CURRICULUM

The Art and Practice of Leadership Development is an intensive and spirited executive education workshop offered at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that is designed to engage leadership consultants, teachers, and trainers from around the world as the learners and the leaders that they are. Participants work closely with experienced colleagues and a faculty of distinguished leadership educators as they examine a range of leadership concepts and teaching methods and investigate questions like:

• What is unique about teaching the subject of leadership?
• What tools are available for teaching leadership?
• In what ways do the dynamics of your organization support or impede the leadership development activity?
• What hidden assumptions do you have about leadership?  How do they affect the way people learn and the way you practice leadership development?
• What place is there in leadership development for values, passion, and character?
• What are the ethics of leadership development, especially when using experiential methods?

To help consolidate learning that arises from the active and experiential nature of this program, considerable time is dedicated to debriefing and reflection.  The Art and Practice of Leadership Development can be a very personally engaging experience for participants as they examine what it means to do this important work in today’s world.

Case in Point
A unique feature of this program is its emphasis on a provocative pedagogy pioneered by program faculty that use the class itself as a case from which everyone can learn about the dynamics of leadership. Taking part in this real-time case study enables participants to experience the “perspirational” as well as the “inspirational” aspects of leadership.

Practice Teaching Sessions
A variety of applications of this innovative pedagogy will be offered during the course. 
Several sessions are set aside where participants can practice Case in Point teaching with colleagues in the course and receive feedback.

Alumni in Back of the Room Role
Each year two program alumni return to the course to work with the program faculty and course participants as observers and commentators on the real-time leadership dynamics as they arise in the classroom and small group sessions. 

Peer Consultation Groups
The program offers unique frameworks for diagnosing and analyzing leadership dilemmas.  Participants consult and receive consultations in small groups about key dilemmas that they face in their own leadership development work.

Examples of Key Dilemmas from past Art and Practice of Leadership Development sessions:

My firm develops and facilitates leadership development programs for local governments.  Our work is typically customized to the agency and includes extensive classroom work, action learning, and multi-rater feedback with follow-up coaching.  The programs actively involved the organization’s top executives in the delivery of the curriculum, so commitment to the program is usually very high throughout the organization.  At the end of each “academy,” the participants walk away feeling positive about the experience and the top executives speak enthusiastically about the effort. 

The challenge is in how to sustain the momentum and effectiveness of the program after our engagement ends.  More so, I am concerned about the long-term effectiveness of the program in terms of the participant’s skill levels and career success.  Because the organizations invest greatly in terms of time and money into the design and delivery of the program, they are rarely interested in making a longer-term commitment to my firm in order to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the training.  Cost is an issue in assessing the effectiveness of leadership development programs.

• Principal Consultant, Management Consultant Firm, US

I have the opportunity to develop a leadership role in creating and implementing a shared leadership development initiative for senior people across the entire public sector in my country.  The question is “what should this programme look like to meet our needs, be world class and also to draw in people from all over the public sector in my country.

• Head of Corporate Learning, Executive Service, European Country

I run a leadership fellowship program for mid-career professionals sponsored by a federal government organization.  This is a fairly heterogeneous group on some dimension, yet the individual experiences and perspectives differ widely.  It seems intuitive that leadership would be an important element of the experience.   Yet, leadership development is not a formal component of the program at all and has never received more than a cursory mention.  Despite more than three decades of experience, it is assumed that leadership development occurs naturally in the course of the year.  Based on my own interest in leadership development, I have introduced a few elements about leadership into the program by bringing in outside consultants or taking advantage of expertise in the group. But, the groups have been reluctant to engage the leadership conversation.   I’m looking for new ideas for a formal leadership development experience.

• Director, Education and Fellowship Programs, US Federal Government Agency

In 1999 our city looked at the top two levels of managers in the organization and found that 88% were eligible to retire in ten years.  This is when we knew we had to quit talking about leadership development and do something.  A review of the literature reveals there is no one agreed upon definition of leadership.  If we accept views of leadership as defined by others, typically in business settings, are these going to be adequate for local government?  Under my direction, the city has offered a variety of leadership development experiences.  These programs included sending people to executive education programs, offering degree programs on site, and sponsoring other training programs and events.  However, since we did not have an agreed upon competency model, we are sending staff on a journey without an agreed upon destination.  What are the expectations for future leaders in local government? What are the competencies for leadership development? What are the critical design elements for effective leadership development programs?  How can you evaluate their success?

• Senior Human Resource Development Officer, Mid-size US City

I teach undergraduate business majors in an African American college in a required semester-long leadership and professional development course.  The goal is for students to have an appreciation of ethics, values and character development and also of the importance of teamwork and community service.  The challenge is to identify pedagogy that will accomplish the goals and be able to assess student’s growth in this area based on the curriculum covered in the course.  The ultimate goal is to develop a model of leadership development for students of color in the area of personal leadership.

• Assistant Professor, US Liberal Arts College