The Rotman School of Management was looking for an instructor to teach their Leadership Presence course in their EMBA and International Omnium EMBA programs. They school was also looking for new ideas around team building.
The Leadership Presence course is not a class to teach students how to be a leader, but to encourage them to be self-reflective and to identify what leadership means to them.
Team building was identified as critical as much of the course work is done in teams and many of the teams were struggling to work effectively together.
Scott Kress began to teach the Leadership Presence course with a mix of models, tools and strategies to allow the students to reflect upon leadership. Students completed an emotional intelligence assessment and an MBTI assessment and used these reports to help them create a personal leadership vision and to develop an action plan for growth towards this vision.
The team building was delivered at the start of each year to help the students identify the potential challenges they may face and to develop strategies to avoid or deal with these. Summit guided the students through a team development session that included a team charter, conflict resolution strategies and decision making styles. The end result was a greater ability of the teams to work well together and to be more self-reliant when dealing with challenges.