成人大片

Lois Whittall

Lois Whittall has been an Adjunct Lecturer in the 成人大片'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'聙聶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'聙聶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 Heifetzâ聙聶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 worldâ聙聶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.

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

1	Articulate a personal definition of effective ethical and moral leadership
2	Develop a plan for personal change consistent with self-identified leadership strengths and challenges
3	Identify, diagnose and reframe complicated and complex problems
4	Identify, source, evaluate, interpret and analyse both primary and secondary data to inform small scale research task

Text Books:

The following two books are required reading for this course:

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

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey,
2009, Immunity to Change, How to overcome it and Unlock the potential in Yourself and your Organization, (Harvard Business Review Press)

A third text is recommended:

Steven D’Souza and Diana Renner, 2014, Not Knowing, The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity (LID Publishing Limited)

No specific online learning facilities are part of the course other than the usual communication and sharing of information/papers via MyUni. Please ensure that your MyUni email address is one through which you can be contacted.(If you use another email address more regularly forward your MyUni address to it.)

I have ‘taught’ FOL and other Leadership courses for many years and I have gone through a persoanl learning process as I have worked with many groups in Adelaide, Singapore and Hong Kong as well as in Executive Education and in many companies,  not-for-profit organisations and government departments. I realised a long time ago that leadership cannot be taught – at least not in the traditional way that we think about teaching. There are two distinctly different types of learning: one is informational – about stuff that you needto know – and the other is transformational – about your thinking and your sense-making. 
For me leadership requires a bit of both but transformational learning is the key.  So, if leadership cannot be taught  why have a core course called ‘Fundamentals of Leadership’ in the MBA?  The answer is: Leadership can be learned and all of us are learning on a daily basis as we interact with people at all levels in and beyond our organisations.  We see and experience what works and we see and experience what doesn’t work in many different human interactions.  My aim in FOL is to help you to learn by crafting a course which enables you to surface and challenge your thinking and your approach to leadership. I want you to ponder and reflect on leadership generally and your own experience in particular. I want you to have many conversations about leadership and hear and tell many stories – with your FOL colleagues, people at work, family and friends: people you meet formally and people you meet informally.  I want you to read widely and critically about leadership and think about its application to your own context. Most importantly I want you to intentionally and mindfully make some decisions about your own approach to leadership and present your thinking through a series of assignments. My purpose in this course is your learning. You will learn what you are ready and able to learn at this time. Students report though that learning continues well after the course finishes. For some the course is challenging – both the style of teaching 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.

he 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 the time spent in  class,
working in your groups and undertaking assessment as well as reading and assignment preparation. You could well find yourself engaged in
thinking and practicing what you are learning for many more hours.

Fundamenatals of Leadership classes are framed as three Intensives or Modules.

Module / Intensive 1.
In this module we will explore the theory behind the practice of Adaptive  Leadership. In particular we will look at the nature of management and  leadership work and the different approaches of using Authority and Leadership skills. We will consider the contexts in which we work and explore a model which helps us to make sense of social systems. As well as looking at how we respond to the complex adaptive systems around us we will consider ourselves as a complex adaptive system and begin to tease out how our individual observations and interpretations impact our
actions.

Preparation:
Chapters 1 – 3 of Heifetz, R.A and Linsky, M., 2002  Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Chapter 1 Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, 2009, Immunity to Change, How to overcome it and Unlock the potential in Yourself and yourOrganization, (Harvard Business Review Press)

Heifetz, R.A., 1994, Chapter 3: “The roots of authority” in Leadership without easy answers, Harvard Business School Press pp 49 – 66

Heifetz, R., Alexander, G., Linsky, M., 2009, Chapter 2: “The Theory Behind the Practice” in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Harvard Business Review Press pp 13 – 40

Tan, Chade-Meng, Chapter 2: “Breathing as if Your Life Depends on It” in Search Inside Yourself, Harper Collins 2012

Goleman, D., 1998. What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 82(1), pp. 93-102. Goleman, D & Boyatzis, R., 2008, Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review, September, pp 74-81   
        
Gary Hamel: Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsdqBC1tHTA&list=PLJ3965bD3NKLvju47meyi0d7uun8pNZ-N&index=27          
Emotional Intelligence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8fcqrNO7so
How does ‘mindfulness’ connect to emotional intelligence? What does Meng mean when he says that we can re-frame emotion from existential to experiential to physiological?

Suggestions for additional reading:

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee A., 2001. Primal Leadership.  Harvard Business Review, December, pp. 42-51

Mintzberg, H., 1994.  Rounding out the manager’s job.  Sloan Management Review, Fall, pp. 11-26

Ibarra, H. & Hunter, M., 2007.  How leaders create and use networks.  Harvard Business Review, January, pp. 40–47.

Module / Intensive 2

In this module students will research and present a complex ethical leadership issue involving leadership of 'the Commons'. We will continue to explore and practice the skills required to do adaptive work including the ability to provide open and honest feedback. There will continue to be a strong focus on questioning assumptions about the social systems around us including the individuals, factions and groups likely to be part of organisational decision making.

Preparation

Chapters  4 – 6  of Heifetz, R.A and Linsky, M., 2002  Leadership on the Line:  Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading Boston:  Harvard Business School Press 

Heifetz, R., Alexander, G., Linskty, M., 2009,  Chapter 13:  “See yourself as the system” & Chapter 14: “Identify your loyalties” in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership Harvard Business Review Press pp 181 - 192

Manzoni, J.F., 2002.  A better way to deliver bad news.  Harvard Business Review, September, pp. 4-8.

Amanda Sinclair, 1992, The Tyranny of a Team Ideology, Organization Studies vol 13: 611

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A., 2002.  The emotional reality of teams.  Journal of Organisational Excellence, Spring, pp 55–65.

Goleman, D & Boyatzis, R., 2008, Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review, September, pp 74-81

Eisenhardt, K.M., Kahwajy, J.L., & Bourgeois, L.J., 1997.  How management teams can have a good fight. Harvard Business Review, July – August, pp. 77–85.

Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S., 2003.  Organisational change for corporate sustainability.  London: Routlege, Ch. 3, pp. 62-87.

Benn, S., Dunphy, D. & Griffiths A. 2006. Enabling Change for Corporate Sustainability: An Integrated Perspective. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management (13)

Hart, S.L. & Milstein M.B., 2003. Creating sustainable value.  Academy of Management Executive, 17(2), pp. 56-67.

Ray Anderson: The business logic of sustainabilityhttp://www.youtube.com/v/iP9QF_lBOyA

Steve Howard: Let's go all-in on selling sustainabilityhttp://www.ted.com/talkssteve_howard_let_s_go_all_in_on_selling_sustainability

Suggestions for additional reading

Levy, P.F., 2001.   Nut Island effect: When good teams go wrong.  Harvard Business Review, March, pp. 51–59. (This is a good article around the establishment of group norms)

Hallowell, E.M., 1999.  The human moment at work.  Harvard Business Review, January – February, pp. 58-66.

The 1957 film 12 Angry Men, provides a great example of raising and lowering the heat in a room. See pages 114 – 115 of Leadership on the Line.

Module / Intensive 3

As you think about the third and final FOL module it is useful to reflect on your learning over the last couple of months,  in the context of Sharon  Parks ‘five hungers’ of leadership: Personal agency – to have an effect, to contribute, to make a positive difference, to influence, help, build – and in this sense to lead; Authority – to direct, protect and control. We have talked about formal and informal authority the ability to deal with complextity  and to adapt as the the world around us constantly changes.  Moral imaginaltion and moral courage of behalf of the common good

How would you apply the five ‘hungers’ that Parks mentions to yourself and your own leadership context? What kind of things have you thought about that perhaps didn’t strike you before? What sort of experiences have you had over the last couple of months that you may have reflected on in a way that is different from before? How are you thinking about the world of work and the activities and action which make up ‘leadership’?
Have you thought more about your own role and responsibility in creating a sustainable world? How does what we have seen in national politics relate to our discussions on leadership?  What has your experience of working intensively and often intensley with a small group of people who were strangers 2 months ago added to your learning about leadership?
In this module we will explore how observation and many interpretations are valuable in designing effective interventions to resolve adaptive challenges. We will consider how to use disequilibrium in the workplace to achieve outcomes and to help people develop themselves. We will explore the challenge of personal change. And finally we will reflect on some of the seductions and dangers of leadership.

Preparation

Chapters 2, 9 & 10,  Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, 2009, Immunity to Change, How to overcome it and Unlock the potential in Yourself and your Organization, (Harvard Business Review Press)
Chapters 7 - 9 of Heifetz, R.A and Linsky, M., 2002  Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading Boston: Harvard Business School Press
Parkes, S., 2005, Chapter 9: Toward a more adequate myth, in Leadership Can be Taught, Harvard Business School Press pp201 – 213
Sinclair A., 2007, Leadership for the Disillusioned, The Melbourne Review vol 3:1 pp 65 – 71
Kegan, R., Lahey, L., Fleming A., and Miller, M., (2014). Making Business Personal in Harvard Business Review April 2014 pp 45 – 52            
In addition, these are a couple of TED talks that I find very insightful:

Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger of a Single Storyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en

Assessment Task	Weighting	Learning Outcome
Individual Technical Assignment	20%	3,4
Peer Feedback of Assignment	10%	3
Individual summary of Leadership Case and Consultations	20%	1,3
Group Assignment	20%	3,4
Individual personal assignment	30%	1,2,3,4
Total	100%

For specific details on assessments and due dates please refer to your Course Folder.

Individual Assignment 1 (20%)

Research beyond the articles provided to critically explore the meaning of sustainability.  Use your sources to explain what ‘sustainability’
means to you.  Is there any sense in which it is a moral issue for you? How does it affect the way that you look at the world and makeyour decisions?  

Identify a commercial company which seems at least on the surface, to be at Stage 5 or 6 of, Benn Dunphy and Griffith’s (2006) phase model (see readings). Note that this goes significantly beyond paper recycling or switching off the lights.  Explain what it has doneand why you think the company is sustainable. Note that you might change your mind regarding the company’s level of sustainability as you research further.  That is fine – it’s about critical analysis, not finding a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer.

Explain the driving forces? What was the role of management / leadership in developing the approach to sustainability?  If you can talk to
someone in the company that will give you additional insight – otherwise use as many and varied resources as you can find.Think critically
about your definition of the concept of sustainability.  Is there any ‘dark side’ to the way that some company’s do business? It has been
suggested that some companies ‘commercialise profit and socialise costs’. What might this mean and could it apply to your company?

The purpose of the assignment is to expand your understanding of sustainability and in particular to help you to develop your thinking
and sense-making of an important moral / ethical issue.  The word limit is 2,000 words.

Individual Assignment 1 - Peer Feedback (10%)

A day or two after you have submitted your assignment you will receive one assignment from an FOL colleague. They will be randomly selected and anonymous.

You should think critically about the way in which they have told their story and connected it to their definition of sustainability.

You should then write around 750 words of feedback.

Leadership Challenge - Individual Components (20% of total marks)

Your own case (5% of total individual marks)

Before you write your leadership challenge skim as much as you can of the readings for the first module. It will help you to frame your
challenge.

In preparation for the first class select one important leadership challenge that you are currently facing in your work.  Choose a challenge that is very important to you, that you would like to make progress on but one which you have struggled with up to now. Choose one that you are willing to describe and discuss with a small group of colleagues in the context of the course. Members of your small group will receive a copy of your written challenge in the second class. Your written description should be no longer than 750 words.

You will be assigned to a group of around 8 members and required to conduct consultations which take one hour each around the leadership challenges presented by your colleagues.

All group members must read ALL of the leadership challenge reports and must be present at ALL consultations.

As you undertake each consultation you will play one of four roles:

Case presenter
Balcony observer
Consultation facilitator (no report required when you play this role)
Consultant (no report required when you play this role)

Post consultation reports (total of 2 reports)

For each of the two roles: case presenter and balcony observer submit a report of no more than 750 words (each of these are worth 7.5% of your total FOL grade)

Group Assignment (20% of total grade)

Use your group as a case and ask yourselves and each other the following questions:
What did we as a group learn from this process about:
·       Adaptive and technical issues
·       Individual and collective willingness to create and sustain disequilibrium
·       Authority and leadership
·       Factions and alliances
·       Vulnerability and trust
·       Experimenting and changing approach

Write a 2,000 word report which is both analytical and constructively critical of your group processes.

Final Individual Assignment (30%)

Using your experiences of the course and group work write a 2,500 word report reflecting on your approach to authority and leadership and your aspirations for the future.  Your report should cover:
1.      your understanding of adaptive leadership and how it relates to your current or immediate past work context.
2.      use of evidence from data collected about yourself as you have completed self-assessment instruments and reflected in your journal
3.      that you have reflected on your values and how they impact your decision making with regards to work;
4.      that you understand your core strengths and how you use them in a leadership context
5.      how you might undertake a journey of self development over the next few years through a plan based upon deep reflection and self awareness;
6.      integration of the materials you have read and experiences you have had in this class.

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.