COURSE NUMBER: MBA 291T-11

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

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 Unit

INSTRUCTORS: Mark Rittenberg & Susan Houlihan

E-MAIL ADDRESSES: susan_houlihan@mba.berkeley.edu

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

CAREER FIELD:

This course is useful for anyone who wants to understand the different roles they play as leaders, with a deep dive in developing the skills of the coach to use coaching and active listening skills with employees, peers and groups.
It is applicable across all disciplines

REQUIRED READINGS: HBR articles and course reader.

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:

Become a coach who can help others maximize their performance and unlock the potential of the workforce.
Develop dialogue and relationship building skills leading to a better understanding of others.
Coach with presence and communicate effectively.
Understand the roles of the leader (coach, mentor, supporter, advisor).
Work with emotional intelligence in becoming a trusted advisor.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
50% based on in class participation
50% based on written assignments & coaching exam

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Dr. Mark Rittenberg
Dr. Rittenberg is CEO of Corporate Scenes, Inc. and is the designer of ACTIVE COMMUNICATING corporate education programs. He served for seven years as Associate Professor at Lesley College Graduate School. He currently serves on the core faculty of the Walter Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley where he heads the Leadership Communications program for the evening/weekend MBA students as well as for the MBA for Executives Program.

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, AT&T, 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.

Susan Houlihan is on the professional faculty of the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches in the Leadership Communications program for the Evening & Weekend MBA students as well as for the students of the MBA for Executives Program with Dr. Mark Rittenberg. She leads a Leadership Communications program for Undergraduate students. Susan is an Instructor at UC Berkeley Executive Education and serves on the Faculty of the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. She is a Guest Lecturer at the School of Creative Leadership in Berlin, and has taught in UC Berkeley School of Data Science, UC Berkeley Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership, and UCLA Anderson School of Management. She also heads up the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute strategic operations.

Susan Houlihan is a communications consultant, executive coach, and electrical engineer who leverages her 15+ years working in engineering and operations in the high-tech sector in Silicon Valley to bring a perspective firmly rooted in business applications to her consulting and coaching work.

Susan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from University College of Cork in Ireland, an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and is a certified Executive Coach from the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute.

In addition to one-on-one executive coaching, Susan facilitates leadership, communications and coaching workshops as well as communications coaching of presentation skills, working with clients on the material (e.g. Powerpoint) and the delivery (content, verbal and non-verbal).

A native of Ireland now based in the US, Susan is an experienced cross-cultural communicator, who has worked extensively with individuals and Fortune 500 companies in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Clients include Salesforce.com, Adobe, Facebook, Biorad, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital of Oakland, Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, Peterson CAT, Financial Women of San Francisco, IEEE, UCSF, UC Hastings, Genentech, Novartis, Cypress Semiconductor, Ideo, McKinsey (Dubai), Fattals (Lebanon), Odgers Bernstein (Russia), Siam Cement (Thailand), and The Berlin School (Germany).

Susan is excited to work with people to uncover their passions, explore their values, move past their obstacles, and build a fulfilling personal and professional life.