Business Leadership 2
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Course Introduction

 

Core Standards of the Course

Strand 1
Creating a Positive Culture - Students will understand and implement strategies that create a positive work culture.

Standard 1
Make a Plan

1. Hire well: Choose the right person for the right job. Give employees autonomy, the ability to work independently, and trust them to get the work done.
   
2. Create a Clear Map: Provide a detailed description of the destination or company vision.
   
3. Have a shared progress report: A goal that all are working to achieve and is in alignment with the company’s goals.
   
4. Keep repeating the Plan: promote the staff internalizing or owning the plan by repeating it frequently.
   

Standard 2
Create Culture
Describe the basic steps for creating an organization’s culture.

1. Create your cultural values
   
2. Commit to stick to them
   
3. Have Credibility, be accountable for your commitment to build and create the culture
   

Standard 3
Have Crucial Conversations
Explore the ways a crucial conversation between two or more people can affect culture. Crucial conversions occur when stakes are high, opinions differ and emotions run strong. These conversations are also difficult because the decisions made have potential for negative consequence and impact.

Performance Skill
Research the culture of an organization by reading and listening to current media and present the findings to the class.

Strand 2
Building effective teams - Students will explore effective team building strategies

Standard 1
Discuss various team titles and responsibilities for effective teams.

Standard 2
Explain the "why" when assigning a task (TASC) and support team members in accomplishing action items.

T- Who owns the task?
A- Do they have the authority to be accountable?
S- Do they agree that they are set up for success?
C- Do they have a checklist of what needs to happen to accomplish the task?

Standard 3
Provide effective feedback as part of a team. Explore the two main types of feedback

1. Constructive feedback, feedback that suggests improvement or need for change
   
   • Identify the issue
   • Stress the importance
   • Agree on a way forward
2. Positive feedback, feedback that encourages continuing a given behavior and action
   
   • Be specific
   • Give positive feedback often
   • Be sincere tone and motivation

Performance Skill
Students will assume the role of team leader for a specific industry or new business. In a case study or scenario. Have students evaluate roles and responsibilities that are needed and go through the TASC questions for each and determine a method for feedback.

Strand 3
Leadership Employability Skills - Students will define and develop essential leadership skills for employment.

Standard 1
Understanding the role of leadership

1. Scope who and what are you responsible for?
   
2. Success Measurement How will you determine success in your role?
   

Standard 2
Communication Skills
Students will explore business communication methods and the appropriate application of those methods.

1. Verbal: Tone, Word choice, Sarcasm use,
   
2. Written: Which type of writing is the most appropriate for the setting and audience.
   
3. Presentations: Use appropriate visual aids designed to focus and draw attention, layouts should be simple and easy to follow, adding to the presentation
   
4. Running a meeting: set an agenda, determine norms of behavior, give opportunities for team members to speak, determine how decisions will be made by consensus or leader decides.
   

Standard 3
Making informed decisions

1. Data driven decision making (DDDM): is defined as using facts, metrics, and data to guide strategic business decisions that align with your goals, objectives, and initiatives.
   
2. Feedback from your team: When feedback is regularly used to make decisions, engagement rises, productivity increases, and organizations become more closely aligned with the values.
   

Standard 4
Accountability

1. Scheduled performance reviews: Annual performance reviews that are held consistently can provide an opportunity to discuss the performance of the employee and to receive informal feedback on the direction of your leadership.
   
2. ROWE: Results Only Work Environment. This work environment is all about accountability. Instead of requiring time from employees to earn their pay it looks at the productivity and the actual outcomes that an employee’s efforts provide toward the businesses goals.
   
3. Constructive Criticism, corrective feedback that is given in a positive way to help employees to improve their performance.
   
4. Anonymous Surveys, when given from employees to leaders can help to provide feedback on the direction of the business and the leader. The anonymity allows for a safe place to be completely honest about how they feel with no repercussions
   
5. Peer to Peer feedback, oftentimes a team must interact or take work from another team. The need for good collaborative relationships in this process is essential. Peer to Peer feedback provides a horizontal vs a vertical alignment in values and goals.
   

Performance Skill
Students will utilize one of the above feedback strategies for a class, CTSO, or club project. As the leader they can gain feedback from their employees to improve the project in the future. Students will provide a description of the feedback they choose and some of the responses they received.

Strand 4
Consensus Building and Change Management - Students will explore strategies for consensus building and change management in a team or organization

Standard 1
Consensus Building, a process involving a good-faith effort to meet the interests of all stakeholders and seek a unanimous agreement.

1. Steps to building consensus:
   
   • Convening, coming together
   • Clarifying Responsibilities, who has what jobs, actions or decisions
   • Deliberating, discuss and listen
   • Deciding, determining what is the best course of action
   • Implementing Agreements, put decisions in action
   • Organizational Learning and Development, making changes and fine tuning for desired outcomes

Standard 2
Managing Emotions, recognizing that you are always free to choose how you react to situations. Students will understand and practice how to manage negative emotions like: frustration, worry, anger, dislike and disappointment.

1. Strategies for Managing Emotions:
   
   • Stop and Evaluate
   • Compartmentalisation
   • Focus on building positive thoughts and actions
   • Relaxation techniques
   • Know your triggers
   • Check your mindset
   • Be respectful
   • Adjust your goal

Standard 3
Understanding Status Quo which is the way things are and the processes that are currently in place within an organization. Leaders may use Status Quo Analysis which is doing nothing for now as an alternative to enacting a change. Weighing both positive and negative consequences of change will help determine the best course of action.

Standard 4
Evaluating Policies and Procedure, the processes used to determine if an organization’s current practices are in alignment with goals, missions and vision.

1. Policies are written protocols for how to handle various business functions. These rules determine how procedures are developed, carried out and evaluated.
   
2. Procedures are directions on how to implement policy.
   

Performance Skill (choose one)

1. Evaluate the policies and procedures of a company you are familiar with and determine if they fit with company goals, mission, and vision.
   
2. Role play dealing with negative emotions in a work setting.
   
3. Practice the steps of building consensus.
   

Strand 5
Resolving Conflict - Students will understand the types and causes of conflict and how to use different strategies to resolve conflict in the workplace.

Standard 1
Understand the difference between functional and dysfunctional conflict. Functional conflict is healthy, constructive disagreement between groups or individuals, while dysfunctional conflict is unhealthy disagreement that occurs between groups or individuals

1. Examples of functional conflict are; incompatible goals, different values and beliefs, task interdependence, scarce resources, ambiguous roles and communication problems.
   
2. Examples of dysfunctional conflict are; turnover, absenteeism, mistakes, loss of clients, counterproductive behavior and loss of productivity.
   

Standard 2
Conflict Resolution - Understand causes of conflict and strategies for conflict resolution.

1. Causes
   
   • Competing: to stress your position without considering opposing points of view.
   • Accommodating: to forego your concerns in order to satisfy the concerns of others.
   • Avoiding: to keep away from or stop oneself from doing or to stay away from someone or something or being work avoidant simply means moving forward while ignoring key pieces of work that either do not interest you or are intimidating for some reason
2. Strategies
   
   • Collaborating: to satisfy both sides. It is highly assertive and highly cooperative; the goal is to find a “win/win” solution.
   • Compromising: To give up something you want in order to reach an agreement
   • Get Curious or seek to understand before being understood.
     • Use the phrase “Tell me more”
     • Ask open ended questions of the participants
     • Understanding the variance of personal narratives in conflict

Standard 3
Students will learn to lead with empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.

1. Perspective taking: to see the world as other people see it.
   
2. Be Non-Judgemental: try to set aside any preconceived ideas of the individual before having interactions and conversations.
   
3. Understand feelings: Learn to not avoid emotions when discussing conflict. Being emotionally intelligent is key to understanding others’ perspectives.
   
4. Communicate understanding: Show emotional intelligence by being able to express understanding of viewpoint.
   
5. Mindfulness: taking a balanced approach when it comes to perspectives so we are not exaggerating or suppressing others emotions.
   

Performance Skill
Students will assume the role as an HR Director and create training materials to instruct employees how to resolve conflict in the workplace.

Strand 6
Creative Problem Solving - Students will understand the importance of creativity in the problem solving process. Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of solving problems or identifying opportunities when conventional thinking has failed.

Standard 1
Making space for creativity in a work environment.

1. Downtime at work: The brain uses this downtime as fuel to incubate and innovate. Creative work environments incorporate downtime into their workflow.
   
2. Play at work: It allows a person to discover why and how things are done within a certain framework, finding new and different solutions to problems.
   
3. Passion projects at work: They help you build new skills or hone existing ones. You can use your creativity, imagination and resourcefulness in new ways.
   

Standard 2
Define the creative problem solving process

1. Clarify: this phase explores a vision or desired outcome and the exact problem to be solved.
   
2. Ideate: this phase focuses on idea creation.
   
3. Develop Solutions: this phase turns promising ideas into more workable solutions.
   
4. Implement: This phase explores the acceptance for the idea and develops a more detailed implementation plan
   

Standard 3
Demonstrate strategies of problem solving. Create a space where everyone has a voice using some classic strategies

1. Socratic Questioning: a form of group discussion, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas.
   
2. Think-Pair-Share: is a strategy where employees first think through the problem on their own, share with a partner, and then with the whole group to solve a problem.
   
3. Brainstorming: an informal approach to problem solving where all ideas are accepted.
   
4. Walk Away: Set the problem aside and take a break from the examination process.
   

Performance Skill
Students will participate in the creative problem solving process and then complete a self reflection of the process through a form of written communication.

Workplace Skills

• Communication
• Problem Solving
• Teamwork
• Critical Thinking
• Dependability
• Accountability
• Legal Requirements/expectations
• Data interpretation

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