The First Two of Five Pre-Course Readings For The 'Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological / Phenomenological Model' Course

Abstract

This paper is the fifth of five pre-course readings for our leadership course.The intention of this one semester leadership course is to leave participants actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. By “natural self-expression” we mean a way of being and acting in any leadership situation that is a spontaneous and intuitive effective response to what one is dealing with. The course is based on a new science of leadership. In addition to being designed to actually create leaders, this new science of leadership enables faculty in higher education to access, study, research, and teach being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership as these are actually lived and experienced.History of the Course:This course was first developed by the authors at the University of Rochester Simon School of Business, New York, USA, from 2004 to 2008, working each year with 70 to 115 undergraduates, graduate students, administrators, alumni, business executives and consultants, and faculty from various academic institutions. The course was taught in the curriculum at the United States Air Force Academy since 2008; at Erasmus Academie Rotterdam, Netherlands, in June 2009 (a version of which was also taught at the Erasmus University Law School from 2009 and 2010); at Texas AM in India under the auspices of the IC Centre for Governance and MW Corporation in November 2010; at the Dartmouth College Medical School, USA, in June 2012; at the University of British Columbia's entrepreneurship@UBC, Canada in June 2013; at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in July 2014; at the Zayed University Convention Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in January 2015; and at Clemson University School of Business in Clemson, South Carolina, USA, in June 2016. Courses offered for the benefit of the Erhard-Jensen Ontological / Phenomenological Initiative include: Whistler, B.C. Canada in October 2012; Bermuda in November 2014; and Cancun, Mexico in October 2013 and December 2015. The promise of the course is to leave participants actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression and our intention is for the course to contribute to the development of the science of leadership. The course is founded on an ontological / phenomenological model of human nature.Our desire is to make the course available to faculty in higher education to teach it, to communicate it and to extend it. This material is not fully complete nor is it polished to our standards. We are releasing the material so that we can benefit from the comments, criticisms and suggestions of others in higher education who share our desire to accelerate the development of a true science of leadership. We want to see this material (or material derived from it) taught in every major business school and university.While the course is still a work in progress, we, the authors and instructors, are making all the materials available through SSRN (Social Science Research Network) to those faculty members who wish to teach versions of the course in a university or college setting.