Leadership is the first course an MBAX candidate takes at the University of New South Wales, giving you the opportunity to engage in deep introspection.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of self-awareness, innovation, collaboration, strategic insight, being a trusted advisor and having the capacity to balance power and influence. It’s not management. Or telling people what to do, in order to get work done. It’s about inspiring the collective to work as a team, and create meaningful outcomes for an organisation.

I appreciated the plethora of models offered during the course. In particular, Heslin and Keating’s (2017) ‘being in learning mode’, a structured framework to running experiments to grow as a leader.

For the final assessment, we looked three to four years into the future and recorded a video to our future self. We needed to describe the leadership role we adopted, behaviours displayed throughout our career, and impact this had on our career.

Course concepts:

1) Giving voice to values (Unit 1, Gentile)

2) Being in learning mode (Unit 2, Heslin & Keating)

3) Leadership development methods (mentoring) (Unit 2)

4) Enabling career success as an emergent process (Unit 4, Heslin)

5) Building an influence strategy (Unit 5)

6) Sharing information to foster stress resilience (Unit 8, Hill)

Top three presentation concepts:

1) Used emotion and vulnerability (Pathos)

2) Use of facts and figures (Logos)

3) Shared stories and anecdotes, with expressions of moral conviction (charismatic leadership tactics)

Final grade: 81.10% (Distinction)