A higher education leadership development course was designed to produce student behavioral transformation.
Often the higher education classroom experience is disconnected from the real world. The practice of leadership and management is about action—to be effective, students must develop behavioral components to accompany their academic learning. To bridge this gap, I designed a leadership development course for MBA student managers that emphasized action and personal change.
The opportunity
Nineteen students enrolled in the advanced leadership course, which was part of an evening MBA program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. All students held management positions and had been working in these roles for some time. Learning objectives included nudging students out of their comfort zones, modifying students' outlook and behavior, and helping students to build self-esteem and self-confidence as leaders.
At the beginning of the course, I asserted that change first happens within—that is, within students' hearts. This "heart focus" underlies most interpersonal, group, and even larger organizational relationships. My premise was that students with leadership aspirations must engage their uncertainties and discomforts, the angst of human interaction, and the anguish of innermost change.
The solution
In his book Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within, Robert Quinn writes: "One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change ... a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment." He advocates the need for managers to confront the fear of change, which he describes as "a time of quiet terror and inner reflection."
Ask leaders in any organization about the defining moments of their leadership development, and they will tell you about a series of gut-wrenching realizations, difficult encounters with an individual or group, growing awareness of the need for behavior modification, and sometimes even the loss of their jobs. Quinn regards such encounters as part of the "heroic journey."
He writes: "The hero's journey is a story of individual transformation, a change of identity. In embarking on the journey we must leave the world of certainty. We must courageously journey to a strange place where there are a lot of risks and much is at stake."
To teach leadership, instructors first must seriously explore their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I have undergone such personal examination via training groups, self-development workshops, and discussions with supervisors, family, and trusted friends. And, after facilitating organizational change projects and receiving candid participant feedback, I have found my hero's journey to be acutely unsettling and instructive.
With my own experience of inner transformation as a backdrop, I could genuinely empathize with and contain students' discomfort and fear, encourage their inner exploration, and embolden their experimentation with behavioral change.
The process
Lecture was a small portion of the course's learning equation. I reminded students that management and leadership are not about how much you know, but about how you do the hard things. I worked to engage students in situations that made them feel uneasy and incorporated a host of in-class simulations and exercises through the following methods.
Outside the comfort zone. I assured students that moving outside of their comfort zones would enable them to experience emotional and behavioral change. I used an egg-shaped diagram called Pressure Zones (see below). The lowest level is the comfort zone, followed by the nervous zone, the stress zone, and then the collapse zone where everything falls in on itself—not a good place to be. I guaranteed students that during the term they would live outside of the comfort zone and within the nervous zone—"the anxious quarter."
My own stories. The instructor's challenge is to balance the academic and the pragmatic. To illustrate leadership concepts and skills, I re-enacted real-life incidents I had encountered as a leader or consultant. I played all of the roles—supervisor, manager, team member, consultant, and participant. In groups, students represented different organization functions or departments while I role-played the scenarios.
Because students were managers, supervisors, or business owners, they could relate to my stories. They offered examples of their own and asked insightful questions. More important, many applied what we talked about to their own management roles. They returned to class with stories of the many surprises, disappointments, and victories that they had experienced.
Personal change experiments. To give change experiments some structure, I assigned students project objectives, which included:
- creating a current snapshot of management strengths and weaknesses based on self-assessment tests, external feedback, and self-reflections
- choosing a well-bounded skill appropriate for a semester-long personal-change project—a skill that required them to interact with others and stretch beyond their comfort zone
- showing evidence that demonstrated some behavioral improvement.
The following accounts are examples of two students' personal change experiments.
- "Anticipatory conflicts were my primary problems. I did not want to admit it, but I was afraid that my businesses would fail or I would burn out or die before being able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I was even scared of my personal life crumbling. I had to let go of the things that I could not change, and tackle the things that I could. For example, I made sure that I spent more time with my wife. This allowed us to talk about what was going on. I mentioned that I was using a small-wins strategy to help improve our communication. I began to develop the ability to break down my stress into smaller units that I could handle."
- "I've realized that it will be necessary to improve my supportive communications skills, particularly in the areas of congruence and owning communication. In the past I didn't realize that I had weaknesses in this area, so I wasn't conscious about the impression I was giving, and I didn't seek ways to improve. Upon reflection, I determined that I had a tendency to disown hard decisions, and I frequently used "we said" and "they said" messages. I've begun to consciously use first-person words to show that I own and support my decisions. Not only does my staff appreciate this more direct and honest approach, but I command more respect from my management and peers as well."
Results and lessons learned
The course concluded with term papers in which students wrote detailed descriptions of their behavioral change experiments and reactions. Through the following questions, I encouraged students to explore their gut feelings, emotional reactions, personal insights, and experiences that were pleasing and affirming as well as disturbing and disquieting.
- What did I do differently?
- What was my experience?
- What did I learn about myself?
- What do I want to change about myself?
Students' self-improvement commentaries illustrated the vibrancy of their behavioral change experiences. For example, one student wrote: "When I first started changing, I did not mention it to anyone. I had one employee actually ask me if I was dying. I could not believe it—had I changed that much?" Another wrote: "The few skills that I implemented and practiced were immediately noticed by my management and even recognized in my evaluation. It wasn't a grand slam of a review, but it validated that coaching skills are something I need to continue to work on."
Finally, to condense and quantify the many qualitative student narratives, I conducted a content analysis of their papers and created a frequency table of change themes. The key measure—"behavioral change noticed by others"—was reported by 37 percent of the students. Another third (32 percent) reported reduced stress as their stress management skills improved. And one-quarter (26 percent) said that they procrastinated less, thereby reducing stress and improving their work-life balance.
My goal to move students out of their comfort zones was rewarded when many achieved observable behavior transformation. Moreover, not only did students experience significant personal change, but their modified behavior also became evident to others in their workplaces and homes. Their risk investment (and mine) paid measurable dividends.
