How to build a leadership course: a complete guide for lecturers

Central question: What is leadership, and how should students distinguish the person, the role, the behaviour and the process?

Leadership courses work best when they begin by resisting a single heroic definition. Students need a vocabulary for leader traits and skills, observable behaviours, formal authority, informal emergence, follower responses and context. This creates a foundation for comparing theories without turning the course into a catalogue of labels.

What this concept covers

• Leadership as influence, relationship and social process.
• Formal leadership, informal leadership and leadership emergence.
• Traits, skills, behaviours and competencies as different units of analysis.
• Leader, follower and context as mutually shaping elements.
• Leadership effectiveness as multiple outcomes rather than a single performance score.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Differentiate leadership from position, authority and management.
• Compare trait, skill, behavioural and process perspectives.
• Identify evidence required to judge leadership effectiveness.
• Explain how followers and context shape leadership outcomes.

How to teach it

• Open with three short leadership episodes and ask what exactly made leadership visible in each.
• Build a class map separating who the leader is, what the leader does and what changes in the social system.
• Use a short research-summary critique to show why attractive leadership labels are not automatically strong evidence.

Case-style example

Arclight Logistics appoints a new regional director to a 140-person unit. On-time delivery is 91%, engagement is 58/100 and voluntary turnover is 17%. Candidate A scores highly on technical expertise but poorly on listening; Candidate B has less sector experience but stronger team-climate scores. Students classify the evidence as trait, skill, behaviour, follower or context data, then recommend what additional evidence is needed. They discover that leadership cannot be inferred from one impressive attribute.

Where students struggle

Students often treat leadership as a personality possession and management as its opposite. A more useful distinction is that management and leadership overlap, while leadership theories ask different questions about influence, relationships, behaviour and context.

Reading and a quick check

Use Carton (2022) to frame leadership as a field with competing explanatory levels. Quick check: ask students to write one leadership claim that sounds plausible but would require evidence before they accepted it.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

The next step turns the analytical lens inward: what does a leader know about their own values, patterns, strengths, limits and development needs?

Central question: How can leadership development become evidence-based rather than a collection of personality labels?

Self-awareness is pedagogically useful when tied to behaviour, feedback and deliberate practice. The aim is not to grade personality. It is to help students compare self-perception with observed impact, articulate values and identify a small number of behaviours they can test and review over time.

What this concept covers

• Leader identity and transitions into greater responsibility.
• Values, motives, strengths, derailers and behavioural patterns.
• 360-degree feedback and limits of self-report instruments.
• Development goals, deliberate practice and reflection.
• Learning orientation, feedback seeking and adaptation.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Interpret feedback without treating an instrument as a diagnosis.
• Translate values and feedback into observable development goals.
• Distinguish intention from impact.
• Design a short leadership development experiment with evidence of progress.

How to teach it

• Use a private reflection before any public discussion of feedback.
• Convert broad goals such as "be more strategic" into one observable behaviour and one feedback source.
• Revisit the development hypothesis at the end of the course rather than treating self-awareness as a one-off opening exercise.

Case-style example

Meridian Health's new operations lead receives a 360 report: strategic judgement 4.6/5, execution 4.4, listening 2.8 and delegation 3.0. Her unit hits 104% of output targets, yet pulse-survey trust falls from 72 to 61. Students select two development priorities, specify one behaviour to practise for four weeks and define evidence that would show improvement. They discover that strong results can coexist with leadership costs that eventually undermine performance.

Where students struggle

Students may over-identify with a profile or dismiss feedback that feels uncomfortable. Keep the emphasis on triangulation: patterns across behaviour, consequences, observers and context are more useful than a single score.

Reading and a quick check

Pair Northouse's leader-development material with a short reflective protocol. Quick check: students state one value they claim and one recent behaviour that either supports or contradicts it.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Once students can articulate their own patterns, they are ready to examine why no single leadership style works in every situation.

Central question: When should a leader change their approach, and what evidence tells them the situation has changed?

This concept moves students away from "best style" thinking. Behavioural, contingency and situational approaches are most useful when taught as competing diagnoses of task structure, follower capability, uncertainty, time pressure and relationship needs. The applied question is which behaviour is justified now and what would trigger a change.

What this concept covers

• Task-oriented and relationship-oriented behaviours.
• Contingency and situational logic.
• Directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented choices.
• Readiness, capability, motivation and task ambiguity.
• Risks of over-adapting, inconsistency and pseudo-flexibility.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Diagnose leadership demands of a situation.
• Select and defend behaviours suited to task and follower conditions.
• Identify when a previously useful style becomes counterproductive.
• Compare assumptions behind major contingency perspectives.

How to teach it

• Give all groups the same leader but vary team capability, urgency and task ambiguity.
• Require students to state the condition that justifies each behaviour, not merely name a style.
• Use a second-round scenario change so students must decide whether to adapt or remain consistent.

Case-style example

Solara Retail is opening 12 stores in eight weeks. The experienced property team has delivered 15 openings, while the newly hired store-operations team has delivered none. A regional director has four hours a week for each team. Students design different leadership approaches, allocate the four hours and state two indicators that would trigger a change. They discover that treating both teams "equally" can be less fair and less effective than adapting to task and capability.

Where students struggle

Students often use situational models as post-hoc labels. Push them to specify evidence before choosing the behaviour and to name the risk of the alternative.

Reading and a quick check

Use Northouse on situational and path-goal approaches. Quick check: change one variable in a scenario and ask whether the recommended leadership behaviour should change, and why.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Situational choice becomes more realistic once students examine how influence works when authority is incomplete, contested or distributed.

Central question: How do leaders mobilise action when formal authority is only one source of influence?

Leadership is often exercised across boundaries where the leader cannot simply instruct. Students should be able to map formal authority, expertise, information, networks, rewards, legitimacy and dependence, while treating followership as active judgement rather than passive compliance.

What this concept covers

• Formal authority and informal influence.
• Power bases, dependence and resource control.
• Influence tactics, coalition building and social networks.
• Followership, dissent and upward influence.
• Ethical limits of persuasion, pressure and political behaviour.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Map power and dependence around a decision.
• Select influence approaches that fit the relationship and stakes.
• Analyse follower agency and constructive dissent.
• Distinguish legitimate influence from manipulation or coercion.

How to teach it

• Have students draw an influence map before discussing communication tactics.
• Assign one group the formal leader role and another an expert with no authority, then compare routes to influence.
• Use short examples of dissent to ask when followership requires resistance rather than compliance.

Case-style example

Orbit Systems must standardise a cybersecurity process across five business units. The programme lead controls no operating budgets. The CIO supports the project, but two unit heads fear a 6% productivity hit and a respected security architect opposes the chosen tool. Students map power and dependence, rank three influence tactics and script the first conversation with the strongest resistor. They discover that formal sponsorship matters, but credible expertise and local dependence can determine whether change actually happens.

Where students struggle

Students may equate power with hierarchy or view politics as automatically unethical. The deeper task is to analyse dependence and influence while setting explicit ethical boundaries.

Reading and a quick check

Use Gardner et al. (2024) on leadership emergence. Quick check: identify an example where someone without formal authority became influential and state what granted that person legitimacy.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Influence becomes more sustainable when leaders connect work to motivation, goals, autonomy and credible performance expectations.

Central question: How should leaders create conditions for performance without reducing motivation to targets and rewards?

Leadership courses should connect motivation theory to the everyday design of goals, feedback, autonomy, recognition and accountability. Students need to see that performance systems can create intended effort and unintended behaviour, especially when targets are narrow, incentives are poorly balanced or empowerment is announced without decision rights.

What this concept covers

• Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
• Goal clarity, challenge, feedback and goal conflict.
• Expectancy, fairness and perceived controllability.
• Empowerment, autonomy and decision rights.
• Performance conversations, recognition and unintended incentive effects.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Diagnose likely motivational consequences of a performance system.
• Design goals that balance clarity with behavioural risk.
• Distinguish empowerment from abdication.
• Recommend feedback and decision rights appropriate to the work.

How to teach it

• Give students a performance dashboard and ask what behaviour it will predictably encourage.
• Run a redesign exercise where teams must keep one hard target but add guardrails and qualitative evidence.
• Ask students to separate what the employee controls from what the system controls.

Case-style example

Cedar Foods raises regional sales targets by 18% and doubles the quarterly bonus. Revenue rises 11%, but returns rise from 4% to 9%, service complaints increase 30% and sales-team turnover moves from 16% to 24%. Students calculate the gap to target, identify likely incentive effects and redesign the scorecard using at most four measures. They discover that stronger incentives can improve one metric while quietly damaging customer value and workforce stability.

Where students struggle

Students often propose "motivation" as if it were a leadership action. Ask what concrete feature of the job, goal, reward, feedback or relationship is changing.

Reading and a quick check

Use Northouse alongside a motivation reading from the course's organizational-behaviour prerequisites. Quick check: students identify one target they would remove, retain or rebalance and defend the choice.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Performance systems still depend on communication. The next concept focuses on listening, feedback and conversations where the leader's message can alter trust as much as the decision itself.

Central question: How can leaders communicate clearly while still learning from people who see the problem differently?

Communication is not a soft add-on to leadership; it is the mechanism through which expectations, meaning, challenge and correction travel. The course should move beyond presentation technique into listening, framing, feedback, questioning, disagreement and the design of difficult conversations.

What this concept covers

• Message purpose, audience, framing and channel.
• Active listening, inquiry and paraphrasing.
• Feedback quality, specificity and behavioural evidence.
• Difficult conversations, defensiveness and face-saving.
• Speaking up, silence and leader openness.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Structure a leadership message around decision, evidence and action.
• Use inquiry before advocacy in an ambiguous discussion.
• Deliver behavioural feedback that is specific and actionable.
• Create conditions that make upward voice safer and more useful.

How to teach it

• Have students rewrite the same message for a direct report, peer and senior sponsor.
• Use paired role-play where the first round is advocacy-only and the second requires inquiry before recommendation.
• Debrief what the listener learned, not only what the speaker intended.

Case-style example

Northstar Labs misses three sprint commitments in six weeks. A team lead believes the senior developer is "not taking ownership," while the developer says requirements change after work begins. Rework is 22% of sprint capacity and only 40% of tickets meet the team's own definition-of-ready. Students prepare a 12-minute feedback conversation using the data, two inquiry questions and one agreed next step. They discover that a performance problem can be partly a system-design problem.

Where students struggle

Students often script feedback that is polite but vague, or direct but diagnostic of character. Keep them anchored to observed behaviour, impact, inquiry and agreed action.

Reading and a quick check

Use Morrison (2023) on employee voice and silence. Quick check: ask what a leader might be doing that makes silence rational, even when the leader repeatedly says "my door is open."

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Communication quality becomes collective in teams. Students next examine trust, psychological safety, coordination and the leader's role in team conditions.

Central question: how can leaders create teams that coordinate, challenge and learn without confusing psychological safety with low standards?

Leadership becomes observable in teams. This concept moves students from individual influence to the conditions leaders create for candour, coordination, accountability, learning and recovery from error.

What this concept covers

• Team purpose, role clarity, norms and coordination.
• Trust as a basis for delegation, information sharing and challenge.
• Psychological safety and the distinction between interpersonal safety and performance standards.
• Leader behaviours that invite voice, surface dissent and respond productively to mistakes.
• Team learning, conflict, after-action review and distributed expertise.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Diagnose team-performance problems using evidence rather than personality labels.
• Distinguish psychological safety from comfort, agreement or weak accountability.
• Design leader behaviours that improve voice and learning.
• Recommend meeting and decision routines that reduce coordination failure.
• Evaluate how trust and role clarity affect team performance.

How to teach it

• Use a short team transcript and ask students to code voice, interruption, inquiry and response to challenge.
• Run a meeting-redesign workshop where students change the leader's opening, agenda and decision process.
• Compare a high-accountability/low-safety team with a high-safety/low-clarity team.
• Require students to turn an abstract diagnosis into three observable leader behaviours.

Case-style example

Vela Analytics has eight analysts. Quality errors have risen from 6 to 14 per month, two people account for 71% of meeting airtime, and the team scores 2.9/5 on 'safe to admit mistakes' but 4.5/5 on 'clear performance standards'. Students diagnose the failure, then design a new meeting routine and three leader behaviours. One group prioritises tighter controls; another prioritises voice. Students discover that accountability can remain high while learning is weak.

Where students struggle

Students may use 'psychological safety' as a synonym for being nice. Push them to specify what a leader does when someone challenges a plan, reports an error or admits uncertainty.

Reading and a quick check

Use Edmondson and Bransby (2023) to connect psychological safety to evidence, boundary conditions and measurement. Quick check: ask for one behaviour that raises safety without lowering standards.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

The team lens opens naturally into inclusion, culture and distributed leadership, where who gets heard and how coordination occurs become even more consequential.

Central question: how should leaders adapt when identity, culture, geography and working arrangements shape participation and interpretation?

Leadership is rarely exercised in a culturally uniform room. Students need to examine inclusion and cross-cultural leadership without reducing national cultures to stereotypes, and to understand how hybrid and distributed work changes access, voice and coordination.

What this concept covers

• Inclusion, belonging, status and access to influence.
• Cross-cultural leadership as interpretation and adaptation rather than stereotyping.
• Distributed and virtual leadership across time zones and communication channels.
• Bias in participation, promotion, sponsorship and information access.
• Leader routines for equitable voice, decision transparency and remote coordination.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Analyse how culture, status and work arrangement affect leadership processes.
• Identify participation and advancement patterns that may indicate structural exclusion.
• Adapt communication and decision routines for distributed teams.
• Design an inclusive leadership intervention using observable evidence.
• Critique culturally simplistic explanations for behaviour.

How to teach it

• Give students meeting-participation data before revealing demographic or location patterns.
• Use two interpretations of the same cross-cultural incident and require evidence for each.
• Ask groups to redesign a hybrid operating rhythm, not merely write an inclusion statement.
• Compare synchronous, asynchronous and rotating leadership practices.

Case-style example

TerraGrid's product team spans London, Bengaluru, Toronto, Nairobi and Singapore. Forty-two percent of recurring meetings fall outside normal working hours for Asia, headquarters-based staff take 63% of meeting airtime, and 7 of 9 promotion nominations come from headquarters. Students redesign the meeting rhythm, speaking process and promotion-evidence rules. One team protects speed through a central hub; another redistributes access. Students discover that inclusion is partly an operating-system problem.

Where students struggle

Students can jump from unequal outcomes to unsupported causal claims, or rely on national-culture labels. Keep them focused on process data, competing explanations and changes a leader can actually test.

Reading and a quick check

Use Den Hartog and De Hoogh (2024) alongside Bell, McAlpine and Hill (2023). Quick check: ask students to name one synchronous and one asynchronous practice that changes access to influence.

Teaching activity

Use the case, workshop or role-play above to collect evidence of diagnosis and judgement before moving on.

Where it leads

Once students can analyse who participates and who has influence, they are ready to examine the formal accountability structures that constrain leadership.

Central question: what should a leader do when personal interests, executive authority and organisational accountability come into conflict?

Leadership courses often discuss ethics as values and governance as structure. This concept joins them. Students examine how leaders disclose conflicts, respect fiduciary responsibilities, use oversight and design safeguards when authority and self-interest intersect.

What this concept covers

• Ethical leadership, integrity, duty and the use of authority.
• Conflicts of interest, disclosure, recusal and mitigation.
• Board oversight, executive accountability and governance controls.
• Transparency, stakeholder confidence and defensible process.
• The difference between a personally attractive outcome and a governable decision.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Identify an ethical and governance conflict using relevant evidence.
• Evaluate competing duties and stakeholder claims.
• Recommend a conflict-management response with proportionate safeguards.
• Defend when disclosure, recusal, divestment or role change is appropriate.
• Design governance controls that preserve decision quality and trust.

How to teach it

• Start with a conflict that is legal but difficult rather than an obvious misconduct case.
• Assign executive, compliance, shareholder and affected-leader perspectives.
• Require students to state both the substantive decision and the process that makes it legitimate.
• Use a board-resolution exercise before moving into the simulation.

Case-style example

Apex Mobility's CTO owns 4% of a competitor while leading a programme expected to generate 28% of next year's revenue. The CTO has delivered three launches ahead of schedule, but policy requires disclosure of holdings above 1%. Students choose among disclosure, recusal, divestment, restrictions or removal, then draft two future safeguards. One group protects continuity; another prioritises independence. Students discover that good governance is about both outcome and process legitimacy.

Where students struggle

Students often treat 'ethical' as whatever outcome they personally prefer. Ask what duty applies, who has decision rights, what evidence is missing and what safeguard would make the process defensible.

Reading and a quick check

Use the course textbook's ethical leadership and governance coverage, then ask students to draft a one-sentence conflict rule that could actually be administered.

Where a simulation fits

The Corporate Governance Simulation fits directly after this concept. Students enter a senior-executive conflict of interest from CEO, CTO, CCO and Shareholder perspectives and must reach an approved resolution and future safeguards.

Where it leads

Governance establishes how leaders remain accountable. The next concept broadens the decision to stakeholder trade-offs, ESG priorities and responsible value creation.

Central question: how should leaders balance financial, workforce, regulatory and environmental priorities when no option satisfies every stakeholder?

Stakeholder leadership is not a list of people to please. It is the disciplined work of deciding whose claims matter, on what evidence, over what time horizon and with what consequences for value, legitimacy and implementation.

What this concept covers

• Stakeholder identification, salience, interests and influence.
• Responsible leadership and the relationship between purpose, strategy and trade-offs.
• ESG decisions as operational and capital-allocation choices.
• Financial constraints, workforce outcomes, regulatory pressure and environmental commitments.
• Decision communication and the conditions for stakeholder acceptance.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Map stakeholder interests and identify genuine trade-offs.
• Evaluate an ESG proposal using financial and non-financial evidence.
• Build a feasible package within explicit constraints.
• Defend why one stakeholder claim should receive priority in a specific decision.
• Communicate a responsible decision without pretending all interests can be maximised.

How to teach it

• Replace generic stakeholder maps with a decision that has a fixed budget and minimum performance threshold.
• Ask groups to build two feasible packages before recommending one.
• Have students role-play the announcement to groups that gain and lose.
• Debrief both outcome quality and the legitimacy of the process.

Case-style example

GreenHaven Manufacturing has an $18m two-year ESG budget. A filter system costs $9m, a wage increase costs $5m per year, and a $12m automation project is forecast to lift annual EBITDA by $7m but reduce headcount. Management must keep EBITDA above $22m. Students build two feasible packages, recommend one and prepare a stakeholder explanation. One group prioritises near-term resilience; another prioritises workforce legitimacy. Students discover that responsible leadership still requires explicit constraints.

Where students struggle

Students may produce balanced-sounding prose without a decision. Require a funded package, a stated constraint and an explanation of who bears the downside.

Reading and a quick check

Use current stakeholder and responsible-leadership material from the textbook plus the ESG simulation briefing. Quick check: ask what evidence would make the class reverse its recommendation.

Where a simulation fits

The ESG Simulation fits here because Management, Investor, Regulator and Union teams negotiate operating, investment, compensation, wage and workforce terms before approving a joint ESG policy.

Where it leads

Stakeholder conflict often intensifies during change or crisis. Students next examine how leaders communicate, adapt and decide under pressure.

Central question: how should leaders create direction and maintain legitimacy when information is incomplete, resistance is rational and time is limited?

Change and crisis reveal leadership process because leaders cannot rely on stable routines. Students learn to distinguish diagnosis from mobilisation, surface sources of resistance, communicate uncertainty and decide when speed matters more than completeness.

What this concept covers

• Change diagnosis, urgency, coalition building and implementation.
• Resistance as information, identity threat, loss or competing incentive.
• Conflict framing, escalation and productive disagreement.
• Crisis leadership under incomplete information and time pressure.
• Communication cadence, stakeholder confidence and post-event learning.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Diagnose the technical and adaptive dimensions of a change.
• Interpret resistance using more than one plausible explanation.
• Design a change or crisis communication sequence.
• Choose an appropriate decision cadence under uncertainty.
• Evaluate when conflict should be surfaced, contained or escalated.

How to teach it

• Give information in stages so students must revise rather than optimise once.
• Ask students to write the first 90 seconds of a crisis briefing, then challenge it with new facts.
• Map losses and incentives before labelling stakeholders 'resistant'.
• Use a post-crisis review to identify what the leader should institutionalise.

Case-style example

HarborAir detects a cyber incident 36 hours before a holiday peak. Security estimates a 35% chance that customer data was accessed. Shutting core systems for 18 hours would cancel about 120 flights at an estimated $4.2m cost; waiting six hours yields better diagnosis but may extend exposure. Students choose a decision time, stakeholder sequence and first public message. One group favours immediate containment; another protects continuity. Students discover that crisis leadership is partly about reversible and irreversible risk.

Where students struggle

Students often reach for a named change model as a checklist. Make them show what is known, what is contested, what cannot wait and how communication changes as evidence improves.

Reading and a quick check

Use the textbook's change and adaptive leadership coverage. Quick check: ask students to identify one reversible decision and one irreversible decision in the case.

Where a simulation fits

The Corporate Governance Simulation can also support this concept when framed as conflict leadership: students must move stakeholders with competing interests toward an approved resolution without bypassing accountability.

Where it leads

The final concept integrates leadership through strategic judgement and resource allocation, where different executive lenses can produce defensible but conflicting priorities.

Central question: how should leaders make and defend strategic choices when resources are scarce and executive perspectives pull in different directions?

The capstone moves students from interpersonal leadership to enterprise judgement. Strategic leadership requires prioritisation, evidence, trade-offs and the ability to integrate functional perspectives rather than merely advocate for one.

What this concept covers

• Strategic priorities, resource scarcity and opportunity cost.
• Executive-team perspectives and functional interdependence.
• Capital allocation as a leadership decision, not only a finance exercise.
• Decision criteria, assumptions, risk and sequencing.
• Integration, recommendation and defence under challenge.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Prioritise strategic initiatives against explicit criteria.
• Compare recommendations from different executive perspectives.
• Use quantitative and qualitative evidence in a resource-allocation decision.
• Defend a portfolio of choices and identify what has been deferred.
• Integrate leadership concepts into an enterprise-level recommendation.

How to teach it

• Give each group the same initiatives but a different executive role before asking for an enterprise recommendation.
• Require groups to show opportunity cost explicitly.
• Ask students to state what evidence would trigger reallocation.
• Finish with an individual defence so group consensus does not hide individual judgement.

Case-style example

Castor Consumer has $100m to allocate. A $45m factory project has an estimated NPV of $18m; a $30m digital platform has an estimated NPV of $14m but high execution risk; a $25m quality programme could cut annual warranty cost by $9m; and a $35m brand push has uncertain payback. Students allocate the budget, then re-argue it as CFO, COO, CMO and CEO. Students discover that leadership quality appears in criteria and trade-offs, not just the final portfolio.

Where students struggle

Students can confuse a high-return calculation with a strategy. Require them to explain sequencing, assumptions, organisational capacity and which objective they are willing not to fund.

Reading and a quick check

Use the textbook's strategic leadership coverage and a short resource-allocation note. Quick check: ask for the initiative each student would cut first and the criterion that justifies it.

Where a simulation fits

The Managerial Accounting Simulation works as a secondary capstone. Students compare products and then allocate $100m across five opportunities through CFO, COO, CMO and CEO perspectives, making functional trade-offs visible.

Where it leads

This closes the arc. Students should now be able to move from leadership theory and self-awareness to influence, teams, accountability, stakeholder trade-offs, change and strategic judgement.

10-week course structure

A 10-week course should compress adjacent concepts without removing ethics, teams or applied judgement. Combine foundations with leader development, combine motivation with communication, and use the final two sessions for integration and defence.

14-week course structure

A 14-week course creates space to separate inclusion from cross-cultural leadership, give governance its own application session and protect time for simulation debrief, individual evidence and a capstone defence.

The Corporate Governance Simulation places students inside a senior-executive conflict of interest. A CTO has a financial interest in a competitor, and the organisation must decide how the conflict should be disclosed, managed and governed. Students work from four perspectives - CEO, CTO, CCO and Shareholder - and the final resolution requires approval across the stakeholder group.

Why it fits here

By Session 9, students should already understand ethical leadership, conflicts of interest, fiduciary responsibility, transparency and board oversight. The simulation can therefore focus on judgement: which safeguard is proportionate, which stakeholder concern is material and what makes the process legitimate?

What students do

• Review the conflict, role brief and evidence from an Analyst Coverage Extract, Internal Compliance Memo and Governance Agency Note.
• Analyse the conflict from the assigned CEO, CTO, CCO or Shareholder perspective.
• Propose and negotiate conflict-management terms rather than simply vote for or against the executive.
• Work toward a resolution that all four stakeholder roles approve.
• Agree future governance safeguards and review comparative role and team outcomes in the reflection stage.

Recommended course placement

• At the end of Session 9 after ethical leadership and governance teaching.
• Across Sessions 9 and 10 if you want a longer board-leadership workshop and debrief.
• Before an individual governance memo or oral defence so students can convert role experience into attributable evidence.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

• Conflict-of-interest concepts.
• Basic executive and board accountability.
• Disclosure, recusal and safeguard logic.
• Stakeholder interests and decision legitimacy.

Delivery format

Suggested debrief questions

• Which stakeholder concern changed your initial position most?
• What made the final safeguard proportionate rather than symbolic?
• Where did role incentives make agreement harder?
• Which part of the process protected legitimacy even if you disliked the outcome?
• What individual argument would you defend differently outside your assigned role?

The ESG Simulation puts students into an unresolved stakeholder decision where responsible-business commitments must remain financially viable. Management, Investor, Regulator and Union teams assess the same company from different incentives, then negotiate operating, investment, compensation, wage and workforce choices before approving a shared ESG policy.

Why it fits here

Students have already learned that stakeholder leadership is not a promise to maximise every interest. The simulation makes that constraint visible by linking the agreement to operational and financial consequences, including a minimum EBITDA condition.

What students do

• Review the company challenge and assigned Management, Investor, Regulator or Union brief.
• Analyse environmental, financial, operating and workforce evidence from the role perspective.
• Prepare positions on production filters, production level, ESG budget, additional investment, management compensation, wages and workforce.
• Negotiate a package that remains within the simulation's financial constraint, including EBITDA above $20m.
• Draft or approve the final ESG Policy Statement and review same-role comparisons and negotiated outcomes.

Recommended course placement

• At the end of Session 10 after stakeholder leadership and ESG teaching.
• Inside a two-session block if negotiation, policy drafting and debrief need separate class time.
• Before a stakeholder memo that asks students to distinguish the assigned role from their own final recommendation.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

• Stakeholder mapping and salience.
• Basic ESG vocabulary and operating trade-offs.
• How financial constraints shape responsible decisions.
• Difference between advocacy, negotiation and enterprise recommendation.

Delivery format

Suggested debrief questions

• Which constraint eliminated your preferred option?
• Where did your role encourage you to underweight another stakeholder?
• Which concession improved the enterprise outcome rather than merely securing agreement?
• Did the final policy statement accurately reflect the negotiated terms?
• What evidence would justify reopening the agreement six months later?

For the team simulations, the platform records what each team decided, the terms they agreed and comparative outcomes across groups. That evidence supports your academic judgement; it does not replace it, and it does not establish which individual student made which argument. Managerial Accounting is single-player, so its calculations, selections, allocations, written reasons and comparative outputs can provide attributable evidence, but your published rubric and moderation process still determine the grade.

Grading with the Corporate Governance Simulation

Students resolve a senior-executive conflict of interest from CEO, CTO, CCO and Shareholder roles, agree conflict-management terms and approve future safeguards.

• Quality of conflict diagnosis and use of governance principles.
• Evidence used to justify the resolution, not merely whether the team reached agreement.
• Proportionality of disclosure, recusal, restrictions or other safeguards.
• Ability to explain stakeholder consequences and legitimacy of the process.
• Individual defence showing what the student argued, changed and learned.

Grading with the ESG Simulation

Students negotiate a financially viable ESG agreement across Management, Investor, Regulator and Union roles, with linked operating, investment, compensation, wage and workforce choices.

• Quality of stakeholder and constraint analysis.
• Financial and operating coherence of the final package, including the EBITDA constraint.
• Evidence used to justify trade-offs among investment, compensation, wages, workforce and environmental measures.
• Quality of the policy statement and whether it matches the negotiated terms.
• Individual reflection on role incentives, concessions and what evidence would change the decision.

Grading with the Managerial Accounting Simulation

Students first compare three consumer-audio products using managerial-accounting measures, then allocate $100m across five opportunities through CFO, COO, CMO and CEO perspectives.

• Accuracy and interpretation of contribution margin, break-even, margin of safety, ROI and NPV work where assessed.
• Quality of product selection rationale rather than calculation alone.
• Coherence of the $100m allocation across five opportunities.
• Ability to compare CFO, COO, CMO and CEO perspectives and explain opportunity cost.
• Individual strategic-leadership defence linking resource allocation to organisational priorities.

Moderation, individual evidence and free-riding

• Publish the rubric before the activity and mark the intended learning outcome, not the in-game rank.
• Sample or second-mark borderline work according to local moderation rules.
• Require individual evidence after team simulations, such as a short oral defence, annotated decision log or 400-600 word rationale.
• If the team reached agreement through one dominant student, the shared outcome can still be useful evidence, but individual marks should not assume equal contribution.