SEMESTER: Fall 2019
COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 291T-12
COURSE TITLE: Leader as Coach: New Skills for New Leadership Roles
UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 unit
INSTRUCTORS: Mark Rittenberg, Susan Houlihan
E-MAIL ADDRESSES: rittenbe@haas.berkeley.edu , susan_houlihan@berkeley.edu
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Sundays 9AM - 5PM on 11/3 and 12/1
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: EWMBA 200C – Leadership Communications
CAREER FIELD:
CLASS FORMAT: Coaching studies, coaching skills and techniques, coaching practicum, lectures and live demonstrations.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE CONTENTS AND OBJECTIVES:
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
REQUIRED READINGS:
Maister, David H., Green, Charles H., Galford, Robert M. – THE TRUSTED ADVISOR (Free Press @2000) - Book
Rittenberg, Mark A. - THE LEADER AS COACH (Course Manual, Corporate Scenes, Inc., Berkeley, California) – on Study.Net
Downey, Myles – EFFECTIVE COACHING – LESSONS FROM THE COACH’S COACH (Texere Publishing, 3rd revised edition, 15 Nov 2003) – chapters on Study.Net
STUDY.NET COURSE READER
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
50% based on in class participation
50% based on written assignments & coaching exam
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.