COURSE NUMBER: MBA291T.1B
COURSE TITLE: Interpersonal Skills and Embodied Leadership
UNITS OF CREDIT: 2
INSTRUCTOR: Erica Peng
E-MAIL ADDRESS: erica_peng@haas.berkeley.edu
PREREQUISITE(S): None
CAREER FIELD: Developing
interpersonal skills is foundational to being more effective
and successful in personal and professional relationships and in all
career fields.
ATTENDANCE POLICY: Attendance to the
entirety of each session over all three days is required. You must be able to
attend the entire first day of class in order to participate in the course. Due
to the experiential nature of this course, safety and rapport amongst
participants is critical to enable learning and stretching. Building
psychological safety and a foundation of basic skills begins immediately and
continues throughout the three days.
CLASS FORMAT: This course is structured as a 3-day intensive with additional
1:1 skills practice 2x week for seven weeks following the 3-day class. The
format is majority experiential learning supported by readings and conceptual
frameworks drawn from research in areas relevant to interpersonal communication
and effective leadership:
Experiential
learning occurs through experiential activities and skills practice, both 1:1
and in an innovative ten person small-group learning lab called T Group
(“training group”). There are also five required written assignments:
ABSTRACT OF COURSE
CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: While many can describe what “good leadership” looks
like, far fewer understand the actual skills and behaviors that enable us to be
effective and influential, as well as connect with the humanity in ourselves
and in others. In a spirit of learning and discovery,
the instructor and facilitator/coaches will support you to develop
awareness, skills, and behaviors foundational to leading teams, organizations –
and your own life and career progression – from a place of inspiration,
empathy, and dignity.
The
cornerstone of this course is practicing
awareness, skills, and mindsets, both 1:1 and in a small group learning lab
called T Group (“Training Group” – see description below). Be prepared to
proactively share meaningful personal experience and learnings with your
classmates during the three-day class, as well as through 1:1 Partner Practice
for 8 weeks after the three-day intensive to support continued development.
Experiential
learning that arises in-the-moment often involves uncertainty, ambiguity, and
discomfort. The course format provides an opportunity to practice and
strengthen being more comfortable with discomfort, a core leadership skill that
helps builds resilience and capacity, critical for being effective in moments
of stress and uncertainty amidst the growing complexity of our global context.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In
the course you will have opportunities to practice the following:
·
Learn
how to drive your own process of learning and development through identifying
goals, setting intention for practice, and taking calibrated risks in areas
that include: personal sharing, listening with empathy, getting curious,
expressing appreciation, giving and receiving feedback, owning the impact of
one’s actions and behaviors.
·
Voice awareness about your emotional reactions and what
tends to evoke them.
·
Manage and “regulate” emotional
reactivity that can derail you from being present and effective, through
individual and interpersonal practices.
·
Transform internalized insecurity,
doubt, guilt, inner critic, etc. that gets in the way of interpersonal
engagement and connection, and having impact and influence as a leader.
·
Develop
self-awareness and interpersonal skills to build safety, trust, and rapport, towards
creating environments
where people feel engaged, appreciated, and motivated to share and contribute
to goals.
·
Give and receive feedback as a
collaborative process of learning how to align impact with intention.
·
Better understand how social identity,
power, and status impact reactions and behaviors that manifest at the individual,
interpersonal, and team level.
T Group
The T Group format
enables participants to practice self-awareness, self-regulation, and
interpersonal skills as they engage and interact directly with each other, with
the guidance of professional T Group facilitator/coaches. This format requires
active participation vs. learning through observation. Enrolling in this course
is agreement to stretch out of your comfort zone to practice new skills and
behaviors, to support learning for yourself and others.
T Group is the pillar
of the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics course (affectionately referred to by
students as “Touchy Feely”) at Stanford University Graduate School of Business
(GSB). Taught for over 50 years, alumni consistently rate it the course that
has most contributed to their development as leaders in personal and
professional arenas.
Why is T Group an effective format?
· T Group is a supportive learning
environment where participants can take some risks to practice desired skills
and competencies with a frame of learning and practice vs. “getting it right.”
Participants can request immediate feedback from facilitators and other
participants. This is a profoundly effective and powerful process for group members to learn about how they impact others, and what
behaviors are effective and influential (or not).
· Through feedback, participants become aware of unconscious “blind spots”
and bias in reactions, behaviors, and verbal and non-verbal communication.
· Skilled and experienced
facilitators build safety, provide
skilled in-the-moment coaching, model effective behaviors, and raise
awareness by pointing out interpersonal and group dynamics, many of which are
shaped by social identity, power, and status of group
members.
· In the absence of structured
activities, the T Group format enables participants to practice skills and
behaviors as actual dynamics arise (vs. scripted role plays). This offers
opportunity to engage in the following ways:
o Build safety and trust among a
group of diverse individuals in a short amount of time
o Connect to and relate with each
others’ common humanity and shared experience
o Work through emotional reactivity
from difficult dynamics including social identity (race, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, etc.) and other dimensions of difference
(introversion/extroversion, level of and comfort with emotions and emotional
expressiveness, focus on task vs. relationships, etc.)
All these dynamics are present in
our teams and organizations – and families –
and unfortunately
most of us haven’t learned or practiced how to navigate them very successfully.
T Group is a safe learning environment that enables practice with coaching and
support.
How can I access TIES Student-to-Student comments about the course?
·
Log in to TIES and in the Student-to-Student comment
section, select course number: MBA291T.1
REQUIRED READINGS: Articles and
short videos (before and after the weekend class) will be available on bCourses in the StudyNet reader.
Materials cover interpersonal development topics and research including neuroscience,
psychology, emotions and interpersonal neurobiology, communication,
social identity and stereotypes, and leadership.
BASIS
FOR FINAL GRADE:
50% written work and 50% active engagement in your
and others’ learning.
15% Pre-class Assignment
10% Friday night Reflection Journal
20% Post-class Reflection Journal
5% Post-class Partner Practice learnings
*25% Ranking based on personal risk-taking in
support of your behavior/skill goals
*25% Ranking based on your contribution to your T
Group’s development by supporting others’ learning and development
*Final ranking: At
the end of the three-day intensive, you will complete two rankings for each
member of your T Group (including yourself) based on the following assessments:
1.
Level of personal risk-taking in
support of your practice goals (behaviors and/or skills)
2.
Contribution
to the T
Group’s development by supporting others’ learning and development
50% of your grade
will be based on these rankings, a reflection of your level of engagement and how you engage in T Group. Facilitators will also submit a ranking of the
members of their T Group. The data will not be shared amongst students but you
may request information about how you were ranked.
Note: Grades will conform to the recommended grading curve for
Haas elective courses.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: As a
leadership development coach and consultant, Erica believes that with Awareness
+ Practice + Feedback + Coaching, people can break free from unconscious and
limiting beliefs and behaviors that prevent us from manifesting our most
inspired and inspiring leadership. Erica’s expertise is supporting individuals
to develop both internal grounded presence and awareness,
along with external skills and competencies. She incorporates
somatic* awareness and whole body approaches to
develop embodied leadership behaviors and presence.
*The word
somatic means “of the body” and comes from the Greek root, soma.
Having
lived, worked, and traveled extensively in Asia, Latin America, and Europe,
Erica brings nuanced awareness and skill in navigating leadership, team, and
organizational challenges involving language, culture, social identity, and
other dimensions of difference.
Erica has
over ten years of experience facilitating and supporting the delivery of
interpersonal development courses at Haas School of Business, Stanford Graduate
School of Business (GSB), and University of San Francisco Law School. Through
her coaching and consulting practice, Deep Stream Leadership, Erica offers
high-impact experiential leadership development workshops based on the popular
"T Group" format. She also works with leaders and senior teams on
organizational culture change efforts, and supports clients to align core
skills, purpose, and values with career and leadership development.