This course explores the question “What does it take to be a great leader and manager of teams?” Organizational effectiveness is directly tied to the quality of teamwork that occurs within the organization, but it is not uncommon to miss a key reflection: “How am I contributing to the negative and positive outcomes the team is experiencing?”

Leading Effective Teams is designed to teach you a series of skills and frameworks that will help you diagnose, personally and collectively, the key barriers and strengths that are leading to your current outcomes. You will be expected to use teams you are currently a member of as a laboratory to try some of the techniques, and be prepared to report back to the other participants about the effects you observed.

• How to identify key features of teams which enable you to become a more astute observer of groups
• How to analyze your leadership style and teams in your own context to enable flexibility in your management techniques and strategies
• How to apply these analyses and tools to strategically enact change
• Managing conflict in teams
• Team structures and norms

This course will use video lectures, exercises (team experiments and reflection pieces), and assessments. Although being on a working team is important, you do not necessarily need to be the leader to take this course. In fact, you may even use your family or friends for some of these exercises to understand how you operate more broadly. Regardless of the team, you must be willing to leverage the course content to honestly, and authentically, engage your team in new ways.