Teaching Leadership Critically to MBAs

Abstract

In 2004, after a year's leave, I started teaching a new Masters of Business Administration (MBA) subject called `Leadership and Change' in what I hoped was a more critical way. In this article I explore my experiences of launching two versions of this subject— one in a full-time MBA and one in an Executive MBA programme. I describe what I did and what happened, including the obstacles encountered—in myself and the structures around me—how it felt and how students and the institution responded. By working experientially as well as critically, I aimed to create a space in which students could challenge their ways of thinking about leadership and all of us could experiment with different ways of `doing' leadership in the group. The article is written with an emphasis on `practical' reflexivity. By interweaving personal reflection with insights from critical theory, I make explicit the `me' in this account—as power-holder, participant and observer; as mind, body and heart, dripping with and scoured by emotion at times. Neither pure narrative nor theoretical exploration, my desire is to excavate insight from points of intersection between critical theory and personal experience.

Keywords

Key Words: critical management leadership MBAs pedagogy

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