Exercise of Moral Leadership in an Increasingly Volatile World

This course is about moral leadership and the dilemmas and decisions that individuals confront in a range of situations in which ethical thinking is needed.

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Topics covered

When joining the course, students address the long-term moral, political, organizational and systemic challenges to be faced by modern leaders.

The course is organized as follows:

- Session 1: Thinking about the unthinkable?
- Session 2: What challenges do we face, and what choice(s) are to be made?
- Session 3: Building a shared vision
- Session 4: Inspiration, creativity, and reality
- Session 5: Understanding the implications of moral dilemmas
- Session 6: Intervention, getting attention, and getting things done in an ethical way
- Session 7: Boundaries, partnerships, and staying alive
- Session 8: Co-creation and the process of dealing with intractable crisis
- Session 9: Technical clinic: Review of the skills and methodology steps
- Session 10: Listening, sensing the environment and using emotions
- Session 11: Saying goodbye and laying the past to rest (course wrap-up)
- Session 12: End-of-term presentations

Course design

The course is designed to build capacity on how to think systematically about change under complex and turbulent situations. Students learn to recognize the characteristic dynamics of complex ethical issues and adaptive systems, including feedback, information and time lags, linked effects and unintended consequences.