COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 291T-12

COURSE TITLE: Leader as Coach: New Skills for New Leadership Roles

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 Unit

INSTRUCTORS: Mark Rittenberg; Thomas Fitzpatrick; Maya Pandya; Susan Houlihan

E-MAIL ADDRESSESrittenbe@haas.berkeley.edu

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Sundays 9/11 & 10/2 from 9AM – 6PM

Please note the unorthodox format of this course, which meets all day on two Sundays. You must attend both sessions in their entirety in order to earn a passing grade. 

PREREQUISITE(S): None

This course description is from Spring 2016 and should only be used as a reference.

CLASS FORMAT: Leadership is a scarce resource in today’s workplace. Excellent leadership involves a synergistic combination of agentic skills (getting the work done) and people skills.

There are plenty of leaders who have learned the essential analytic tools necessary for leadership. However there are far fewer leaders who are skilled in motivating and developing employees so that these individuals can unleash their potential in order to maximize their performance.

To achieve these sorts of results leaders can learn to become trusted advisors and coaches for their people.

Coaching involves direct interaction with a person, team or unit with the goal of identifying talent, developing skills, and deepening knowledge within people and across people and units. In addition, coaching often addresses removing barriers that are preventing the individual or work group from achieving desired results.

This course focuses on the art and science of coaching including theory and practice. The curriculum will cover theory and practice for three aspects of the coaching process – knowledge-based (information and skills), motivation-based (inspiration and passion), and strategy-based (communication and integration).

The course will enable course participants to become skilled coaches for peers, work groups and direct reports. The curriculum will focus on primary coaching skills. tools, processes and behaviors that a coach uses. In addition, participants will learn facilitation skills as the preferred methodology in achieving successful coaching programs.

Course participants will have the opportunity to utilize this material in practice coaching sessions with supervision and feedback from peers and the instructor.
Topics to be addressed and worked with in the coaching process include the roles of a trusted advisor, creative problem solving, interpersonal barriers (what is holding a person back), people skills, relationship building, dialogue skills, negotiation tools, managing conflict and teamwork.

Course Objectives:

  1. Become a coach who can help others maximize their performance.
  2. Create individualized coaching programs.
  3. Develop dialogue and relationship building skills leading to a better understanding of others.
  4. Coach with presence and communicate effectively.
  5. Negotiate conflicts effectively and creatively.
  6. Understand the roles of a coach (sponsor, mentor, appraiser, role model, and teacher).
  7. Analyze competencies and assess development needs.
  8. Unlock the potential of the workforce through coaching.
  9. Work with emotional intelligence in becoming a trusted advisor.
  10. Utilize coaching as a management strategy.

REQUIRED READINGS: TBD

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
1. Attendance at all hours of the course. 50% 
2. Facilitate three coaching sessions back in the workplace.. Submission of essay relating a narrative of these sessions linking the process of activities and text references discussed in class. 50% 

Grading:
50% based on in class participation 
50% based on written assignment 

Assignments:
Prior to the first class:
1. Read the two Harvard Business Review articles attached under course materials in www.study net
a. Managing the Human Sigma
b. Authentic Leadership and “Your Crucible Story”-Learning from Mistakes
Between First and Second Class
1. Read Chapter 8 in the Trusted Advisor 
2. Review the coaching skills, tools and coaching development plan sections from the Leader as Coach course manual. 

Written Assignment:
Conduct three coaching sessions when you return to the workplace. It could be three separate sessions or all three sessions with one person or with one group. In your journal, track what took place in the coaching session—i.e. did you set the stage properly, were you able to embrace what your coachee wanted to work on, were you telling and counseling vs. facilitating, coaching, using the skills and the tools, skills and principles, and finally the outcome of each session. How present were you? What worked? What could have been better?

Utilize the coaching report in Leader as Coach to track what took place in the coaching session. Make sure to ask your coachee for feedback as to how the session went for them.

Use the data collected in the three coaching sessions to write a short essay where you link what happened in the coaching sessions to the various principles, skills and tools covered in class and in the reading material. Write a short review of your overall performance as a coach. Articulate the strengths you feel you used as a coach and where you need to get better. Make sure to write about what actions your coachee took as a result of the coaching session.

Essay is between 3-5 type written pages. Participants should e-mail or post the essays to mark_rittenbeerg@haas.berkeley.edu. Or mail them to Mark Rittenberg, 2328 Ward Street, Berkeley, CA 94705

If you would like your paper returned with comments, please post the essay and enclose two copies and self-addressed stamped envelope.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Dr, Mark Rittenberg is on the professional faculty of the Walter Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, where he heads the Leadership Communications program for the Evening & Weekend MBA students as well as for the students of the MBA for Executives Program.

His executive coaching practice includes clients from Sandia National Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Corporation, GAP Inc., Transnet Corporation (South Africa), Sasol Corporation (South Africa) and the ATandT Corporation. In addition, he trains executive coaches and directs the Executive Coaching Institute through the Center for Executive Education, University of California, Berkeley.

In 1985, Professor Rittenberg was visiting Artist and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where he conducted seminars in the Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Business School. In 1993, he was awarded the J. William Fulbright Senior Scholar awarded by the United States Information Agency and traveled to Soweto, South Africa, where he served as Diversity Specialist in building black/white relationships in South African corporations and education institutions. He returned to South Africa in 1994, 1995, and 1996 in order to implement Active Communicating Educational Programs as a communication intervention to assist corporate and political leadership in the transition to a multicultural, democratic, non-racial South Africa. His doctorate in International and Multicultural Education is based on his work in South Africa.

Dr. Rittenberg evolved the ACTIVE COMMUNICATING methodology from his own background as an actor and director. The methodology draws upon acting skills and anthropological principles in skilling managers, aspiring leaders and the critical mass in becoming both powerful communicators and authentic leaders. He currently provides educational programs and executive coaching programs for corporations including, Lucent Technologies, ATandT, The Gap, Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin and Sandia National Laboratories. In addition he heads an annual Executive Coaching Institute at UC Berkeley where he trains new executive coaches as well as executives who want to avail themselves of a coaching training in order to become more effective leaders.

Recently he served as chief designer and consultant for the National Principals Leadership academy conducted at Washington University in June 2009 dedicated to high school principals becoming coaches and mentors for teachers teaching in disadvantaged situations. The leadership academy was funded in part by President Obama’s White House initiative dedicated to building better schools through outstanding leadership.