1. BMA533: Leadership and Change in Organizations
Fall, 2006
Instructor: Lee Bolman

2. Tonight’s agenda
Reflective dialogue: How can we learn about leadership?
Contracting: syllabus

3. Reflective Dialogue

4. Issues in the dialogue What is leadership?
Authority?
Power?
Credibility?
Quality of an individual or a relationship?
How does the leader-constituent relationship work?
Leader leads, others follow?
Leader seeks to please, respond to constituent expectations?
Mutual influence?
Mutual seduction?

5. Issues in the dialogue What’s the test of leadership?
High rating from constituents?
Progress on important and difficult problems?
Take people where they need to go even if they don’t want to go there?
Dance floor and balcony
Content (what)  Process (how)
See the here-and-now, make sense of it, and respond in real time (e.g., improvisational jazz, basketball point guard)
Trust and risk
Who can we trust?
How much risk are we willing to take?

6. Break

7. Conceptual perspectives
Bolman & Deal, The Wizard and the Warrior
We need warriors because conflict is central to leadership; they help us confront competitors and enemies who would attack or thwart us
We need wizards to help us escape from prisons of our own mind, to see and create new possibilities
Heifetz & Linsky, Leadership on the Line
Leadership  a dangerous enterprise
How do you get people to face and learn from adaptive challenges when they would rather not
Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Practices of leaders at their best

8. Contracting: Syllabus
Syllabus is our operating agreement
We’re all accountable for honoring the agreement
Contracting process is your opportunity to clarify and shape the agreement

9. Contracting Process Read syllabus Meet in groups. Discuss:
What makes sense or looks good?
What’s not clear?
What concerns? How could those be addressed?

10. Next Week Team Formation Web site: www.leebolman.com/bma533.htm
In-class process designed to balance skills and interests
Web site: