Communication Leadership and Conflict Management

Catalog description

Credits 3. 3 Lecture Hours. COURSE OVERVIEW. Examines leadership and conflict through a communication lens. Focuses on how people create shared understandings of what “counts” as leadership and how leaders manage tensions and conflicts as they seek to exert influence, coordinate collaborative efforts and mobilize collective action. Considers conflict as a communicative phenomenon in interpersonal, group, organizational and societal settings. Emphasizes how different meanings of leadership and conflict are constructed, contested and transformed through communication. RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION. Connects to professional, organizational, civic and community contexts where leadership and conflict management are central to collaboration and decision-making. Relevant to careers involving teamwork, supervision, facilitation, advocacy, public affairs, consultation and organizational development. Addresses communication practices used to build credibility, respond to tension, coordinate diverse perspectives and guide collective problem solving. DEEPENING UNDERSTANDINGS. Clarifies how leadership is enacted through communication rather than position or personality. Highlights the inevitability of conflict in common leadership contexts and the range of communicative responses it can elicit. Encourages analysis of how power, relationships and context shape approaches to collaboration and disagreement. Differentiates between constructive and destructive communication patterns in navigating conflict. TOPICS AND THEMES. May include study of leadership theories as communication phenomena; analysis of dialogue, negotiation and mediation; examination of conflict in interpersonal, group, organizational and public settings; systemic and constructionist approaches to collaboration; use of symbols in leadership communication; management of difference in diverse teams and communities. Examples may address professional, civic, institutional and/or societal contexts in which leadership communication shapes outcomes and relationships. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification.