RSM2621H – Effective Leadership (Fall 2024)

Instructor Bio

Professor Gary Latham is the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Effectiveness and a past president of the Canadian Psychological Association. He is the only person in his field to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In addition, he is a Fellow of the American and Canadian Psychological Associations, the American Academy of Management, and the only person to receive both the awards for Professional Contributions to Psychology as a Profession and as a Science from the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Scholar/Practitioner Award from the American Academy of Management. In 2006, he received the prestigious Michael R. Losey Human Resource Research Award from the Society of Human Resource Management in the U.S., and he was in the first group of scholars to be made a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology, where he now serves on the Board of Directors. In 2007 he became the first Canadian to be elected President of the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. Gary served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Creative Leadership from 2001 – 2007, the Board of Directors of the Society for Human Resource Management, 2007-2013, and currently its foundation. Gary is the past President of Work and Organizational Psychology, Division 1 of the International Association of Applied Psychology.

Target Audience

Students interested in issues regarding/understanding how to build high performing teams, know how to spot “winners”, ways to coach high performing teams and methods for overcoming learned helplessness when a team experiences setbacks.

Format

Intensive format over 2 weekends, plus an in-person exam.

Course Mission

To increase your personal effectiveness as a leader.

Course Scope

Focus is on selection, performance management, motivation, and leadership in the workplace.

This course will consist of a series of lectures, group discussion, with an emphasis on workshops regarding the following subject matter:

• How can we build a high performing team?
• Invariably, people leave. How can we tell prior to hiring who is going to walk on water, tread water, or sink rapidly if an applicant is invited to join our team?
• Once employees are in place, we, as leaders, must assess them, and we must coach them if they are to be high performers who contribute to rather than detract from your team’s effectiveness. How can you as a leader instill within an employee a desire for continuous improvement?
• As teams start to jell, typically there are feelings of jealously and mistrust as people come to believe that some individuals are treated better than others. In addition to being fair, it is critical that we as leaders are seen as fair. What can we do to foster “organizational justice”?
• One severe setback, or multiple small ones can instill doubt in both the team and in ourselves. Learned helplessness can cripple us and the team we lead. How do we inculcate resiliency, learned optimism when the facts are clear that we are in very difficult times?
• High IQ on the part of a leader always was and always will be critical to a leader’s effectiveness. But in this new millennium, it is not a differentiator between a highly effective and a not so effective leader in the workplace. The key is our ability to “read” others and to read ourselves. The key is emotional intelligence. How can we increase it?

Evaluation and Grade Distribution

Component	Due Date	Weight
Class Participation	Ongoing	20%
Online Discussion Board	Ongoing	10%
Final Exam (In-person)	During exam period	70%

Required Resources

Latham, G.P.  (2018). Becoming the evidence-based manager: Making the science of management work for you (2^nd ed.).  Boston:  Nicholas Brealey.