to draft papers                                        10 %
  4. Paper #1                                                        15 %
  5. Paper #2                                                        15 %
  6. Celebration of learning with authentic audience                10 %

Your session participation, written responses, responses to draft papers, and celebration of learning will be graded as a zero for non-participation, late participation, or inadequate participation per the instructions, or a full grade for active participation per the instructions in the Google Classroom.


For the papers we will use the following grading scale:

Letter Grade

Numerical Equivalents

Grade Point

Grasp of Subject Matter

Other Qualities Expected of Students

A RANGE: Excellent: Student shows original thinking, analytic and synthetic ability, critical evaluations, broad knowledge base

A+

90-100

4.0

Profound and Creative

Strong evidence of original thought, of analytic and synthetic ability; sound and penetrating critical evaluations which identify assumptions of those they study as well as their own; mastery of an extensive knowledge base

A

85-89

4.0

Outstanding

A-

80-84

3.7

Excellent

Clear evidence of original thinking, of analytic and synthetic ability; sound critical evaluations; broad knowledge base

B RANGE: Good: Student shows critical capacity and analytic ability, understanding

of relevant issues, familiarity with the literature

B+

77-79

3.3

Very Good

Good critical capacity and analytic ability; reasonable understanding of relevant issues; good familiarity with the literature

B

73-76

3.0

Good

B-

70-72

2.7

Satisfactory at a post- baccalaureate level

Adequate critical capacity and analytic ability; some understanding of relevant issues; some familiarity with the literature

F

0-69

0

Failure

Failure to meet the above criteria


4. Course Schedule

Session 1

Read: Gawande (2007), Heifetz & Laurie (2001), Heifetz & Linsky (2002)

Join us on Thursday, April 28 from 4:15 pm to 7:15 pm, ET, for our starting Zoom session!

In preparation, by Monday, April 25 at midnight ET, please post a response to your reading of Gawande (2007), Heifetz & Laurie (2001), and Heifetz & Linsky (2002) in which you (a) quote the one sentence that most clearly represents the essence of each reading from your perspective, (b) share a checklist you currently use (or make one up that you could currently use), and (c) tell an anecdote in 100-125 words about an adaptive challenge you currently face.

Starting with your sentence selections, checklists, and anecdotes, we will introduce ourselves to one another in our first Zoom session by considering what your sentence selections, checklists, and anecdotes reveal about how we understand our own leadership contributions and the contexts in which we are currently contributing leadership.

With reference to Gawande (2007), Heifetz & Laurie (2001), and Heifetz & Linsky (2002) we will talk about algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices.

With reference to this syllabus we will preview the course.

Session 2

Read: Schall (1995), Weick (1996)

Join us on Thursday, May 19 from 4:15 pm to 7:15 pm, ET, for our second Zoom session!

In preparation, by Monday, May 16 at midnight ET, please post a response to your reading of Schall (1995) and Weick (1996) in our Google Classroom in which you (a) quote the one sentence that most clearly represents the essence of each reading from your perspective, (b) tell an anecdote from your own experience of leadership in the face of a “fire” in 100-125 words, and (c) tell an anecdote from your own experience of leadership in the midst of a “swamp” in 100-125 words.

Starting with your sentence selections and fire and swamp anecdotes, we will continue our consideration of  how we understand our own leadership contributions and the contexts in which we are currently contributing leadership.

Session 3

Read: Crouch (2016), Lencioni (2012)

Join us on Thursday, June 16 from 4:15 pm to 7:15 pm, ET, for our third Zoom session!

In preparation, by Monday, June 13 at midnight ET, please post a response to your reading of Crouch (2016) and Lencioni (2012) in our Google Classroom in which you (a) quote the one sentence that most clearly represents the essence of each reading from your perspective, (b) tell an anecdote from your own experience of leadership that allows for flourishing (in Crouch’s sense) in 100-125 words, and (c) tell an anecdote from your own experience of leadership resulting in organizational health (in Lencioni’s sense) in 100-125 words.

Starting with your sentence selections and anecdotes, we will consider leadership that allows for flourishing and that results in organizational health.

Draft papers

Read: Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky (2009), Williams (2005)

First paper

Write a draft paper of 1,500 to 2,500 words in which you offer a diagnosis of both the toughest challenge and the political landscape of a setting in which you hope to contribute leadership over the next few years. Identify the leadership initiatives you are able to contribute to addressing this challenge from wherever you are positioned in that setting. Reflect on what it will require from you to make your leadership contribution with both honest vulnerability and appropriate authority.

Second paper

Write a paper of 1,500 to 2,500 words in which you describe your own approach to long-term professional development as a leadership practitioner, informed by what you learned in this course.

Your draft papers are due on Friday, August 5, at midnight ET. Submit your papers as Google documents in 12-point Times New Roman font, and in APA 7 style. Useful primers on APA 7 are available from Purdue University and the American Psychological Association. These drafts will not be graded, but if you do not meet the length and style requirements, or if you deliver the paper after the due date, you will lose 5 points off the grade for the final paper. You will be assigned one or more other participants at the beginning of the course to whose papers you will respond.

Session 4

Join us on Tuesday, August 9 from 9 am to noon, ET, for our fourth Zoom session!

In preparation, by Monday, August 8 at midnight ET, please post a 100-150 word response (each) to your assigned draft first paper(s) in which you (a) celebrate the strengths of the paper in diagnosing a tough challenge, (b) suggest possible improvements to the diagnosis of a tough challenge in the paper, and (c) ask questions that the paper raises for you with regard to the diagnosis of tough challenges.

Starting with your responses, we will consider the diagnosis of tough challenges.

Session 5

Join us on Wednesday, August 10 from 9 am to noon, ET, for our fifth Zoom session!

In preparation, by Tuesday, August 9 at midnight ET, please post a 100-150 word response (each) to your assigned draft first paper(s) in which you (a) celebrate the strengths of the paper in diagnosing a political landscape, (b) suggest possible improvements to the diagnosis of a political landscape in the paper, and (c) ask questions that the paper raises for you with regard to the diagnosis of political landscapes.

Starting with your responses, we will consider the diagnosis of political landscapes.

Session 6

Join us on Thursday, August 11 from 9 am to noon, ET, for our sixth and final Zoom session!

In preparation, by Wednesday, August 10 at midnight ET, please post a 100-150 word response (each) to your assigned draft second paper(s) in which you (a) celebrate the strengths of the paper in describing an approach to long-term professional development, (b) suggest possible improvements to the description of an approach to long-term professional development in the paper, and (c) ask questions that the paper raises for you with regard to approaches to long-term professional development.

Starting with your responses, we will consider approaches to long-term professional development.

Final drafts

Final drafts of both papers are due on Wednesday, August 31.

Celebration of learning

“No one survives hidden vulnerability without companions who understand. No one can turn hidden vulnerability into flourishing without friends. We will never be able to fully reveal our vulnerability to the wide world—but we will never survive it without companions willing to bear it with us.” (Crouch, 2016, p. 141)

“... don’t  confuse confidants with allies: Instead of supporting your current initiative, a confidant simply supports you. A common mistake is to seek a confidant among trusted allies, whose personal loyalty may evaporate when a new issue more important to them than you begins to emerge and take center stage.” (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002, p. 9)

“Share your vulnerability with your confidants to get the most useful support from them, difficult as that may be for you.” (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 290)

At a convenient date between August 11 and August 31, organize a celebration of your learning in this course. Invite an authentic audience to your celebration, consisting of people you trust as friends and confidants. Share what you have learned and invite advice. After this celebration and no later than Wednesday, August 31, post a 250-word reflection on your celebration in our Google Classroom. You are not required to treat the instructor or participants in this course as confidants: simply reflect on your experience of the value that this celebration had for your own professional development as a reflective leadership practitioner.


5. Required Readings

Gawande, A. (2007). The Checklist. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist 

Heifetz, R. A., & Laurie, D. L. (2001). The Work of Leadership. Harvard Business Review, 79(11), 131–141.

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). A Survival Guide for Leaders. Harvard Business Review, 80(6), 65–152.

Schall, E. (1995). Learning to love the swamp: Reshaping education for public service. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 14(2), 202–220.

Weick, K. (1996). Prepare Your Organization to Fight Fires. Harvard Business Review, 74(3), 143–148.

Books to buy:

Crouch, A. (2016). Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, & True Flourishing. IVP.

Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A. & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. Harvard Business Press.

Lencioni, P. (2012). The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. Jossey-Bass.

Williams, D. (2005). Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges. Berrett-Koehler.

5. Recommended Reading

Bennis, W. (2009). On becoming a Leader (4th ed.). Basic Books.

Blanchard, D., Kwan, J., Graves, S., & Locy, J. (2013). From Concept to Scale: Creating A Gospel-Minded Organization. Praxis.

Blanchard, D., Crouch, A., Kauffmann, S., Nardella, J.L., Greer, P. (2019). The redemptive nonprofit: A playbook for leaders. Praxis.

Blanchard, D., Crouch, A., Kauffmann, S., Nardella, J.L., Greer, P. (2021). The redemptive business: A playbook for leaders. Praxis.

Bungay Stanier, M. (2019). The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Page Two Books.

Burlingham, B. (2016). Small Giants: Companies that choose to be great instead of big, 10th-anniversary edition. Penguin.

Carroll, B., Levy, L., & Richmond, D. (2008). Leadership as Practice: Challenging the Competency Paradigm. Leadership, 4(4), 363–379.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don't. Harper Business.

Collins, J. (2019). Turning the flywheel: a monograph to accompany Good to great. Random House.

Coyle, D. (2009). The Talent Code. Bantam.

Crouch, A. (2008). Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. IVP.

Crouch, A. (2013). Playing God: Redeeming the gift of power. IVP.

DePree, M. (2004). Leadership Is an Art. Currency Doubleday.

Dooyeweerd, H. (1958). The Criteria of Progressive and Reactionary Tendencies in History. In Proceedings of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science, May 6-9, 1958. Noord-Hollandse Uitgeversmaatschappij.

Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Epstein, D. (2019). Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Macmillan.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. Little, Brown.

Goldsmith, M. & Bell, C. (2013). Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships For Leaders (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehlers.

Goldsmith, M. & Reiter, M. (2007). What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Hyperion.

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading. Harvard Business Press.

Heifetz, R.A. (1998). Leadership Without Easy Answers. Harvard Business Press.

Ibarra, H. (2015). Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader. HBR Books.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (2001). The strategy-focused organization: How balanced scorecard companies thrive in the new business environment. Harvard Business Press.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2006). The leadership challenge. John Wiley & Sons.

Kznaric, R. (2020). The Good Ancestor : How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. Ebury.

Marriot, L., Nilsson, P., & Sirak, R. (2007). The Game Before The Game. Gotham.

Mauboussin, M. J. (2012). Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition. Harvard Business Review Press.

McEntyre, M. C. (2021). Make a List: How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers, not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development. Berrett-Koehler.

Minzberg, H. (1987). Crafting Strategy. Harvard Business Review 65 (4), 66-75.

Moore, D. A. (2020). Perfectly Confident: How to Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely. Harper Business.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press.

Parker, P. (2018). The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Riverhead.

Parks, S. D. (2005). Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World. Harvard University Press.

Peters, T. J. (1992). Liberation management: necessary disorganization for the nanosecond nineties. Knopf.

Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive Strategy. Free Press.

Richards, S. (2019). The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May. Atlantic.

Runcimen, D. (2019). Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers. Allen and Unwin, 2019.

Saxenian, A. (1996). Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Harvard University Press.

Scharmer, C. O. (2009). Theory U: Learning from the future as it emerges. Berrett-Koehler.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Seerveld, C. (1996). Dooyeweerd’s idea of ‘historical development’: Christian respect for cultural diversity. Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1), 41–61.

Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., Roth, G., & Smith, B. J.  (1999). The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. Currency Doubleday.

Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R.B., & Smith, B. J.  (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. Currency Doubleday.

Senge, P. M., Scharmer, C. O., Jaworski, J., & Flowers, B. S. (2005). Presence: An exploration of profound change in people, organizations, and society. Currency.

Sharp, J., & Macklin, C. (2019). Iterate: ten lessons in design and failure. MIT Press.

Simon, H. (2009). Hidden champions of the twenty-first century: Success strategies of unknown world market leaders. New York: Springer.

Waterman, R. H., & Peters, T. J. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best-run companies. Harper & Row.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. SAGE.

Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. Jossey-Bass.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.

Wilkinson, J., & Kemmis, S. (2015). Practice Theory: Viewing leadership as leading. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(4), 342–358.

Wilkinson, J., Olin, A., Lund, T., Ahlberg, A., & Nyvaller, M. (2010). Leading praxis: exploring educational leadership through the lens of practice architectures. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 67-79.

Wilkinson, J., Olin, A., Lund, T., & Stjernstrøm, E. (2013). Understanding leading as “travelling practices.” School Leadership & Management, 33(3), 224–239.


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