Leadership in an International Context

Course goals

After completing this course, students will have:

• developed sensitivity for their own professional attitude in the role of a leader;
• acquired skills, insight and knowledge about their personal effectiveness in the role of leader in an international context, partly by an academically based tool measuring those competences;
• gained insight in the complexity and the value of specific competences when working together in an international working environment;
• familiarised with the role of leader in practice by spending a day(part) with a leader in an international organisation;
• learned to place their personal learning points in a theoretical framework and to create learning practice opportunities and use them in order to train their skills;
• developed leadership skills by leading a workshop for a group consisting of international participants.

Content

This course helps you to gain insight in the complexity of working as a leader in international organisations and to prepare for a role as a leader in an international workplace. During this skills training you will move into the leadership role and work with different skills and intervention options that come with this profession.
We will work on typical leadership skills like personal effectiveness (personal style, international differences), conversational techniques (feedback, direct/indirect communication), leadership (from instructing to delegating, influencing styles) and third party interventions (mediation in conflicts).

We will approach these leadership skills from an international point of view: the situation in which you, as an participant of the course, already find yourself in. The world is globalising at high speed: societies and organisations become more and more international. When we live or work together with people of different backgrounds, we realise that our own behaviour is no longer self-evident. Other people can have different ways of solving problems, organising meetings e.g. Therefore it is important to develop skills to help us understand and handle this kind of interactions. 
Therefore, we work with an academically recognised model (IRC) that distinguishes four competences in particular: increasing sensitivity, building commitment, improving communication and managing uncertainty. Training these competences contributes to your effectiveness as a leader in an international context and also provides insight into your professional attitude in this role.

You write an individual learning report about the skills, insights and knowledge acquired during the training. In addition, you will get acquainted with the role of leader in practice by spending a day(part) with a leader in an international organisation. You process your experiences in a concise analysis report.
At the end of the course, you organise and lead a workshop yourself on a self-chosen, relevant theme in the field of international leadership to further increase your knowledge and skills.

Meetings are organised as interactive training sessions with discussions of literature and experiences, individual and group assignments, student presentations and simulation games. You will also actively visit international settings outside the classroom, and reflect on the acquired experiences. You will meet and interact with people having other backgrounds from whom you can learn and with whom you can train your skills. 

This course is part of the elective Academic and Professional Skills programme offered by the Master’s degree programme and will be scheduled in the second half of the week, from Wednesday afternoons onwards.

Literature

• Text book: to be announced later
• IRC Questionnaire 
• Articles (shared on blackboard)