UOW Leadership Masterclass

UOW hosted the second of three Master Classes on Saturday 4 November, presented by John Hesketh on Leadership. John shared with the LIP his wealth of international leadership experience, built from his career that started in engineering and progressed to various roles as Managing Director, Principal Consultant, Project Director and now Doctoral Researcher for Sydney Business School - University of Wollongong.
 
We were given a brief history of leadership theories, highlighting the shift over time from theories focussed on individuals and their power influence to the collective leadership theories of more recent years. We then examined today’s leadership challenges, reviewed the characteristics of different leadership styles including visionary, coaching, democratic, pacesetting, commanding and affiliative.

In pairs, the LIP undertook an 'immunity to change' exercise, drilling down on a leadership goal they identified as something they would like to improve. The exercise yielded some surprising, confronting and invaluable results.

The LIP enjoyed taking a day to explore leadership theory in more depth through an academic lens, breaking down goals and deriving and assessing their assumptions through the immunity to change class exercise. The Master Class was also a great introduction to the modern leadership styles required for success in today’s environment, leading during ambiguous and uncertain times and the importance of responsible leadership.