Leadership Essentials
Lead with clarity, courage, and practical wisdom.
Leadership Essentials is a five-session, once-a-week course that distills the fundamentals of leading people and shaping organizational life. It’s fast-moving, pragmatic, and grounded in classic ideas and current practice. You’ll leave with usable tools, sharper judgment, and a clearer sense of what it means to lead well.
Who Should Enroll
Professionals, educators, and lifelong learners who want a concise, no-fluff leadership primer — especially those moving from managing tasks to leading people, or preparing for greater responsibility.
What You'll Learn
By the end of the course, you’ll have:
- A concise, working leadership philosophy you can explain in one minute
- Research-based tools for culture, motivation, and trust you can apply the same week
- Sharper diagnostic lenses for team dynamics and organizational realities
- A practical plan for moving from “good manager” to credible leader
Course Format
- Five weeks, one live session per week (75 minutes) on Zoom
- Dual-mode participation: join live or engage asynchronously via curated lectures, readings, and Canvas discussions — you can mix modes week to week
- Interactive: lecture → discussion → application exercise
- Time commitment: 2–3 hours/week
Live sessions: Wednesdays, 7:30–8:30 pm Eastern (January–February 2026), starting Jan. 14 and ending Feb. 11. Asynchronous option: weekly Canvas prompts and discussion boards Maximum enrollment: 50
Weekly topics (the five big ideas)
1. Identity and the work group
Humans are ultrasocial — we live, work, and decide within groups. Leadership starts with understanding the group’s identity, its pressures, and the individual–group tension that shapes behavior.
Tool: Five-question diagnostic.
2. Culture and Bureaucracy
Culture unifies through shared meanings; bureaucracy coordinates through roles, rules, and records. Great leaders challenge but also work with both.
Tool: BS gap mapper.
3. Motivation and Goals
Why people do the work — beyond carrots and sticks. We focus on three key needs (autonomy, competence, and connection), and the role of individual calculation (expectancy theory and equity theory), as well as the power of goals to align individual and collective effort.
Tool: Motivation audit.
4. Trust and Power
Good leaders build high-trust environments, where people can exchange ideas, take risks, and seek truth to solve problems. We’ll explore the two critical elements of building trust: safety and accountability. We also explore trust as the foundation of durable power, and consider alternatives.
Tool: Trust matrix.
5. From Managing to Leading
Managing is a commitment to help people and groups solve problems; leadership accelerates this and takes on future uncertainty, as well. We’ll explore critical managerial competencies, and what it means to grapple with uncertainty.
Tool: Leadership 90-day action plan.
What to expect each week
- Pre-work (30–45 min): two short readings and brief video
- Live session (60 min): ideas → discussion → application
- Post-work (30–45 min): a short exercise you can try immediately
Instructor
Dr. Michael Harvey — professor of leadership and organizational behavior; writer and consultant focused on leadership as agentic inquiry and the practical craft of leading people.