RSM2698H: Special Topics in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management

Leadership development requires learning new ways of being for solving increasingly complex strategic organizational problems. The two-pronged responsibilities of the leader — reaching organizational goals and developing people in their teams — can be a difficult task, particularly when professional, personal, and global pressues compete for one’s inner resources. Becoming a leader requires an inner transformation yet changing oneself in adulthood has proven for many to be a difficult task. This course helps explain how the usual path to change — such as implementing a new set of behaviours through willpower — frequently fails because behaviour is only one part of a larger self-system which includes wants, body/past, emotions, and thoughts, all of which can resist movement. All aspects of the self, though intricately linked, have their own mechanisms of change, and for the whole 'self' to change it requires moving all the parts together. We address the five parts of the self in turn, focusing on exercises that clarify and set them into motion. These learnings are then applied to broader organizational dynamics and means of facilitating healthy organizational change.

0.50
St. George