Courses

This course is designed for students who wish to advance their understanding of leadership and enhance their personal leadership skills, attitudes, and behaviours in keeping with the mission of TWU. It introduces students to the literature of leadership, helps them design tools for assessing their own leadership abilities, and enables them to develop a Christian servant leadership model within the context of a Christian worldview. Team building and self-assessment exercises, leadership presentations, case studies, and field research are included.

An exploration of what leaders can learn from the past to understand contemporary leadership and to imagine future ways of leading. Students are provided with the opportunity to use the historical method, including primary sources, to understand past leaders and leadership thought. Emphasis is given to the social circumstances and philosophical ideas that led to the Classical and Scientific Management theories, and subsequent leadership theories emerging through to the 1980s.

Examines leadership as systems of leading and following in various contexts. Multiple levels of analysis from self to society at large are considered. Core practices, such as, appreciative inquiry, systems thinking, and design thinking are investigated.

An exploration of the leader's decisionmaking practice, including the relation to problem analysis, decisionmaking techniques, and ethical considerations. Emphasis is given to a critical examination of individual, organizational, and macrolevel issues in ethics, and exploring the role of values and ethics in the leader's formulation of strategies for motivating, communicating, utilizing power, and developing followers.

A practical examination of leadership in the team context and its relevance to organizational flourishing. Emphasis is given to shared leadership in facilitating collaborative work, problem-solving, learning, and sustainable performance.

Students learn to identify conflict sources within and outside organizations related to personal differences, real and imagined levels of power, and stakeholder interests. Forms of dispute resolution are discussed including professional arbitration and alternative methods of mediation, with recognition that conflicts can be beneficial.

Leaders need to understand change in order to lead change. This course enables students to understand the impact of change, develop a better sense of leading complex change, and learn about various change process models, frameworks, and engagement principles to gain commitment and involvement. Students also develop an understanding of how to coach in the midst of change. Using a nine-phase change process model, students apply their learning to a change project or initiative.

An examination of leaders' vocation discernment and career planning in the context of both modeling and mentoring. Emphasis is given to the leaders' identification of personal calling and the creation of their career development plans and how they use their self-development knowledge as life mentors to those they lead, bringing others toward personal and professional clarity and growth.

Students learn key principles and methods beyond general strategies of leadership, which lead to successful administration of private and public organizations. This course provides the student with an opportunity to apply learned leadership principles of the program in the context of a management application, thus demonstrating an understanding of both management and leadership, and acknowledging that a good leader is also a good manager. Topics include preparing strategic plans, modifying strategies, designing the organization to fit objectives, organizational governance, staffing the organization, budget building and defending, risk management and due diligence, and effective implementation of plans.