Leading Creative Teams

What skills will I develop in this class? 1. You will gain greater self-awareness. Self-awareness is a starting point for leadership development and an essential capability for the exercise of effective leadership. Some of the related skills that we will learn include building emotional intelligence, understanding how personalities shape leadership behaviors, defining personal and ethical values, giving and receiving feedback, coping with change and ambiguity, and managing stress. 2. You will learn to build positive relationships by enhancing your interpersonal skills. Leadership and teamwork are inherently relational activities and strong interpersonal skills are therefore important enablers. During the course, you will develop related skills in managing conflict and negotiation, motivating and inspiring others, communicating effectively, building positive relationships and networks, building sources of power, and exercising influence. 3. You will develop your ability to lead a team and be an effective team member. Our focus on teamwork will center on both leadership and followership as essentially interdependent. Examples of related skills we will learn include how to compose and launch new teams, how to create and communicate an inspiring vision, how to develop groups into real teams, how to empower group members and delegate roles and responsibilities, and how to conduct productive team post mortems. 4. You will learn how to develop creative solutions in team environments. The unique context of teams in this class will be “creative” ones – groups that are charged with developing novel and useful solutions to problems. In this class, you will learn several creative problem solving skills, including how to understand problems from different points of views, how to find commonalities among disconnected fields or domains, how to open-up new ways of thinking about problems, and how to create a motivating environment that fosters creative problem solving. What will the class be like? This will not be a purely lecture-based course. While we will review and discuss readings to build our knowledge of course topics and skills, we will also draw from many learning methods, including: Self-assessments to measure current skill competence and opportunities for development. Case studies to see examples of how skills are applied in real leadership situations. Role plays and simulations to practice skills in class and receive feedback from others. Reflective learning through the crafting of an autobiography. Visits from guest speakers and interviews with leaders in your chosen areas.