Values Based Leadership -Syllabus

1Running head: MOBERG BRAUER INTEGRATED SYLLABUS

Integrated Syllabus and Reflection Paper:

Values Based Leadership for Student Leaders

Hallie Moberg Brauer

Loyola University Chicago

2MOBERG BRAUER INTEGRATED SYLLABUS

Values Based Leadership for Student Leaders

Introduction:There are many things this world tells us are important. Wealth, power, prestige, and many other things come through as important, if you listen to what the world has to tell you. But have you ever sat down, and thought about what it is you truly value? What is important to you? Why? This class will help students work through what their core values are. We will then go on to work through what other values are present in their lives, particularly which values are present in their student organization. This leadership class will help students work through what it means to lead and to be a leader whose leadership style is informed directly by core values. This will allow students to experience and move towards excellence in leading their peers and others in a truly genuine way.

A main goal of this course is for students to better understand their own values so that they can live out those values in a genuine way, and feel that the way they lead is truly congruent with the values they hold to be most important in their lives. To work towards values congruence in both daily life and leadership action is something that students who complete this course will strive to achieve.

Get ready! This course is designed to be like no other course you have taken before, so students need to come in with an open mind, ready to learn about themselves, their values, their strengths, areas for improvement, and how to put all of those things together to make themselves into strong, empowered young leaders.

Course Instructor: Hallie Moberg Brauer will be teaching this course this semester. She is available by email and will return emails from students between the hours of 8am and 5pm. If you send an email outside of that time, you can expect a response during the next day. Office hours are available upon request. Hallie’s top five strengths are: Developer, Relator, Empathy, Harmony, and Woo. As students understand their own strengths, it will be helpful to understand her strengths as a leader, and how we can use our strengths together to collaborate. She will share more with the students throughout the semester about her own personal values and how they relate to her leadership strengths. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have directly.

Administrative Details:

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is an expression of respect for colleagues and peers that encourages students to hold themselves to the highest standards of ethics. Under no circumstances are students to fall below this standard. If students have questions about what it means to maintain academic honesty and integrity they can schedule a meeting with the instructor at any time. Each member of the community is responsible to themselves and others to strive to be the best academics they can be, never at the expense of others.

Accessibility

Students who have disabilities which they believe entitle them to accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act should register with the Services for Students with Disabilities


(SSWD) office. To request accommodations, students must schedule an appointment with an SSWD coordinator. Students who have any questions about these resources can feel free to contact the instructor at any time.

Technology

We live in a world that is more and more dominated by technology. This learning community is here to challenge you to step outside your comfort zone and to become more authentically yourself. It can be challenging to do that when your face is behind a screen, or your eyes are attached to a cyber-world beyond the classroom. Thus it is the instructor’s desire that all forms of technology be left outside the classroom, or at least turned off and in bags on the floor. However, all students have different learning styles and needs, so if this policy presents a challenge for a student beyond what is expected, please feel free to set up a time to talk with the instructor about your needs.

Diversity

Each student in this class is coming to this space with a variety of experiences, perspectives and ideas. As we explore the values we hold, it is important to remember that people hold different values in various levels of importance. Students are expected to respect difference of opinion or perspective. Students should push themselves to try to understand what causes this diversity of opinions and values, as well as to ask themselves why they hold their own values in the regard they do. The diversity of the people and experiences in the classroom adds to our experience and is to be respected at all times. The process of understanding why people value what they value is an important learning experience of this class.

Learning OutcomesStudents who complete the Values Based Leadership Course will be able to understand the value of Values Based Leadership, understand more about their own leadership style and strengths, and then use what they have learned to integrate their knowledge of their values and their leadership style into practice in leading their peers and others who are a part of the university community. Students can expect to achieve the eight following goals.

1. Students will be able to identify their top there personal values as well as the top three values of the organization they seek to lead. (Foundational Knowledge)

2. Students will be able to formulate and execute a leadership plan for an area in which they demonstrate leadership on campus. (Learning How to Learn)

3. Students will be able to articulate their leadership strengths and give tangible examples of how they can use those strengths in practice. (Application)

4. Students will be able articulate connections between their personal values and the values of their organization. (Integration)

5. Students will be able to articulate how their leadership strengths relate to their personal values. (Integration)

6. Students will be able to demonstrate their leadership strengths and then articulate how those strengths relate to and compliment the strengths of their peers. (Human Dimension)


7. Students will be able to identify their leadership skills that need to be developed further and articulate a plan to practice those skills. (Human Dimension)

8. Students will be able to assess their own strengths and areas of improvement on a regular basis throughout their leadership experience. (Caring)

AssignmentsThere will be three large assignments to be completed over the course of the class. The projects and goals will be laid out in this section of the syllabus, and broken down by what is expected from students on a weekly basis as well.

Personal Reflection Journal (20%) (Learning outcomes 1-8) (DUE WEEK 6, WEEK 12)This assignment is designed both to hold students accountable to personal reflection, to give an outlet to students who process internally better than externally in class, and to give students a development record from the first day of class to their final day of class. It can be visited in the future to remind students of the leadership journey they have been on, as well as what goals they set for themselves that still have to be accomplished. Each journal entry should be at least two pages long, but there is no length limit, since students can use as much time and space as they want to develop themselves. This activity will be assessed based on three criteria:

1. The length is appropriate and there are at least twelve entries, one per week of class.

2. Each entry is thoughtful and written with intentionality and seeks to reflect on what each student has learned about themselves, their leadership style, and what it means to implement values based leadership in their lives.

3. Appropriate grammar and writing style.

Values Based Leadership Action Plan (20%) (Learning outcomes 2, 4-8) DUE WEEK 8This assignment is in three parts. It is to help students think about, plan, put into action and then reflect upon an act of leadership. Students will use their communities that they lead, (could be Greek letter organization, could be a club, a res hall floor, etc.) to practice their personal leadership style as well as identify their strengths and work to improve upon their areas of improvement. In the first weeks of class students will understand more about their own values, the values of the organization they are a part of, and then they will execute and act of leadership to better understand how those values can be integrated into their leadership experience and the experience of those communities that they lead.

Plano This is the first part of the assignment. Students will develop a plan in

which they are going to execute their values based leadership skills and style. This could take the form of many different things. It could be planning an event, leading a meeting, starting a conversation. Lots of activities could fall into this area- they just need to be approved by the instructor first.

Event, Action, Conversation, Workshopo In this part of the assignment students will execute their plan to the best of

their abilities. They will need to engage members of the community and


put what they are learning in class to work in the community they lead or serve.

Reflection Papero This part of the assignment will represent fifty percent of the assessment.

Students will reflect on all parts of the process of planning and executing their leadership skills. Students will reflect, but also self asses how they think they did on the project, where they think they can improve and do better as well as asses their own learning.

Leadership Strengths and Future Ideas Road Map- Template Building activity (20%) (Learning Outcome 7) DUE WEEK 11This final project will take what the student learned from the previous assignment and it will transform it into a document that students can use in the future to be reminded of what they learned in this class. It will serve as an individualized leadership template that students can construct creatively to remind them of their leadership strengths, style and purpose as a values based leader in the future. It can be no more than one page, back and front, and it should serve as a guide to students into the future so enable them to continue to lead effectively as students, as well as in their future career paths.

Calendar of Class Activities

Week One: Values Based Leadership: What is it?Reading- Leading change: The argument for values-based leadership pgs 1-80In class activity: Students will discuss in small groups and large groups how they define leadership, their previous leadership experience, and the instructor will give a short presentation about what Values Based Leadership looks like.

Week Two: Values Based Leadership: What are my values?Reading- Leading change: The argument for values-based leadership pgs 81-161In class activity: In class activity: Exploring Values- Students will pick 3 core values out of 20 provided. They will then discuss these values and why they chose them with a partner or small group. A large group discussion to follow will categorize students based on the personal values they choose.

Week Three: Values Based Leadership: What are its Merits?Leading change: The argument for values-based leadership pgs 161-endIn class activity: The Instructor will lead a traditional fishbowl activity revolving around the questions: Values Based Leadership: What are its Merits? What are its drawbacks?An open large group discussion will conclude the class.

Week Four: Leadership Style: What are your strengths?Reading: Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference pgs 1-78In class activity: Students will complete the Strengths Quest Inventory. They will then break into small group discussions based on their strengths and work with those people who share their strengths to identify other areas they have to improve.


Week Five: Leadership Style Continued: How to Use Your StrengthsReading: .Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference pgs. 79-158In class activity: Students will work in groups to brainstorm their leadership action plans. There will also be time in class to chat with the instructor one on one about ideas, questions that students have.

Week Six: Values Based Leadership: Integrating Values and StrengthsReading: .Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference pgs. 159-238In class activity: Students will take their identified strengths and the top values of their own and their organization. They will then work in pairs or small groups to visually represent how their values and strengths relate to one another. They will then break into two larger groups and each student will share their visual representation. Students are encouraged to be creative.

Week Seven: Values Based Leadership: What does this look like in practice?Reading: .Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference pgs. 238-318In class activity: Role playing- students will spend half of the class developing small skits for their peers about their experiences with presenting ideas and values to members of the community. Students will perform them, and then their peers will provide feedback. A feedback form will be provided to guide students through the feedback process.

Week Eight: Values Based Leadership: On campusReading: .Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference pgs. 318-EndIn class activity: Students will break into two teams and conduct a debate based around the question: Should all students be expected to take a leadership class like this one? Is leadership for everyone.

Week Nine: Values Based Leadership Application- Future CareerReading: Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders pgs. 1-65In class activity: Students will spend time building their resumes for future job opportunities in a way that reflects and high lights their leadership experience, personal values and leadership strengths. Students will then work in pairs to critique and edit each other’s resumes.

Week Ten: Values Based Leadership and your CommunityReading: Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders pgs. 66-131In class activity: Presentations, each student will present the results of their Leadership Action plan event- each student has ten minutes to discuss their success and things they would do differently next time.

Week Eleven: Values Based Leadership and the Community at LargeReading: Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders pgs. 13-196


In class activity: Presentations, each student will present the results of their Leadership Action Plan event- each student has ten minutes to discuss their success and things they would do differently next time.

Week Twelve: Leadership Reflection and IntegrationReading: Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders pgs. 196- EndIn class activity: Looking to the future: Students will share their leadership templates for the future leadership action plans and seek feedback from their peers before submitting the final assignment to the instructor.

Required ReadingsKellerman, B. (2008). Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders.

Boston: Harvard Business Press.McMahon, T. R., Lucas, N., & Komives, S. R. (2007).Exploring leadership: For college

students who want to make a difference. (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.O'Toole, J. (1996). Leading change: The argument for values-based leadership. New York:

Ballantine Books.Assessment

The goal of this class is for you to learn how to use your values and your strengths to become a better leader for your community and to help your community express its values through its actions. Thus the process of assessment is based on feedback from the instructor, your peers and yourself. This class is not graded on a scale but is pass or fail. However, students must achieve an 80% or higher to pass. Sixty percent of the grade will be determined by evaluating the assignments. The final forty percent of the grade will be determined by the instructor and the student him/herself as described below.

Instructor Assessment (20%)

Instructor assessment will happen in two ways. First the instructor will be responsible for grading and giving feedback on all assignments in a timely manner, within one week of the assignment being turned in. Secondly, the instructor will give in-person feedback to the students twice throughout the semester. In the first week of class students are to sign up for meeting times with the instructor at the mid-term of the class and in the final week of the class. Each meeting will be one hour long. The instructor and the student will have time to discuss what the student has learned, questions the student has, and talk about the progress the student makes. These conversations between the instructor and the student will result in the student and the instructor working together to assign the student twenty percent of the student’s final grade.

Peer Assessment

As students are learning to use their values and leadership strengths to lead their peers to success, it is important to use their peers’ feedback to enhance their learning experience. Each class students will be assigned a different partner (by the instructor, at random) to work with each week. The last thirty minutes of class will be spent working together on their Values Based Leadership Action Plan. This way, students can feel like they are getting genuine feedback on their ideas before they put their plan into action. This will also benefit students who process ideas by speaking out loud; they can work through the learning and planning process together.


There will be no actual grade attached to this portion of assessment, but students are to take the feedback their peers give them thoughtfully and seriously.

Self-Assessment (20%)

There are many opportunities for students assess themselves in many different ways throughout this course. From the Reflection Journals to the one on one meeting with the instructor students should feel that they have a good say in the assessment process. This is to benefit them in the future, when they are working towards implementing values based leadership ideals throughout their lives, and there is no formal assessment in this area. Twelve weeks should be time for students to begin forming positive reflective and self-assessment habits to take with them into the future, outside of the course.


Analytical Reflection Paper

The phrase, “When you are doing this, think about the learning, not about the grade,” that

was spoken about this assignment last week really created more challenge than expected. I have

not done anything for school in the last fifteen years of my life in which the focus of the activity

has been on anything but the grade. The learning that the project would produce was assumed, I

would learn in the process, but the quality of the product I produced was the most important part.

So as I kept these thoughts in mind, I kept asking myself, what am I learning? Am I doing this

for the learning?

And as I asked myself that question I felt myself relax into the activity. I felt myself able

to become more creative, more open to ideas, and to see the plan for the integration of the class

come together, I felt focused on the end result of the syllabus, but not necessarily the end product

on which I will be evaluated. In some ways it felt freeing. In other ways it was stressful.

However, if I were really teaching this course I designed, I would challenge my students to do

the same. Focus on the learning, not on the grade. It completely changes the experience of the

process. The rest of this reflection will focus on this process that I went through, how I made the

choices I made and the method I developed to think through the choice of activities I made.

Finally I will discuss the joy and challenge of trying to truly integrate the course experience.

Why Values Based Leadership

I currently am employed in the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Northwestern

University. We work with 46 Greek letter, values based organizations who reside on campus.

However, the majority of people do not think of Greek letter organizations as having many

values beyond partying and casual hook-ups. However, this is simply not the case. Each of the

organizations was founded on unique and important principles and values that the founders


hoped each member would live out to the best of their ability in their everyday lives. Thus it is

the work of our office to help students understand this fact. Each member of the community

joined organizations that stand for something, and they stand for real things far beyond nice

clothes and flashy parties.

Thus, I sought to design a course where students could work to better understand the own

personal values, the values of their organizations, and how those values relate to each other.

Then, the course needs to teach students to go beyond that point, to use their values and their

leadership strengths to change their community for the better, and to change the perception

people have of those students as thoughtless people who party too much.

With this overarching goal in mind, and the desire to help students achieve an elevated

level of values congruence along with a better understanding of the values they personally

recognize as being their own. This course would be designed for students who are a part of a

student group on campus. The class would be open to everyone on campus who is a leader in a

student group or thinking about seeking a leadership role in the future. I mentioned Greek letter

organizations as my inspiration, however many if not all groups have values that they stand for,

and if they need to develop those for their group through this course, it is an option too. Values

congruence work is important for all students, particularly as they are developing into young

leaders and young citizens of the community they choose to be a part of, and hopefully to lead.

The Method to the Madness

Developing a course for students to help them become strong, empowered, values based

leaders is both a challenge and a joy. There are several aspects of this class that help to make it

an excellent opportunity to put L. Dee Fink’s Significant Learning Taxonomy (2003) into

practice. First, this course would be offered outside of the academic structure, so students would


not necessarily be driven by a grade. Hopefully students could get academic credit, but it would

be in a pass fail context, not in the realm of being graded for credit. To have the class be worth

credit would motivate students to stay engaged, push them to participate and make it a priority,

however hopefully students will feel free from the context of being overly focused on a final

grade.

The next aspect of this course that works well is the fact that students will be learning

how to become better leaders in communities that they have chosen for themselves. The students

are much more likely to engage and work hard if they see that doing so will benefit them and be

beneficial for a community of which they are already a member. Many students dedicate many

hours a week to their student organizations, and they are often very passionate about they work

that those organizations do, and the social and service outlets they offer. Thus students will be

more inclined to engage on the basis that this class will recognize the communities they are

passionate about, as well as encourage them to play to their passions. Students who are engaging

with material and work that encourages them to do what they are passionate about will be much

more likely to accept and enjoy an integrated learning environment. Having these engaged and

willing students will go a long way to making this learning experience a significant one for both

the students and the instructor (Fink, 2003, pg. 223)

The Challenge of Integration

Working backwards through the course design as Linda Nilson suggests in her the second

chapter of her book, Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors

(2010) is both challenging as well as useful. The process of developing the learning outcomes

for this syllabus was perhaps the most challenging aspect of building the entire class. Answering

the question, “What do I want my students to learn?” was a difficult question to answer.


However, once the eight learning outcomes I designed were completed, the process of

developing the rest of the course activities and assignments became much more fluid and

intuitive.

Knowing exactly what I wanted to students to learn, each time I thought of an activity or

an assignment, I had a list of criteria to hold that activity to up to, to ask, how this project will

teach one of these eight things. If I couldn’t come up with how it could fit, then I discarded it.

Then when I was finished designing the activities and assignments for the course, I could directly

relate each thing to the learning outcomes I designed. Each thing students would do, would

relate to one or more learning outcome. I also chose to directly label each activity and

assignment with the learning outcome it relates to so that students would better understand the

goal of each activity and assignment. Students who are aware of the goals that each activity or

assignment sets out for them to achieve will hopefully be more likely to achieve those goals for

both the instructor to assess, and for them to measure their success on their own.

Using the learning outcomes that were designed for the students of this course from the

outset also helped to make it easier and clearer how an instructor can integrate different types of

assessment from students. This was particularly true, as I sought to design forward thinking

assessment activities for students. The learning outcomes guided my creative thought, but also

allowed me to think of ways to assess students that could measure what I had set out to measure.

And if I can measure them in the present, certainly students can develop their own tools during

the course of the class to assess their own leadership success in the future. It also allows room

for students to evaluate themselves on two different levels, both in their reflections as well as on

a one on one basis with the instructor.


It was not always easy to come up with an idea, realize it did not fit into the learning

structure I had set for myself, and then to simply discard it. But the taxonomy provided by Fink

really does help to maintain the structure. And if an idea cannot fit into the structure it is

possible to take the activity and form it into something new. This freedom and challenge to

reimagine old ideas into new ones is very important in the process of designing a class. This

intentionality with each step really helped to tie all of the pieces of the puzzle together, so that

the picture I ended up with seemed more cohesive than I really could have imagined at the

beginning of the brainstorming project.

One aspect that I did incorporate into my syllabus was peer feedback for students. I think

that as they are building their own leadership skills in how to lead their peers, this is a key aspect

of this class. Being able to use your peers as a spring board for ideas and strategies for leading

your peers is important for building confidence and understanding the community to which a

student belongs. I did not assign credit to this feedback, but it is important for students to hear

from their peers on a frequent basis in the same way they need to hear from their instructor on a

regular basis.

In conclusion, I feel that this syllabus for a values based leadership course is a good start.

This is the first time I set out to design an intentional learning environment for students to learn,

as well as to become accustomed to a new approach to teaching in learning. If students have a

class like this in a non-traditional credit setting, they may be more accustomed to it when it

appears in their department of study. This type of class could be what lays the ground work for

future instructors to engage their students in integrated learning classes to create significant

learning. My only regret about this project is that I will not have an opportunity to put my class

into action. I would love to try it, to know what works well, and where I could improve for next


time. Like I said, this feels like a good start, and I look forward practicing this process again in

the future.


References

Fink, L.D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to

developing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Nilson, L.B. (2010). Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Values Based Leadership -Syllabus