Exercising Leadership in the Non-Profit and Public Sectors

Catalog description

A key premise of the course is that leadership requires helping communities and organizations make the adaptations needed to thrive and survive in rapidly changing contexts. Effective management must be deployed to preserve successful institutional behaviors whereas leadership is needed to ensure that practices no longer serving organizational or community interests are discarded and that new innovations are pursued to generate greater impact. However, such adaptive work can be extremely challenging when longstanding practices are hardwired into the DNA of organizations through years and even decades of practice. In this context, the work of leadership is about accompanying people through the realities and losses of necessary change while opening them up to the promise of the future. The course will introduce students to a set of tools and strategies for effectively bringing about that change within organizations and communities, without getting sidelined in the process.