ResearchPod
ResearchPod
Complicating Leadership Development for Business Leaders
In trying times, we all look for leadership. But leadership skills have to come from somewhere. Understanding how, where and why these skills develop is an important part of the continuing journey to more inclusive and collaborative leadership practice.
Dr Nicola Patterson, Dr Amy Stabler and Professor Sharon Mavin discuss the programme they lead at Newcastle University Business School. The MSc in Strategic Leadership course seeks to engage with leadership learners in a critical way, so as to unlearn traditional ’norms’ of leadership and open new approaches to foster inclusive, sustainable and reflexive leadership practices.
Read the original article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13505076231162717
00:00:10 Will Mountford
Hello I'm Will Mountford. Welcome to research pod.
00:00:13 Will Mountford
In trying times, we all look for leadership. This can be true of families and households across a professional team, or on grander scales. But those leadership skills have to come from somewhere. Understanding how, where and why these skills develop is an important part of the continuing journey to more inclusive and collaborative leadership.
00:00:31 Will Mountford
Doctors today I'm speaking with Doctor Nicola Patterson, Doctor Amy Stabler and Professor Sharon Mavin about the program they lead at Newcastle University Business School. The MSC in strategic Leadership Course seeks to engage with leadership learners in a critical way so as to unlearn traditional norms of leadership and open new approaches to foster inclusive, sustainable.
00:00:51 Will Mountford
And reflexive leadership practices.
00:00:54 Will Mountford
And joining me from Newcastle University Business School is Amy, Sharon and Nicola. Hello to all of you.
00:01:00 Prof Sharon Mavin
Hello. Hello, hello.
00:01:03 Will Mountford
Just by way of introductions, if I could work my way through the list, Amy, if you could tell me a bit about yourself 1st and then Nicola and then Sharon.
00:01:11 Dr Amy Stabler
Hello, my name is Doctor Amy Stabler and I am a senior lecturer at Newcastle University Business School. I specialize in leadership development and I research both leadership, development and coaching and mentoring.
00:01:26 Dr Nicola Patterson
Hello I'm doctor Nicola Patterson. I'm a senior lecturer at Newcastle University Business School in Leadership Development and organization futures. And I'm interested in leadership, leadership development experiences of gender and particularly the experiences of women in entrepreneurship.
00:01:44 Prof Sharon Mavin
I'm Sharon Mavin. I'm professor.
00:01:47 Prof Sharon Mavin
Off leadership and organization studies at Newcastle University Business School and my research interests are obviously leadership and organization, but also particularly issues of difference.
00:02:02 Prof Sharon Mavin
And women in leadership.
00:02:06 Will Mountford
The conversation today is centered around a paper, a project that you've all been working on about leadership development for business leaders, but just to kind of set some terms and settle a bit of background. Could I ask why it is important to think about developing leaders in an academic sense rather than letting people loose and seeing how they grow in a very organic way and just figuring things out as you go?
00:02:31 Prof Sharon Mavin
So in terms of exposure in leadership development in universities and university business schools.
00:02:40 Prof Sharon Mavin
We I guess we would argue that the key benefit in that type of leadership learning is exposure to all of our latest research, not just our research but also research from the leadership community worldwide so that we can draw upon that.
00:03:00 Prof Sharon Mavin
Research.
00:03:02 Prof Sharon Mavin
And engage with our leadership learners in terms of their own practice in organisations, we realise that leadership development for strategic leadership, particularly with post experience learners, we realise that we what we were facilitating is unique.
00:03:21 Prof Sharon Mavin
And should be more prevalent, so we wanted to share our practice and to provide a provocation on how to do leadership learning differently.
00:03:35 Dr Nicola Patterson
I think sharing that practice now.
00:03:38 Dr Nicola Patterson
Is really timely in terms of the context that we're in. We're in a post pandemic space. Some of the conversations that have been happening and the experiences that have been had locally, nationally and globally make what we do and how we do very relevant and to stay curious, not just about the content in which we.
00:03:59 Dr Nicola Patterson
Deliver, but actually how we deliver this in terms of leadership and leadership development.
00:04:05 Dr Amy Stabler
We when we were creating this pedagogy and this approach to management development and leadership development, we were really thinking about how could we create.
00:04:17 Dr Amy Stabler
A method, a way of providing leadership development that actually moved with the context as it changed because one of the things that I'm conscious of having worked in leadership development for about 30 years in different you know both as a private provider within organisations is it tends to get stale very quickly and not move.
00:04:37 Dr Amy Stabler
Not have the ability to move with the learner's context as it as it emerges.
00:04:43 Will Mountford
Center things around the most recent publication we're all talking about today is a paper on flipping the normative and flipping the status quo. So what is the status quo? What is critical management pedagogy? Let's go over some terms. A bit of a, a glossary and start from.
00:05:02 Will Mountford
The average the normal what is expected, what is current and then from there we can look at what needs to change.
00:05:10 Prof Sharon Mavin
So if we're looking at the norm, then the modern leadership development approach.
00:05:17 Prof Sharon Mavin
Private providers and business schools tend to teach students to play with models and numbers so that they approach leadership as if it was rational and objective, with a with a recipe or a list of things to do to be a strategic leader or to be a leader.
00:05:37 Prof Sharon Mavin
So that these types of normative leadership development approach.
00:05:41 Prof Sharon Mavin
Matters focus on mastering techniques to improve performance and profit.
00:05:49 Prof Sharon Mavin
And perhaps to advance individuals career prospects rather than taking a a more critical approach and they tend to ignore how leadership is a social, relational activity about people.
00:06:08 Dr Amy Stabler
So I can pick up there if it's helpful about what we mean by critical management, education or critical leadership development and the title of the paper about flipping the normative and the key concept for us in the paper is that we flip this norm, that Sharon has just described by.
00:06:28 Dr Amy Stabler
Unsettling the assumptions that underpin it, and inviting learners to do that with us and questioning why has leadership done that way? Why do I do leadership that way? And could I do it differently in relation to other people and recognising again picking up the point that I made earlier about?
00:06:46 Dr Amy Stabler
Context that context demands a a leader in situ all the time to be making choices in.
00:06:55 Dr Amy Stabler
Volatile and certain complex and ambiguous environment, so that questioning is very helpful on an everyday basis when leaders are practising. So I'm gonna think I'm gonna hand over to Nicola at this point to say a little bit more about that.
00:07:10 Dr Nicola Patterson
Yeah, I think in practice probably a really useful example in some of the conversations that I have with learners that come on this program is one of the first things I say to them is if you want to come on a program that tells you how to be a strategic leader leader, this isn't the program for you. So the majority of normative leadership programs have really heavily relied on.
00:07:32 Dr Nicola Patterson
Individual heroic models of leadership of what an individual should or could be in senior strategic leadership roles. But this program flips that because we're not about creating a carbon copy or a factory line of strategic leaders that look the same. Instead, this pedagogy.
00:07:51 Dr Nicola Patterson
We really help you to peel back the layers of who you are.
00:07:56 Dr Nicola Patterson
That go well beyond your values to your core belief system to understand who you are as the human who you are as the leadership practitioner so you can develop your unique individual strategic leadership lens that you take as part of your everyday leadership practice so that.
00:08:15 Dr Nicola Patterson
The whole aim through this program, long pedagogy is to develop socially responsible leaders who can influence and shape.
00:08:26 Dr Nicola Patterson
Their everyday practice, the practice of others working together at more of an organizational professional level and that macro level of society so they can actually shape and see the contribution that they can make from the micro, the measle to the macro level.
00:08:46 Prof Sharon Mavin
And just to just to add another example of that in terms of taking the critical pedagogy.
00:08:55 Prof Sharon Mavin
We support learners to challenge the normative discourses that are around us all the time. For example, neoliberalism and how neoliberalism shapes us with its fixation on performance, perfection and profit.
00:09:15 Prof Sharon Mavin
Rather than creating or shaping us around positive social impact and doing leadership differently.
00:09:27 Will Mountford
Few things that if I imagine in different research contexts either in engineering or biology, where the process of research is really quite more iterative. You mentioned a production line of people that if you are building new devices or designing new medicines or molecules, it is very much about better performance, better fit and it is kind of.
00:09:47 Will Mountford
Always forwards.
00:09:49 Will Mountford
Does that sit at any kind of odds or tension or maybe even adversity with how people expect to go into a learning course and development is any kind of like a challenge to themselves if they aren't ready to do this kind of reflection and reflexive practice?
00:10:04 Prof Sharon Mavin
Well, we can. We can start by thinking of our critical pedagogy, flipping the normative by doing the unexpected and and disrupting the status quo. And we're very clear with learners right from the beginning, from the first time they inquire.
00:10:23 Prof Sharon Mavin
About coming to to join the program, that it is a different learning process. Do you want to extend that, Nicola?
00:10:34 Dr Nicola Patterson
So in terms of.
00:10:37 Dr Nicola Patterson
How we do what we do? We've got a really clear learning philosophy to the program that really anchors not just the learners, but us as the academic team that deliver this program. So we always talk about there are three.
00:10:52 Dr Nicola Patterson
Simultaneous elements to this process, there's the content that weighs the academics bring to this program that we curate and provide. That's our job. There's the context which we expect the learners to bring their context, that we assume that they're immersed in an.
00:11:12 Dr Nicola Patterson
Portion of practice and we want them to bring that to the program. I always say to learners, there's there's no free passengers in this program. You need to share a little bit of who you are as the human and who and your leadership practice to the extent where you feel come.
00:11:29 Dr Nicola Patterson
But that's supported and held by the learning process that we design and we hold the content and the context in now that's really important in terms of the tensions because it's the process that anchors us and the learners. It's as we talk through the.
00:11:48 Dr Nicola Patterson
The paper you'll see that sometimes there are freak outs. There are moments for us as academics in the learning space where we think.
00:11:57 Dr Nicola Patterson
Or no? Is this do we? We need to really trust the process that we've designed because this is different and as a result we will have unexpected experiences in the classroom either in person or online. The learners will have an unexpected experience in terms of even though we talk about.
00:12:17 Dr Nicola Patterson
That this is different at the beginning, regardless of what the learners have been briefed and inducted in, this is not.
00:12:26 Dr Nicola Patterson
The norm. So we keep bringing learners back to this learning philosophy of the content, the context and the process. And it's trusting that process, that learning design in which we hold them in and that process, this is a blended flexible program. So we blend the learning we have.
00:12:48 Dr Nicola Patterson
We anchor learners in the online space. That's where the Knowledge acquisition takes place, so that when we come together in this social learning process, either in person or online, we.
00:13:00 Dr Nicola Patterson
Have that rich depth of learning where we can together alongside the learners, makes sense of the new knowledge that they have in relation to their organizational context and their individual practice. So the blend is really important, but the flexibility of how we've designed the program.
00:13:21 Dr Nicola Patterson
In terms of the online space where that knowledge acquisition happens, we release that content weekly. The program team that has designed the program let long pedagogy.
00:13:34 Dr Nicola Patterson
Have a real depth of understanding of what it's like to be a workplace work based learner, have delivered and been part of blended learning. But understanding the the need for flexibility is so imperative so we release the weekly learning but we curate for the learner and highlight to them.
00:13:53 Dr Nicola Patterson
What's time sensitive to keep them on track?
00:13:56 Dr Nicola Patterson
So we can keep them on track by outlining something that they have to watch, something that they have to read and something that they have to do to try and meet as many different approaches to learning that would suit different learners. So we do that weekly. And so that's just one example of how we do that to manage that process and hold them.
00:14:15 Dr Nicola Patterson
In one of those elements of that learning philosophy.
00:14:20 Prof Sharon Mavin
And and at the beginning there is a tension because we are asking learners to unlearn their expectations of what leadership is and of what, what learning is. So, you know, we we do challenge the standard models.
00:14:39 Prof Sharon Mavin
And prescriptions and we do challenge the power dynamics. And as Amanda Sinclair expresses delivery of critical pedagogy, it can be heaven and hell.
00:14:54 Prof Sharon Mavin
Because it is hard, challenging assumptions and peeling away different layers of defensiveness to see the world differently and we, we can have pushback from learners as we go through this process.
00:15:11 Dr Amy Stabler
Yeah, there's a lot of negotiation in it. Actually. I think as academics, we have to be willing to negotiate, talk about expectations and really help navigate learners through that as well as navigating ourselves at the same time.
00:15:28 Will Mountford
And could you walk me through maybe just some of the like the personal reflection that goes into the development of the course and what that means in terms of reflexivity? I understand that reflexivity, reflexive practice and personal reflection of all slightly different angles. So what that meant for you as the course designers, administrators, how that kind of changes?
00:15:49 Will Mountford
Your own process going through it in the setup and then with the delivery and then everything that comes through feedback around it as well.
00:15:57 Prof Sharon Mavin
So we, our our our approach to leadership development through critical pedagogy, pedagogy really moves on from personal reflection. Learners tend to arrive thinking they can do personal reflection. It'll you know it's all fine and we introduce something.
00:16:16 Prof Sharon Mavin
Completely different for them. We develop psychologically safe enough spaces where learning is emotional and we'll talk.
00:16:27 Prof Sharon Mavin
About embodied and emotional learning, where we can feel it in our body. We we ask them to reconceptualize vulnerability from weakness to strength, and we support them to develop reflexive practice. Following Paul Hibbert's framework.
00:16:48 Prof Sharon Mavin
So that we ask ourselves, as academics and the learners, to see ourselves continually in relation to other people, not as a robot who's rational and objective.
00:17:02 Prof Sharon Mavin
But with someone who is in relation to power dynamics, who may or may not have position power at certain times and may or may not have privilege, but to challenge our assumptions, understand our own, storing our personal values, what is our moral compass, and where does it come from?
00:17:25 Prof Sharon Mavin
And how do we challenge those expectations of how we should behave?
00:17:31 Prof Sharon Mavin
To how we want to behave so that this process of reflexivity, once we get into a rhythm of reflexive practice, we can't stop doing it, so that we begin to question and challenge our assumptions as we go through that program.
00:17:52 Dr Amy Stabler
Picking up a point that Sharon was making about social, social learning and social relational learning being at the centre of this pedagogy, I think the point about one of the key points about reflexivity is it has to involve other people. So we do invite learners to be reflexive together and to unsettle each other's assumptions. So.
00:18:12 Dr Amy Stabler
That, I think is very different to a a model of personal reflection, which is very much focused on self, focused on an individual perspective of the world, whereas we're actually inviting a a collaborative collective reflexivity, which we have as a team of academics as well. So again, in terms of the set.
00:18:30 Dr Amy Stabler
Up of the programme and the way that we developed the pedagogy, it was very much in talking it through in dialogue, challenging each other's assumptions about what we're what we were doing and what we are doing. And we continue to do that as we go forward and and writing this paper was part of that was very interesting for us as we wrote the paper, some of the.
00:18:52 Dr Amy Stabler
Reflexive moments where we challenged each other's assumptions about how we were making meaning in writing the paper. So you can see it's a thread that informs everything in the both the.
00:19:03 Dr Amy Stabler
Paper in the programme in the way it unfolds for academics and learners.
00:19:09 Will Mountford
Doctor stable. There was 1 acronym in the paper that leapt out to me. Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, which I mean that's.
00:19:19 Will Mountford
A lot of words which don't seem like a very comfortable place to be developing as a person, or to have any real safety for development at all. Can you tell me a bit about what that meant for business development, personal development, and where it fits into the scope and the schedule of this?
00:19:35 Dr Amy Stabler
I think got one of the IT was one of the key phrases. If you like. That came up. It's actually a business phrase that's used quite often at vuca, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And it was a, A, a theme that we had in our minds when we were designing the programme about the fact that organisations, businesses have to change day by day.
00:19:56 Dr Amy Stabler
In response to.
00:19:57 Dr Amy Stabler
To unexpected circumstances. So if you think of the pandemic as one massive example of that, that happened shortly after we had been talked starting to talk about Vuca as a common theme for for business development and leadership development.
00:20:12 Dr Amy Stabler
You know, everything changed overnight and businesses simply had to respond and the the people and businesses simply had to respond. So our programme was really thinking about what does that demand of people when they're confronted with a vuca environment day-to-day and.
00:20:31 Dr Amy Stabler
That actually that creates a level of vulnerability for people who are trying to manage that changing environment on a day-to-day basis and how do we support learners on a leadership development programme to become comfortable with that level of discomfort that's provoked by.
00:20:52 Dr Amy Stabler
Being in uncertainty all the time, so again to return back to what Sharon said at the beginning about normative normed programs.
00:21:01 Dr Amy Stabler
Treat leaders as as, as as a technical rational.
00:21:06 Dr Amy Stabler
Object if you like to develop where there are certain processes and principles that if you follow them then XY and Z will happen. We recognise that's actually not at all the case. You're often confronted with real messiness in work, and we wanted to invite people to really think about that with us and to and to experience it in a safe way within the program.
00:21:28 Dr Amy Stabler
Don't know Nicola, do you want to speak a bit more about? About what that raises in terms of psychological safety in the programme?
00:21:35 Dr Nicola Patterson
So psychologically, creating psychologically safe enough environments is really important and has been from the very beginning and it's part of the process element of the learning philosophy that that we we keep talking about in, in the way in which.
00:21:51 Dr Nicola Patterson
This.
00:21:52 Dr Nicola Patterson
Critical pedagogy is designed so it's important.
00:21:56 Dr Nicola Patterson
For us that learners feel safe enough and we always say enough, we can't guarantee 100% safe.
00:22:03 Dr Nicola Patterson
But we want to create a safe enough environment where they feel comfortable to share a bit of who they are as a human and their practical and practice experiences so.
00:22:17 Dr Nicola Patterson
We create ground rules psychologically safe enough ground rules that we share with the learners and they can.
00:22:25 Dr Nicola Patterson
They have an opportunity to to add to that and at times we have added, perhaps in addition to those ground rules, but it's about making sure that not just the learners, but us as the academic team, anybody who is in a learning environment, feel safe enough. So it's not just about the learners, it's about.
00:22:45 Dr Nicola Patterson
For colleagues as well, the any academics or any people that come into our learning space, whether that be in person.
00:22:52 Dr Nicola Patterson
Online in a live session or even as part of discussion boards that might be happening happening asynchronously online that they understand what what the boundaries are and how they should treat and take care of the people and the experiences that are shared.
00:23:13 Dr Amy Stabler
That I think we used that creation of at safe spaces that Nicholas talking about to allow the learners to gradually become more and more vulnerable and share with each other their their real experience as opposed to their. Yeah, the experience they feel they have to portray at work, but they're real experience of work and the things that.
00:23:34 Dr Amy Stabler
They're tangling with on a day-to-day basis and we do that very gradually through the program so that they become vulnerable when they choose to. We give them lots of different spaces and opportunities to do that on an individual basis with their personal tutor in groups, small groups in action, learning in the online and in person in the room.
00:23:55 Dr Amy Stabler
In order to learn to trust each other and to trust us as educators, and we become increasingly vulnerable with them as we go through that process as well. And one of the key themes from the paper is identifying vulnerability as a strength, which flip which flips the normal understanding of vulnerability as a weakness in leadership and in business. So that is.
00:24:14 Dr Amy Stabler
Are the key themes of the programme that actually by becoming vulnerable and becoming confident with your vulnerability and how to share that in an appropriate and boundaried way.
00:24:24 Dr Amy Stabler
The learners become more resilient in in the in this future workplace that we're talking about, so it is it is an ongoing process and one that we as academics and I think there's a piece in the paper where one of the academics writes in their reflexive diary about feeling really worried about was was a learner safe enough to say something at a particular point in time.
00:24:45 Dr Amy Stabler
Or they said something that actually might have embarrassed another learner, and the emotions and embodied experience that the academic has alongside the learner of that increasing vulnerable vulnerability shared.
00:25:00 Will Mountford
Some of the early comments that we had around the the tension about it is that vulnerability, something that everybody is open to, is receptive to or is there ever well we don't have to name names or anything, but has there been pushed back about overcoming that boundary opening that vulnerability of yourself and if anyone just.
00:25:20 Will Mountford
Don't.
00:25:21 Will Mountford
Do that.
00:25:22 Dr Amy Stabler
I think what our philosophy is, is that I've I've passed to Sharon at the moment what our philosophy is that people share what they're ready to share and where they're up to, and there's space for people to take it at different pace and space. And actually what's interesting psychologically is the invitation of the collective. Reflexivity is very powerful.
00:25:43 Dr Amy Stabler
That people who feel very resistant and hold back a lot at the beginning. Eventually we see we don't have to push them. We invite them to come through and join in in the process. Sharon, what do you think of that?
00:25:59 Prof Sharon Mavin
I guess I'm I was going to echo what or extend what you said there, Amy, that it's a two year part-time blended process where we don't expect learners to fully engage you know on their first day back at school so to speak.
00:26:18 Prof Sharon Mavin
This is a designed process.
00:26:21 Prof Sharon Mavin
Which takes them through a journey I guess. Where they they, as Amy said, they can choose.
00:26:29 Prof Sharon Mavin
And the more trust they build up with each other, which they do, and with us through the various exercises we ask them to prepare and to come and discuss in the learning spaces, that's what develops confidence and I guess resilience to be able to decide what they want to share.
00:26:51 Prof Sharon Mavin
And why? But that is a a transformative learning process.
00:26:58 Prof Sharon Mavin
In terms of their engagement with that?
00:27:02 Dr Amy Stabler
And I I think I don't think we've ever had anybody on the in the four cohorts that we've had.
00:27:09 Dr Amy Stabler
Not engage in it at some level in the way that's right for them. And I think again, we're very sensitive and thinking is that the right level for this person at this time in their life, in their professional development. So again, we don't have A1 size fits all. They must come out at the end in this way when they've done the learning with this, we're we're watching and seeing.
00:27:30 Dr Amy Stabler
And thinking yeah, that's probably enough, that's good enough.
00:27:33 Will Mountford
And maybe a quickly an example of how this all looks in practice.
00:27:38 Prof Sharon Mavin
So an example that came out of the data with the academics as to how we flip the normative through the critical pedagogy is when teaching strategy.
00:27:52 Prof Sharon Mavin
Anybody who has been taught strategy may describe it as being deaf by PowerPoint. PowerPoints of the same old strategic models of if you do XY and Z, then you have a strategy off you go. It can work.
00:28:10 Prof Sharon Mavin
One of the academics described how they focus on situated individual experiences, because for each of the learners, their experiences are unique to them in their organization, the learners are asked to focus on their own thinking and behaving and become aware of their.
00:28:30 Prof Sharon Mavin
Beliefs and values that form the basis for their leadership practice and to question those assumptions.
00:28:38 Prof Sharon Mavin
And surfaced some of the taken for granted rules around how strategy should be done or shouldn't be done and only then are they asked to consider their organizations strategy.
00:28:55 Prof Sharon Mavin
Us to consider do they see themselves as strategic and what is their relationship with strategy work? How do they see themselves in relation to others around developing strategy or implementing strategy in organizations?
00:29:15 Prof Sharon Mavin
So the death by PowerPoint just doesn't happen in this critical pedagogy after the initial cohort of leadership learners had graduated and we had success indicators, then we made the decision that I, as someone who hadn't designed the program but.
00:29:35 Prof Sharon Mavin
They'd deliver on it.
00:29:36 Prof Sharon Mavin
Would interview five members of the academic team who were asked to outline how they understood the pedagogy, how they developed the pedagogy, how they operationalize it, and how they felt the pedagogy challenges normative expectations of.
00:29:56 Prof Sharon Mavin
How leaders should be.
00:29:58 Prof Sharon Mavin
And at the same time, the academics also kept their own reflex of Diaries throughout, delivering the programme. And these were also analysed. So Nicola, Amy and Amy were two of the academics who were interviewed in order to get the data for the paper.
00:30:18 Will Mountford
Doctor Stabler, could you tell me what that was like to be on the other side of the table there?
00:30:25 Dr Amy Stabler
It was. It was really nice actually, because having spent a lot of time developing the pedagogy to have someone ask questions you hadn't been involved actually.
00:30:37 Dr Amy Stabler
Created some awareness of things that we've done that I hadn't perhaps seen at the time and gave me a greater depth of understanding of perhaps some of the practices that had brought the pedagogy to life, and I think keeping having already kept reflexive Diaries while we were creating the programme as part of our.
00:30:56 Dr Amy Stabler
Kind of development practice.
00:30:57
Is.
00:30:58 Dr Amy Stabler
To then repurpose them to be used for the research was also really gratifying to see that something that you have created to, to support your own practice then becomes a an, an instrument of some really in-depth research was really rewarding for me personally. And we also I think the something else that we did.
00:31:18 Dr Amy Stabler
Karen, if I'm not.
00:31:20 Dr Amy Stabler
If I'm correct, we we had reflexive conversations about the the information. So as a kind of double loop check on what we were learning, again as I as I mentioned earlier, we were reflexive in the doing of the research as well as the doing of the program development. So if you like that next loop of reflexivity we talked about what we were finding as we were going along and those conversations were fabulous.
00:31:41 Dr Amy Stabler
Really interesting and again gave us some ideas about ways to continue to develop the program.
00:31:47 Will Mountford
And how would you say this kind of curriculum design compares to other courses where you know modules might not have been changed for years? Maybe some of the professionals involved haven't been changed for even longer than that? Does it reflect something about kind of the developments that you as staff have as the course itself develops?
00:32:06 Dr Nicola Patterson
And I suppose it speaks to the the way that we've designed the philosophy.
00:32:11 Dr Nicola Patterson
That.
00:32:12 Dr Nicola Patterson
We're learning as an academic team. We're learning with them, so we kind of expect that and maybe other people don't expect that. We expect to learn alongside them. So I suppose the way that we've designed this pedagogy as a program, long critical pedagogy is that we, Createspace.
00:32:32 Dr Nicola Patterson
And have an expectation that we will learn alongside with them. So when we talk about the learning philosophy of the content, the context and the process.
00:32:43 Dr Nicola Patterson
We as an academic team only stay relevant in terms of our practice by engaging it. It's one way we can help to increase the relevance and contextual appropriateness of our of our practice knowledge. By engaging in this space. So I think we never assume and this is where the power dynamic shifts in terms of this critical pedagogy.
00:33:04 Dr Nicola Patterson
All of the time, so we might have the power in terms of how we we decide and curate the content.
00:33:10 Dr Nicola Patterson
And.
00:33:11 Dr Nicola Patterson
We do make we have that power, we select what's in, what's out in a particular element and parts of the overall program. But in terms of what the the context that's brought, we expect to be surprised and we want to be surprised because that's what's progressive with this type of pedagogy.
00:33:32 Dr Nicola Patterson
And I think the way that we've designed the philosophy, but also the way that we hold in the process, it doesn't mean to say it's.
00:33:38 Dr Nicola Patterson
Easy when it.
00:33:38 Dr Nicola Patterson
Happens it it's, you know, it can catch us off guard. And even though we know what might happen, it doesn't make the experience of it any more or less.
00:33:47 Dr Nicola Patterson
Comfortable, but I think that we hope and expect that that will happen. So we invite that almost so.
00:33:56 Prof Sharon Mavin
Introduce.
00:33:57 Prof Sharon Mavin
Saying power and privilege into the classroom, into the learning space with leadership learners is a way that we get to uncover all types of experiences of difference. If we have a safe enough space for learning.
00:34:17 Prof Sharon Mavin
And we talk openly about power and privilege, particularly white privilege, but also how.
00:34:26 Prof Sharon Mavin
The learner's power is unstable in different situations in the lives and how gender, class, race, neurodiversity, sex, religion, ability differences can actually destabilize peoples power and privilege in their personal lives and in organizations.
00:34:48 Prof Sharon Mavin
And how this is certainly privilege is a fragile thing. So if you're in a leadership position, you think you have position power, but actually that is it's fragile, it's unstable.
00:35:03 Will Mountford
And so then for the course design of 2024-2025, all ready locked in stone and good to.
00:35:08 Dr Amy Stabler
Go. Yes, we're all ready to go. This is our 4th iteration. Is that right? Nicola. Nicola is the program director. 5th iteration of the program. Wow. Time flies. We actually we I was we actually launched the program.
00:35:23 Dr Amy Stabler
In during the pandemic year, so 2020 was the first year of the program.
00:35:27 Dr Amy Stabler
And it was a really interesting experience to see how easy it was to turn the pedagogy fully online. And then we moved back into sometimes online, sometimes in person, which is the the way that we designed the program. It's it is, it's hugely flexible program design.
00:35:46 Dr Nicola Patterson
I think what we start, but we actually designed this program pre pandemic. So what's interesting is we've had three different program designs although we've delivered 21 that was fully online and then a different blend.
00:36:01 Dr Nicola Patterson
So I think what been really important for us in in has really shaped the program is that this the learner voice is at the center. So we always because as a program team we have experience and we understand work based learning. But we're not work based learners right now.
00:36:20 Dr Nicola Patterson
So the way that we've we have the support infrastructure we have as part as most universities and universities will have a staff, student committee where learners can voice and share their thoughts. You know the strengths and weaknesses of the program, but.
00:36:35 Dr Nicola Patterson
Actually, the way that we've designed the program, we've got a really tight close personal tutoring system with the academics and it's through that we can really get a close individualized perspective of how things are going for the learners. So that we before it gets to that committee meeting, we can shape and influence.
00:36:56 Dr Nicola Patterson
What works? What isn't working in a way that works for them? The time sensitive activities that we now release weekly was from a learner suggestion.
00:37:04 Dr Nicola Patterson
We almost forget that, but it was kind of from the first few weeks, one of the learners just said I kind of just want to know what are the the key priorities, you know, kind of what do I need, what are the three things that I need to do and that really got us thinking. But we did that, but it was so early on at the beginning that we almost forget that that wasn't us.
00:37:22 Dr Nicola Patterson
That was listening to the learners.
00:37:24 Dr Nicola Patterson
We're growing and have been growing the program. We what's special about the program is the selection and really holding dear. The diversity of the individuals and the organizations that come on the program.
00:37:40 Dr Nicola Patterson
That dynamic and making sure that every single individual that comes on the program appreciates the learning philosophy but understands their role in the pedagogy is really, really important, because otherwise it doesn't work because social learning is at the heart. So.
00:37:58 Dr Nicola Patterson
We will always have small cohorts. That's really important. So we are growing and have been growing since the beginning of to a cohort of up to 40.
00:38:10 Dr Nicola Patterson
That's in terms of how and whether we grow with more cohorts, that's up to perhaps senior leaders in the the university as to how they can support and resource that growth.
00:38:22 Prof Sharon Mavin
I think one of the key things that has changed is that we began knowing that we were an all women white academic team and we designed.
00:38:37 Prof Sharon Mavin
Diversity into the team, into the programme, the critical pedagogy and over the four years the four cohorts that we've heard our cohorts have become more diverse. So that actually we have to do less design and we have more present.
00:38:58 Prof Sharon Mavin
Diverse real diversity.
00:39:00 Prof Sharon Mavin
Which to me, excuse me, shows how leadership is changing. That leadership is becoming more diverse and that the the inclusion and belonging and diversity piece of leadership is even more critical. So I would say we've also.
00:39:20 Prof Sharon Mavin
Focused much more on inclusion and belonging over the past two cohorts.
00:39:28 Prof Sharon Mavin
To ensure that we, you know, those in leadership understand what inclusion and belonging mean, but also that we do it in reality.
00:39:37 Prof Sharon Mavin
In that during this pro.
00:39:39 Prof Sharon Mavin
Program.
00:39:41 Dr Amy Stabler
I think the other, the other theme that's perhaps become emphasised increasingly, along with inclusion and belonging, is the theme of sustainability, which again was in the programme at the beginning and we were quite.
00:39:54 Dr Amy Stabler
I think.
00:39:56 Dr Amy Stabler
We were very purposeful that it needed to be right throughout the pedagogy and appear in both the teaching materials and assignments, but I think it's become much more integrative in terms of the way that we invite them to.
00:40:08 Dr Amy Stabler
Talk about the sustainability in practice on a day-to-day basis rather than a sort of add-on. We we we talk about the for example the UN Sustainable Development Goals and we have that as a kind of organising scheme at the beginning, but that's quite out there and we bring it very close in terms of people.
00:40:26 Dr Amy Stabler
'S.
00:40:26 Dr Amy Stabler
Practice.
00:40:28 Dr Amy Stabler
To the fact that when they finish the program, they will write a large piece of work and have to explicitly say how they're speaking to sustainability and what element of it their practice is particularly focused on. And that might actually be diversity as one of the key sustainable sustainable development goals.
00:40:48 Will Mountford
Well, reflecting on everything we've talked about so far and everything that's covered in the course as it grows.
00:40:56 Will Mountford
Who should be listening to this podcast? Do you think? What do you want them to have taken away from hearing? You talk and learning more about the course and where can they go to find out more about you?
00:41:07 Prof Sharon Mavin
Though those listening to the podcast will hopefully be curious about how to do leadership development and leadership differently as a subjective relational practice with others that can be emancipatory and not power driven and can be achieved by developing.
00:41:28 Prof Sharon Mavin
People, not robots and developing self-awareness in relation to others, not through dot to dot functional models. So we're hoping that those who are listening might be from organizations.
00:41:45 Prof Sharon Mavin
Who, if they're considering investment in leadership development, they could be more curious.
00:41:51 Prof Sharon Mavin
About what approaches private providers and business schools use to develop lead leadership learners beyond reputation. You know they could be considering their own organizational context of continuous change and ambiguity.
00:42:10 Prof Sharon Mavin
Their public declarations around social justice, grand challenges and actually look for leadership development that does do things differently if we only do what we've always done, we'll get the same result. So our provocation for those who are listening.
00:42:31 Prof Sharon Mavin
Is that we do need new approaches to leadership development and a critical pedagogy is definitely one approach to achieve that.
00:42:42 Dr Nicola Patterson
If people would like to find out more information, of course they can look at the flip in the normative paper, which is in the Journal of Management Learning, and if people would like to know more and understand more about the programs themselves. So the MSC and strategic leadership and the Level 7 senior leader apprenticeship that we deliver, please make your way to the Newcastle.
00:43:02 Dr Nicola Patterson
University website and Newcastle University Business School.
00:43:07 Dr Amy Stabler
As an academic, as a as a teaching academic, I really have felt more resilient through working collectively, so I would invite academics and those who manage academics or structure the way that teaching is delivered in business schools, around leadership development really think about the importance of a team based approach.
00:43:27 Dr Amy Stabler
For delivering a really high quality leadership development experience.
00:43:32 Dr Amy Stabler
Through their programs and it creates more resilient academics, as I've found myself, but also recreate creates resilience in the learners too. So certainly we have the evidence now for some more research that we've done with that is coming out of the programme, which is the basis of another paper that we'll be publishing in the future.
00:43:52 Dr Amy Stabler
It's really to to demonstrate how how much more resilient and able to continue in their leadership practice. Our learners are. Nicola, did you want to add anything?
00:44:04 Dr Nicola Patterson
I think in terms of just adding to the learner individual perspective, what they what they should think about if you're thinking about and looking at what's got you to where you are in your current leadership journey or you're at the beginning of your leadership journey and you want?
00:44:24 Dr Nicola Patterson
You know where you want to go next, but you're not sure how to get there. This might be the program to help you to do that in terms of looking at what the tools are in your leadership toolbox currently.
00:44:36 Dr Nicola Patterson
And if you're willing to make space and get rid of some of what's got you here and served you well to, then add some new tools that we could offer you on the program to really help you understand at a deeper level who you are as a, as a human, but also as a leadership practitioner to help support and influence others as part of your everyday practice.
00:44:57 Dr Nicola Patterson
Then this is maybe a program that's worth exploring for you.
00:45:02 Will Mountford
Well, as we start to think about summaries and conclusions, what do you think would be some of the key learning points that people should take away from this podcast from your course and from the ongoing education that you offer?
00:45:13 Prof Sharon Mavin
The feedback we've had from learners is that they didn't expect the the leadership development programme to have changed them as people.
00:45:23 Prof Sharon Mavin
But actually this is what they say they've achieved through the critical pedagogy, not just changing their leadership practice, but actually changing them as people in the world who want to make a a difference.
00:45:40 Dr Amy Stabler
It's doing leadership with others rather than to others, or forcing yourself as a leader into a particular suit of armour or clothes that have been given to you by the environment with it, with it within which you work. So it's actually.
00:45:58 Dr Amy Stabler
And to empower yourself to become the kind of leader that you.
00:46:01 Dr Amy Stabler
Want to be?
00:46:03 Dr Nicola Patterson
And from my my point of view, the final final note, if you like is from an institutional perspective, if you're wanting to develop this critical pedagogy for executive learners, you need a team, not a group of people, to make this work. And when I talk about a team, I mean a team that includes academics, professional service.
00:46:24 Dr Nicola Patterson
Colleagues and the learners themselves, so that that worked well together. You need definitely a group of academics who are individually to start with engaged and understand this work so that they can then come together.
00:46:39 Dr Nicola Patterson
Collaboratively and be relational in their practice and not transactional. For this to work, and at that point then you can experience a really rewarding and joyful experience as an academic, delivering on the program and engaging with these types of learners.