printer friendly pageOB 205: Managing Groups and Teams
This course introduces you to the structures and processes that affect group performance and highlights some of the common pitfalls associated with working in teams. Topics include team culture, fostering creativity and coordination, making group decisions, and dealing with a variety of personalities. You will participate in a number of group exercises to illustrate principles of teamwork and to give you practice not only diagnosing team problems but also taking action to improve total team performance.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1
OB 206: Organizational Behavior
Building on the discipline of social psychology, this course helps you cultivate mindsets and build skills to understand the ways in which organizations and their members affect one another. You will learn frameworks for diagnosing and resolving problems in organizational settings. The course relates theory and research to organizational problems by reviewing basic concepts such as individual motivation and behavior; decision making; interpersonal communication and influence; small group behavior; and dyadic, individual, and inter-group conflict and cooperation.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Flynn, F. (PI)
;
Laurin, K. (PI)
OB 209: Leadership Laboratory
In the Leadership Labs class we ask you to consider the question, "Why would someone follow YOU?" This is a course in which you consider what kind of leader you want to be, what kind of leader you are, and how to align your leadership behavior with your leadership goals. In this class you will have an opportunity to lead your squad and in doing so to discover your strengths and challenges as a leader. You will receive feedback about your approach to leadership and you will have the opportunity to try out new skills and tools. Students will be placed into 5-6 person "squads" and the majority of class time will be spent in these squads. Your squad will meet to work on basic leadership challenges (e.g. managing conflict, assessing a team's progress). There will be the opportunity for a lot of feedback so you can achieve a deeper understanding of the impact of your behavior on others. The squads will do role-play cases and group exercises designed to help you think more deeply about the dynamics in your workgroup and to allow you to practice and experiment with new ways of leading. Each session will be divided into two segments, and one squad member will be the leader for each segment. MBA1 squad members will rotate through the segment leader position. Your squad will have an MBA2 Leadership Fellow assigned to it and he or she will also be present for these meetings in order to provide coaching to the leader and to the squad as whole. Over the course of the quarter your squad will also produce an outside of class project oriented toward changing lives, changing organizations, and changing the world. The project is intended to further challenge your leadership skills and lead to greater reflection about the nature of effective leadership. In addition to being graded as part of your Lab grade, your squad's project will be shared with the entire GSB Community and evaluated by a panel of alumni judges. Finally, the quarter culminates with the Executive Challenge. The Executive Challenge will be an opportunity for you to further refine your leadership skills by engaging with alumni judges in role plays that test your ability to lead effectively. The alumni will provide you feedback and evaluate your performance.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Batista, E. (PI)
;
Cronkite, J. (PI)
;
Dobbs, C. (PI)
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Instructors:
Batista, E. (PI)
;
Cronkite, J. (PI)
;
Dobbs, C. (PI)
;
Frankel, R. (PI)
;
Keelan, H. (PI)
;
Sharabi Levine, Y. (PI)
;
Tiedens, L. (PI)
;
Tiedens, L. (SI)
OB 278: MSx: Organizational Behavior
Building on the discipline of social psychology, this course helps you cultivate mindsets and build skills to understand the ways in which organizations and their members affect one another. You will learn frameworks for diagnosing and resolving problems in organizational settings. The course relates theory and research to organizational problems by reviewing basic concepts such as individual motivation and behavior; decision making; interpersonal communication and influence; small group behavior; and dyadic, individual, and inter-group conflict and cooperation.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Flynn, F. (PI)
OB 330: Leadership Fellows I
The Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program plays an integral role in the GSB leadership curriculum by bringing together a group of talented second years to support the leadership development of the first-year class.
OB330, an 8 unit two-quarter MBA2 elective course, is the academic component of this program and runs the entirety of both Autumn and Winter Quarters. Both quarters must be completed to receive any units of credit. The course is open only to those students who have applied and been accepted into the Fellows Program. Interested students apply during at the start of Winter Quarter of their first year and undergo a competitive application process, after which successful applicants are invited to take part in the program. Informational meetings are held late in Autumn Quarter and in early Winter Quarter and Fellows are selected from the first year class in mid- Winter Quarter. nn nnKnowing how to develop others is a crucial leadership competency. In this class, Fellows develop the advanced leadership skills of leading leaders and developing others through coaching and mentoring. Among the competencies developed in this class are: 1) Team Coaching Skills (e.g. facilitating a group, diagnosing group dynamics, debriefing, coaching without undermining the leader), 2) Individual Coaching Skills (e.g. effective inquiry, asking powerful questions, balancing support and challenge, providing effective feedback, holding others accountable, utilizing, valuing and connecting across differences and power differentials, using oneself in service of another's development) and 3) Personal Development Skills (e.g. self-reflection and self-awareness, leveraging strengths, stretching outside one's comfort zone.)nn nnIn the Autumn Quarter Fellows are assigned to a squad of six MBA1s in Leadership Labs. Fellows guide their MBA1 squad through the learning process in the Labs and provide both individual and team coaching to their MBA1 squad members. In addition to the work with their MBA 1 squad, Fellows provide in-depth 1:1 coaching to three additional MBA1 students who are not members of their squad. This 1:1 coaching begins after Autumn midterms and continues through the end of Winter Quarter. nn nnFellows classes meet twice a week for 105 minutes. There will be a reading list of conceptual material which will be supplemented during class with lectures and discussions. Students will have the opportunity to apply those concepts through role-playing and experiential exercises during class time as well as in their coaching and mentoring of their MBA1 coachees. Additionally, Fellows will attend weekly Leadership Labs with the first year squad to which they have been assigned and meet 1:1 with MBA1 coachees. Fellows meet regularly with five of their peers in "clinics," standing groups led by a GSB Leadership Coaches, professional executive coaches who are a staff members of the school's Center for Leadership Development and Research (CLDR). Fellows meet with their Leadership Coach and clinic approximately every other week during regular class time to discuss specific strategies for working with their first year students. Fellows also periodically meet with their Leadership Coach one-on-one to hone their skills and explore their areas for specific improvement.nn nnNote:
OB374, Interpersonal Dynamics, is a PRE/CO-REQUISITE for this course; students who want to be Fellows are advised to assess whether that is a class they want to take in the spring quarter of their first year. Additionally, signing up for 1:1 coaching by a Fellow as an admit strengthens a MBA1 student's application to the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows program.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Robin, C. (PI)
OB 363: Leadership Perspectives
What does it mean to be a principled leader? What role do values play in an organization, and how do successful leaders apply their values in their daily business lives? This course examines the concept of principled leadership and the various ways that leaders try to institutionalize particular values within the organizations they lead. Equally important, it explores the difficult challenges that leaders sometimes face when trying to apply their principles in a tough, fast-paced business environment, where others may not share the same expectations. Through assigned readings, interactive lectures with visiting executives, and weekly small group discussions, students will learn how practicing leaders implement their principles, while reflecting the realities of different cultural expectations and meeting business demands. The course will provide a forum for students to learn directly from practicing leaders and to think introspectively about their own personal values, leadership styles, and long-term aspirations.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
O'Reilly, C. (PI)
;
Peterson, J. (SI)
OB 374: Interpersonal Dynamics
PRE-QUALIFICATION IS REQUIRED BY THE DEADLINE (APPROXIMATELY TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE QUARTER BEGINS). The focus of this course is to increase one's competencies in building more effective relationships. Learning is primarily through feedback from other group members. This course is very involving and, at times, can be quite emotional. However, this course is not a substitute for therapy; we deal more with inter-personal issues than with intra-personal ones. If you are in therapy, please talk this over with your therapist and get their advice before enrolling in this course. The students are divided into three 12-person T-groups that meet the same evening of the class. It is very important to note that when you decide to take this course, you make an explicit contract to be actively involved. Attendance to the first class is required for the 1-day/week section of this class. Attendance to the first three classes is required for the 2-day/week sections of this class. Failure to attend the first class will result in an automatic drop. Students who are waitlisted must attend either a 1-day/week class or the first two classes of a 2-day/week section to secure a place in the course should space open up. It is the student's responsibility to notify respective
OB 374 faculty if your attendance is aimed at fulfilling your waitlist requirement. You also need to inform the faculty member for which specific section you are waitlisted. T-group meetings for all sections will meet for 3 hours the same evening as 1-day/week class and the same evening of the first day of the 2-day/week section. The class has a weekend retreat the seventh or eighth week (check your specific section) of the course. Because of the highly interactive nature of this course, it is very important that all students attend all sessions. Missing class, class-t-group, evening T-group, or portions of the weekend will negatively influence your grade and may result in a student's grade being dropped one grade level (for each absence). Arriving late on Friday to the weekend will negatively influence your grade level- missing any more of the weekend beyond that will result in a U. Students must pre-qualify before taking this course. Qualification essays are due 10 days before the first day of the class. More information about the qualification process can be found at
https://sites.google.com/a/stanford.edu/ob374-prequalification/.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Bristol, S. (PI)
;
Corney, A. (PI)
;
Dexter, G. (PI)
;
Francisco, R. (PI)
;
Robin, C. (PI)
OB 387: Redesigning Work for 21st Century Men and Women
Research on the Millennial Generation (i.e., those born between 1980-2000) shows that millennials, as compared to earlier generations, have quite different values and priorities when it comes to work. For instance, millennials report that they place a high value on autonomy and creativity at work, and prefer to self-manage their personal productivity. They also report that they value being a good parent and having a good marriage over having a high-paying career. Despite this research, our organizations have been slow to respond to a new generation of workers. This has led to high levels of disengagement, and lower levels of productivity in many organizations. This class will explore the gap between how our organizations are designed, and what a new generation of workers desire in terms of work. Students will work in teams to design a new workplace that is reflective of what workers want in terms of their work. The first part of the course will focus on what the issues and problems are in how organizations are designed for an earlier generation of workers, while the second part of the course will be set aside for team-based project work and presentations.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Soule, S. (PI)
OB 503: Games and Decisions
This course is intended for individuals who are interested in how decisions happen in organizations, and wish to expand their knowledge about the interactive processes involved in strategic decision-making. The course will draw on behavioral game theory to analyze and make sense of individual and group decision-making. nTo understand how decisions happen, we will use analyses of in-class exercises and in-depth discussions of new and exciting research findings on cognitive and emotional aspects of decision making (e.g., what does "bounded-rationality" really means? how do our emotions influence our decisions? What is unconscious thought and how can it be used to improve decisions? What drives erroneous market-entry decisions?). We will play strategic games in all our meetings to understand how various conditions (e.g., time pressure, uncertainty, information complexity, accountability) influence our decisions, but we will also read and discuss theory and research on bargaining and interdependent decision-making. So, if you enjoy in-class exercises, you will enjoy our simulations. At the same time, if you enjoy analyzing human behavior and social interactions, you will like the reading and our discussions.nAfter taking this course, you will: (a) be better able to identify and avoid common traps in strategic decision making; (b) be able to draw on a diverse "tool-box" of skills and techniques to make you a more effective decision maker; and (c) have a deeper understanding of other people's thinking and decision making processes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1
Instructors:
Halevy, N. (PI)
OB 504: Culture & Organizations
This course is designed for individuals who are interested in learning about the multitude of ways by which culture influences core organizational processes, including leader emergence and effectiveness, communication and social influence, decision making and negotiation. The course will also address the challenges associated with cross-cultural business interactions. nTo dig deep into culture's consequences, we will use analyses of real-world cases, in-class exercises, and in-depth discussions of new and exciting research findings. For example, we will discuss why some cross-cultural joint ventures succeed while others fail; engage in exercises that illustrate the challenges of working across cultural boundaries; review common pitfalls in cross-cultural interactions; and discuss when cultural variation within the organization can be an advantage, as well as how leaders can effectively manage it. Thus, class experience will include a balanced mix of hands-on exercises aimed at illustrating what culture is, and discussions aimed at analyzing its implications. nAfter taking this course, you will: (a) be better able to identify, understand, and avoid common traps in cross-cultural business interactions; (b) learn how culture can affect and be used to enhance organizational performance; (c) possess a larger repertoire of behavioral skills to apply in various cross- and intra-cultural interactions; and (d) understand why culture can be sticky, and how to leverage it for the purpose of organizational change.
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