Using Authentic Leader Dilemmas to Teach Micro-Influence Making
February 2, 2020
This post is filed under: Authentic Assessment, Business, Daily News, Higher Education, Instructional Design, Leadership Professional Development.
Tagged as: Authentic Assessment, Leadership professional development, Micro-influence
One of the challenges in teaching leadership knowledge and skills is the limited opportunity to apply theory into practice. Bringing real life dynamics into the classroom is often time taking and demanding. As a result, teaching of leadership often emphasizes theories primarily through lectures, personality assessments, and case studies of CEOs (Ferris, 1998; Antonacopoulou, & Bento, 2004), and such a practice does not fully reflect the complexity and dynamics of leadership (Doyle & Smith, 1999). Instructors often resort to using hypothetical organizations, groups and leaders in order to engage students in theory application. Such hypothetical situations may be effective in deepening students’ knowledge of leadership, but have limitations in developing their capacity to lead or follow. In response to the calls for a more meaningful and authentic learning experiences(McDermott, 1994), educators have introduced experiential games, simulations, role plays, dyadic tasks, and group tasks. While there are great examples of exercises on decision making, perspectives of leadership, group dynamics, conflict resolution (see Journal of Management Education, Management Teaching Review, and Journal of Leadership Education), few exist on followership, influence making, and power relations.
One of the challenges in teaching leadership knowledge and skills is the limited opportunity to apply theory into practice. Bringing real life dynamics into the classroom is often time taking and demanding. As a result, teaching of leadership often emphasizes theories primarily through lectures, personality assessments, and case studies of CEOs (Ferris, 1998; Antonacopoulou, & Bento, 2004), and such a practice does not fully reflect the complexity and dynamics of leadership (Doyle & Smith, 1999). Instructors often resort to using hypothetical organizations, groups and leaders in order to engage students in theory application. Such hypothetical situations may be effective in deepening students’ knowledge of leadership, but have limitations in developing their capacity to lead or follow. In response to the calls for a more meaningful and authentic learning experiences(McDermott, 1994), educators have introduced experiential games, simulations, role plays, dyadic tasks, and group tasks. While there are great examples of exercises on decision making, perspectives of leadership, group dynamics, conflict resolution (see Journal of Management Education, Management Teaching Review, and Journal of Leadership Education), few exist on followership, influence making, and power relations.
