The Practicing Change Leader

Introduction

Please note that this is a preliminary course description. The final version will be published in June 2027.

The Practicing Change Leader is a capstone course with a triple attention to the action strategies that make people in organizations thrive and grow, what creates extraordinary performances, and how to develop more sustainable business. The course has a summary nature and is meant to equip students with a research-based repertoire of knowledge, skills, and practical tools as a change leader, whether in a formal role or not. The course draws from positive organizational scholarship, practice-based approaches to achieving excellence in leadership and change, as well as a growing literature on sustainable business.

Course content

• Building quality and energy in interactions: High-quality connections and compassion at work, the practices of generative resistance, giving behaviour, and being a contribution.
• Experiential learning and generative AI: Unleashing hidden potential through deliberate play and prepping, bridging the use of generative AI with getting physical in learning.
• Meaning making: Activating drama, the reflective best-self portrait, callings at work, from prosocial to pro-environmental motivation.
• Sustainable business: Creating and leading green organizations, building sustainability engagement, the sustainable business case simulator, and materiality analysis.

• Positive organizational change: The theory and tools of appreciative inquiry, acting on the progress principle to build self-efficacy and mastery climate; fostering change agency.