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Course Pages
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​​4. Leading with Integrity
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​5. The Nature of Leadership
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Leadership Course - Introduction
You are a Leader!
The goal of this course is to help you discover the leader inside of you,
and to help learn to use your natural leadership abilities
to create a flourishing world for yourself and those around you.
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You are a Leader!
As a leader, you must be ethical
in order to flourish in life, find happiness in leading,
and to be effective in creating happiness for others and a flourishing world.
You are a Leader!
This course is designed to help you discover the leadership ability which you already possess,
develop your leadership knowledge and skills, then put them to work
to make meaning of leadership in your own life and the world around you,
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Leadership is an art.
It is a complex enterprise with few hard and fast rules.
However, there are principles and processes that can be studied,
understood, and applied in a variety of situations and contexts.
You can lead and do it ethically! ​​​​​​​​​​
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Starting and Human Excellence Courses
I hope you have had the opportunity to go through the other two courses on this website.
They are designed to help you understand yourself and the power you have,
and how to be an excellent human being.
Rather than give a recap of these courses, I will embed important elements from them into this course.
If you have had the time to go through those two courses, this will serve as a refresher,
and help you learn how to put some of what you learned to work.
If you have not had the opportunity to go through them,
I will endeavor to give you enough from them, to enhance your leadership learning experience.
This course is based on several courses I helped develop and then I taught
at several levels of education, from elementary school to college.
One book I used at the college level was
‘Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference’
(Third Edition, Komives, Lucas, and McMahon, 2013, John Wiley & Sons).
While you do not need the book to go through this course,
it is a wonderful book which gives a very good, clear and simple perspective on leadership.
While there are many different definitions of leadership.
one in this book captures the essence of leadership very nicely, as
“…a relational and ethical process of people together attempting to accomplish positive change.”
(Komives, et.al 14).
The authors present leadership as being
ethical, empowering, inclusive, purposeful, and process oriented.
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You can make a difference in the world. A couple of quotes from previous students
will give you an idea of what you can take away from this course:
“I believe that this class has helped me realize my true leadership potential
and I am going to use all of these skills to continue with that leadership.”
“The class really just opened my eyes and made me think deeper about leadership
and the type of leader I want to become as well as the leaders that I admire.”
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I sincerely hope you enjoy the course, learn, and grow from it.
You have the power to lead us to a better place.
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Course objectives
1) To help you, the student, understand the relationship between
leadership, ethics, human survival, happiness and flourishing
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2) To explain the different ways which you are always a leader
and help you see your leadership and the following in all aspects of your life.
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3) To provide you insight into the importance of followers to leadership,
the power of empathy, and methods to enhance your understanding of others. ​
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4) To give you some ideas regarding the dynamic nature of leading, following,
and the importance of cooperation to the future of humanity.
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5) To help you discover develop, and enhance your natural leadership abilities,
so that you can become an excellent human being and an excellent leader.
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​This course has 7 segments, as introduced below.
It is best if you follow the sequence listed.
Generally, the segments take 10 to 20 minutes each.
The entire course can be completed in about 1 to 2 hours.​​​
1. Ethical Leadership
The first place you find leadership is within you. You lead your own life.
You must make your own decisions regarding what to say, how to act and who to follow.
​Leading does not exist without willing individuals following,
who, if fully aware of where they are headed, would follow.
​A leader must always work in the best interests of their followers, or in other words, a leader must be ethical.
Leadership, by definition, is ethical. A leader is a person who is ethical.
In this first section we discuss the critical relationship between leaders, followers and ethics.
2. You are a Leader
You are amazing. You are unique. You are powerful. You lead every day.
As you lead your own life, leadership is projected upon you, or given to you, by followers.
You are a leader in the hearts and minds of others.
Be who you are and build on what you have been given.
You cannot change the circumstances you were born into in life. That is the past.
However, you can change the future and the world.
In this section you will explore you and your leadership. Who are you?
One of the most important parts of your growth and development is understanding yourself.
Leadership is found in the connection between you and others,
as those around you observe your actions and you observe theirs.
Leadership is found in the continuous interaction between us.
3. Understanding Others
This section builds on your understanding of yourself,
to help you recognize similarities and differences between you and others,
and become aware of, and sensitive to, other’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
Every human being needs other human beings to exist, survive and prosper.
Leaders keep their own interests, and the interests of their followers, in balance.
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You are unique and at the same time incredibly similar to every other human being.
We are all part of the human race, similar physically, mentally and emotionally,
and a product of our DNA, upbringing and environment (nature, nurture and experience).
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There are universal moral principles which are absolutely true for every human being,
no matter their nature, nurture or experience.
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It is through love that we are motivated to act to help others,
a love for everyone as equal human beings,
love in its highest form, wanting the best for ourselves and others.
4. Leading with Integrity
In every moral situation you face, there is a correct choice, based on universal moral principles which apply,
love for your life, and ethical love or agape, the highest form of love, pure love, benevolence, goodwill,
a love of everyone that desires the greatest good for others and self.
Leaders are good, moral people, creating happiness for themselves and their followers
and helping create lifelong flourishing, deep joy and human fulfillment for the global community.
This section focuses on tools to help you be a better leader,
and make ethical decisions, using both reasoning and emotion.
Several approaches to moral decision making are discussed and reviewed,
along with some ideas on how to combine methods.​​​​
5. The Nature of Leadership
Our notions of leadership and what it entails have changed over time.
In this section we explore some of the challenges of understanding leaders, and the role they play.
You also have the opportunity to learn about some leaders and role models.
You are at times leading, and at times following. This can happen whether or not you are aware of it.
To be in a leadership position, having power over followers, is different from being a leader.
how leadership manifests in the world is varied and complex.
There have been many people who we thought were leaders, who led the world to war and ruin.
For much of history people were thought to be born leaders or that they had special character traits.
We now know this is not true.
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There is one thing which is constant in leaders, that they must be ethical.
A leader must work in the best interest of followers.
6. Your Leadership
Are you aware of your formal and informal leadership?
You may be a role model for others or have formal leadership roles.
This final section is about you exploring your own leadership
as well as providing you with some moral decision-making tools.
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You have the power to change the world. ​
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This section is reflective and designed for you to think about yourself and discover the leader in you.
