COURSE NUMBER: MBA291T.1B

 

COURSE TITLE: Leadership and Personal Development

 

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1.0

 

INSTRUCTOR: Cort Worthington

 

E-MAIL ADDRESS: cort@haas.berkeley.edu  

 

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION:  http://bspace.berkeley.edu

 

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME:

Mondays 2:00 – 4:00PM during Spring B (March 15 – May 10)

 

PREREQUISITE(S): None.

 

CLASS FORMAT: lectures, discussion, interactive exercises.

 

REQUIRED READINGS: books, articles, and supplementary materials.

 

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: participation, reflective written assignments, potential midterm and final.

 

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: 

Leadership begins at home, with self-exploration and self knowledge.  Great leaders know themselves in ways that count—their strengths, vulnerabilities, values, vision, their passions and aspirations. 

 

Great leaders also know how to grow.  How to challenge themselves, how to experiment with new behaviors, how to take risks and learn from defeats, all while empowering others to do the same.

 

LEADERSHIP AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT is a 1-credit Haas elective open to all full time MBA students.  This class focuses on your personal leadership journey:

 

·       examining the forces that shaped you into who you are today

·       critically assessing your current skills and talents, and uncovering strengths and weaknesses that impact your personal efficacy

·       crafting a compelling, long-term vision for who you want to become as a person and as a leader…decades into the future

 

This course takes inspiration from two highly successful leadership classes taught elsewhere:  Stanford Business School’s most popular elective Interpersonal Dynamics, and Harvard Business School’s MBA course Authentic Leadership. 

 

The class requires that students be willing to shed defenses and courageously look at who they are and how they want to be in the world.  Through lecture, discussion, reflective exercises, and interpersonal activities, students will acquire skills that will serve them throughout their lives:

 

·       how to take interpersonal risks in order to grow

·       how to seek and deliver impactful interpersonal feedback

·       how to create trust, providing coaching and mentorship to others

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: 

A leadership consultant and Haas lecturer, Cort Worthington was co-founder of toy company Primordial, LLC, where he served as Director of Operations.  Prior to teaching at Berkeley, he worked for many years as a film producer, directing documentary crews around the world.  Cort also spent fourteen seasons leading elite teams as a wilderness forest fire fighter and parachuting U.S. Forest Smokejumper.  He is a long time practitioner of improvisational theater.

 

Cort holds an MA in Communication from Stanford University, an MBA from Columbia Business School, and an MBA from U.C. Berkeley.  His organizational client list includes Exxon Mobil, Oracle, the U.S. Army, Kaiser Permanente, and Sun Microsystems.  He teaches the popular Berkeley business course Improvisational Leadership, as well as Executive Leadership for the Berkeley-Columbia MBA program.  Professor Worthington can be reached at cort@haas.berkeley.edu.