Group & Organizational Dynamics for Transformational Business Leadership

Course Number: MBA 172

Program Prerequisite: MBA 100, MBA 132

Corequisite: PL05

Credits: 7 Credits

Course Description:

This course takes you into the Wright Graduate University’s unique definition of leadership, the capacity of every individual to influence the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. In other words, we are all leading all the time. You grow as a leader by identifying the gaps between desired outcomes and actual results. You learn and grow as you apply the Evolating process to expand your communication, leadership, supervisory, teaming, coaching, and management skills to bridge the gap and develop as an increasingly effective business professional. Learning means you discover what you know now that you did not know before. Growing means developing new or expanded thinking, feeling, and actions or applying current skills in unimagined new areas. We refer to the five hats of leadership—managing, supervising, training, coaching, and teaming. You will learn more about these five hats as you progress as a business leader, trainer, coach, and leader.

Through self-assessment, case studies, theoretical modeling, and analysis of personally-applied assignments, and observing and intervening real-time in groups to which you belong, you dive into the world of thinkers on leadership as you study yourself and others through reading and in performative learning situations.

Before reading about other views of group dynamics and leadership, you dive in as a scholar practitioner experiencing, then analyzing group dynamics—also becoming an applied social scientist. You plan and track your personal transformation in your Purposeful Leadership Planner. You learn to use historical and emerging leadership principles and technologies to deepen your understanding of the leadership resources you have at your disposal. You learn the four components of Transformational Leadership and how Transformational Leadership differs from Transactional Leadership. You deepen your understanding and application of Evolating as you further deploy your Purposeful Leadership Process (PLP) to facilitate your own Evolating and leadership effectiveness. As you explore how to be a more effective leader in every area of your life, you influence others to do the same. You also study the models, mechanisms, and dynamics of groups and identify the conscious and unconscious behaviors that influence group functioning. Most students comment after taking this course, that they could never see themselves or group dynamics the same again.

Taking this course, you join decades of leaders who have similarly begun or enhanced their personal leadership journey through this personally engaged study of applied group process. They have become international leaders of their professional associations, national leaders in governance, leading economic theorists, professors, highly successful entrepreneurs, and philanthropists.