MBE7041 - Personal development, leadership and communication

Objectives:

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

Critically explore theories of: team working, personal development, leadership and management.

Critically examine a range of strategies and approaches to improve the performance of self and others across diverse organisational contexts.

Critically appraise your role as a manager and reflect your role as an effective manager/leader.

Critically assess the importance of effective communication in teams.

Create a professional development plan for yourself and your team.

Content:

The aim of the module is to enable the apprentice to develop themselves, including their leadership and communication skills.

Personal development
Apprentices will assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realise and maximise their potential. Apprentices will create a personal development plan.

Leadership
The theoretical part of the module will focus on the critical overview of traditional approaches to leadership, such as trait, situational and process theories, as well as wide-ranging consideration of new approaches, which conceptualise leadership as separate from authority and management, such as Shared/Distributed Leadership, Servant Leadership, and Narrative Leadership. A critical analysis of ethical and values based leadership and principles of corporate social responsibility which underpins organisational strategy will be expected.

Communication
Apprentices will focus on listening skills, emotional intelligence, teamwork, negotiation skills and non verbal communication.

Ethical practices and management of risk are core underpinning themes which should be addressed in all of the modules within this apprenticeship programme

The KSBs from the Systems Thinking Apprenticeship Standard include

S9: Developing self • Applies techniques for structured personal reflexive practice, to monitor and develop knowledge, skills and self-awareness.

S10: Leading, communicating and influencing • Educates and influences stakeholders to participate effectively in challenging and ambiguous situations, including managing confrontation and conflict constructively. • Creates effective teams. Orients intervention teams to the organisational / social / political and cultural context. Leverages strengths and develops alliances. • Translates systems models and representations into comprehensible language for stakeholders; adapt communication method to audience. • Explains the benefits, principles and skills of systems approaches to stakeholders and participants in an intervention in order to guide them through a systems intervention

B1: Develops self and practice • Engages in structured reflection, monitoring and regulating own thought processes and understanding. Aware of the effect of own and others' biases and of the mirroring effect of clients’ problems.

B2: Courage and constructive challenge • Prepared to identify and challenge formal and informal centres of power and authority. Willing to constructively challenge assumptions, norms, claims and arguments. • Adjusts the degree of challenge against political considerations, to achieve maximum achievable effect with minimum levels of damage. Balances confidence, challenge and humility during interventions. Fosters reflection in others.

B3: Curious and innovative • Interested in creative solutions; explores areas of ambiguity and complexity. Seeks innovative solutions and approaches. Develops and tests multiple hypotheses.

B4: Professional • Seeks to balance the needs of different stakeholders irrespective of personal bias. Regularly assesses ethical issues in interventions. Adheres to professional standards.

B5: Adaptable and cognitively flexible • Enjoys working on ill-defined and/or unbounded problem situations. Is comfortable with high degrees of uncertainty and with working on a variety of situations of interest. • Accepts change and innovation; actively considers new approaches to solving problems. • Takes an adaptable approach to inquiring, intervening and stakeholder engagement. • Aware of possible unintended consequences resulting from acting in complex environments. Avoids over-attachment to particular, pre-determined or expected outcomes.

B6: Practical • Takes a ‘real-world’ approach to the application of system models and to the design of interventions. Appreciative of constraints affecting the situation of interest.

B7: Resilient • Remains motivated to make a difference when facing conflict between client and stakeholders, or a lack of will to engage with the initiative, or the client’s lack of willingness to take a systems approach. • Accepts that “goal posts move”, and that unstable conditions are normal.

B8: Collaborative • Is participative and inclusive of others; sensitive to relational dynamics; encourages dialogue and co-operation across diverse people and groups; seeks positive win/win outcomes.

B9: Open-minded • Embraces and seeks out diversity; enjoys exploration of multiple perspectives

Learning and Teaching Information:

The sessions will be organised in teaching blocks. Lectures will deliver core theoretical frameworks, followed by tutorials and personal exercises for reflection and development. Tutorials will be designed to support learners to be self-directed in additional research and with particular emphasis on research within their own employing organisation.

The module will present students with selected scenarios for basic analysis in order to develop both analytical competence and the ability to identify and apply appropriate techniques in a range of typical situations.

The module will make use of case studies and developing business trends and so the nature of the topics and exercises will vary. Students will be provided with, and/or directed to, relevant reading and additional questions/ exercises to support their progress through the module material.

Lectures
Hours: 24
Intended group size: Cohort

Guided independent study
Hours: 176

Further details relating to assessment
Within the assessments for the module, because the programme is an apprenticeship and therefore some of the assessment may relate specifically to the organisation in which the apprentice works, it may be beneficial to encourage the apprentices to submit the assessment using different mediums such as blogs, vlogs and podcasts.

Students will be offered formative feedback throughout the module in order to help them to achieve successful coverage of the apprenticeship standard’s KSBs in conjunction with the modules aims and outcomes. This will be done via formal sessions and also via online interactions on the Moodle platform and the use of tools such as email and Microsoft Teams.

Assessment:

Fact File

Module Coordinator - PRS_CODE=
Level - 7
Credit Value - 10
Pre-Requisites - NONE
Semester(s) Offered -

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