This course focuses on the skills sets needed to elicit high commitment and productivity from people and groups. Awareness of one's own values, beliefs, decision-making tendencies and behaviors is seen as a crucial first step in becoming a leader. Thus, a significant portion of the course consists of activities designed to enhance students' self-awareness. The course provides students with the interpersonal skills needed to motivate key actors in the workplace and to manage group dynamics so as to create synergy among group members. Methods of instruction include individualized feedback, cases, role-plays and experiential exercises.

Modupe Akinola

Associate Professor of Management; Faculty Director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics

Modupe Akinola is an Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Professor Akinola worked in professional services at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch. Professor Akinola examines how organizational environments- characterized by deadlines, multi-tasking, and other attributes such as having low status- can engender stress, and how this stress can have spill-over effects on performance...

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