Global Leadership (Master's)

This foundational course introduces students to the principles, practices, and mindset of conscious global leadership. Emphasizing personal, collective, and theoretical awareness, students explore cultural intelligence, ethical responsibility, and systems thinking. The course challenges students to explore what it means to lead with consciousness in an interconnected and rapidly changing world. Students will examine the evolution of global leadership theories, explore transpersonal and sustainable leadership models, and develop a personal leadership philosophy grounded in purpose, inclusivity, and social impact. Throughout the course, learners will engage in critical reflection, case studies, and experiential activities designed to deepen their understanding of how personal growth and global awareness are essential to leading across diverse contexts. Text Recommendation: The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact (Hull & Moore, 2025)

This course explores the intersection of critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and leadership through a global lens. In this rapidly evolving, interconnected world, students will develop advanced critical analysis skills to evaluate complex global issues, navigate cultural paradigms, and lead with agility in multinational contexts. Through case studies, simulations, and collaborative projects, students will engage with topics such as global governance, social responsibility, sustainable development, and transpersonal leadership. The course emphasizes reflective practice, cross-cultural communication, and ethical decision-making as essential competencies for transformative global leadership. Text Recommendation: Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (Margaret J. Wheatley, 2006)

This course provides a foundational exploration of the intrapersonal and interpersonal capacities essential for effective leadership in complex and rapidly evolving global systems. Drawing on interdisciplinary research from leadership studies, organizational behavior, transpersonal psychology, and systems theory, students will critically examine the personal dimensions of leadership—including purpose, values, beliefs, self-awareness, emotional and cultural intelligence, complexity, and conscious values-based decision-making. Students will explore and describe their orientation to the world to enhance adaptability, consciousness, and resiliency in complex, ever-changing environments. The course serves as a critical entry point for advanced study in global leadership by emphasizing the internal capabilities that enable systemic impact. Text Recommendation: Doing Better: Activate Your Power and Potential in Daily Life (Koriath, 2025).

This course guides students into leading with curiosity, humility, ethics, and purpose. Students experience the cultivation of powerful questions to explore assumptions and beliefs and to catalyze innovation. There is reflective engagement, which contributes to the development of deep listening skills to self, others, and systems. This immersion fosters an environment where vulnerability and empowerment are embraced. Meaning-making conversations will surface diverse perspectives and enable sense-making across cultures. Text Recommendations: Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (Schein, 2013); Bohm on Dialogue (Bohm, 1966); The Reflective Practitioner (Schoen, 1983); The Tacit Dimension (Polanski, 1966)

This course explores leadership as a dynamic and relational process grounded in authentic collaboration within groups, among peers, with personal and with positional power. Through case studies, real-world projects, and self-assessment, students will develop practical skills to lead across diverse teams, cultures, and organizational contexts. Emphasizing ethics, trust-building, shared purpose, emotional intelligence, and adaptive communication, the course challenges students to align values-driven leadership with collaborative strategy. Learners will critically evaluate the role of authenticity in leadership and develop tools for fostering inclusive, innovative, empowered, and high-performing environments in global and cross-sectoral settings without position or hierarchical power. Text Recommendations: Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow (Johnson, 2025); An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization (Kegan & Lahey); Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Pearce & Conger, 2002)

This course focuses on identifying and building engaged and culturally aware global organizational capacities. Students will focus on developing intercultural communication skills that support authentic and collaborative relationships with others who may have different values, beliefs, and behaviors. The fundamentals of global leadership in complex environments are explored. Students will learn to apply systems approaches to understanding complex organizational and societal systems, adopting different ways of knowing through the consideration of political, social, cultural, and spiritual perspectives. Text Recommendation: The Soil of Leadership: Cultivating the Conditions for Transformation (Yamamoto, 2025).

This course equips students with the strategic insight and analytical tools necessary to understand and respond consciously to the complex challenges and emerging opportunities facing organizations in a rapidly evolving global landscape. Students will explore how globalization, technological disruption, shifting geopolitical dynamics, environmental crises, and social expectations are reshaping the way organizations operate and lead. Students will assess real-world scenarios confronting multinational enterprises, social ventures, and global institutions. The course emphasizes systems thinking, ethical decision-making, and authentic leadership to help students consider adaptive strategies that are both globally responsive and locally relevant. Text Recommendations: The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Friedman, 2007); Making Globalization Work (Stiglitz, 2007)

This course is an applied, individualized learning experience designed to allow students to pursue in-depth study on a specific topic, challenge, or leadership practice aligned with their personal and professional goals in conscious global leadership. Under the guidance of a faculty advisor, students develop and execute a customized framework for the first iteration of their capstone or internship that integrates theoretical exploration with practical application. This course emphasizes independent assessment, critical analysis, and real-world relevance. Students may choose to address a pressing global issue, conduct a case study of a leadership initiative, design an intervention in their organization or community as an internship, or explore emerging trends through research in global leadership, innovation, or cross-cultural collaboration. Text Recommendation: Optimizing the Power of Action Learning: Real-time Strategies for Developing Leaders, Building Teams, and Transforming Organizations (Marquardt, 2011)

This advanced course explores the tools necessary to build a viable network for long-term inner-dimensional growth of conscious leadership. Students are invited to critically examine how personal growth, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and identity development shape a global leader’s capacity to drive meaningful change in complex and emergent global systems. The course emphasizes the inner work of leadership—how leaders evolve through challenge, reflection, and purpose. Students will engage in personal inquiry, supported by emergent peer mentoring frameworks and experiential learning practices to better understand their own leadership mindset, biases, and transformative potential. Text Recommendation: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, Flowers, 2008)

This course explores the metaphor and method of alchemy as a transformational framework for developing adaptive leadership in complex, global, uncertain environments. Drawing from systems thinking, transpersonal psychology, and organizational theory, students will engage with leadership as an inner and outer journey of transformation—akin to the alchemical process of turning base metals into gold. Through historical and contemporary lenses, learners will analyze case studies of leaders navigating volatility, ambiguity, and resistance. Adaptive leadership frameworks will be paired with transpersonal and symbolic methodologies and archetypes to cultivate resilience, emotional intelligence, and strategic agility. Text Recommendation: Insights on Leadership: Service, Stewardship, Spirit, and Servant Leadership (Block, Blanchard, Wheatley & Autry, 1998)

This course explores the dynamic intersection of technology, innovation, and human imagination in shaping the future of global leadership. Students are challenged to critically examine how emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, blockchain, and immersive media—are not only transforming industries but also reshaping leadership paradigms, ethics, and global systems. Through a multidisciplinary lens, students will investigate how visionary and conscious leadership can harness technological change to solve complex global problems, foster inclusive innovation, and anticipate unintended consequences. The course also examines the creative process as a leadership capacity, enabling students to cultivate imagination as a strategic tool in innovation and foresight. Recommended Text: The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Christensen, 1997)

This course examines the evolving dynamics of the global economy through the lens of ethical leadership. In an era marked by rising inequality, geopolitical tensions, climate risk, and digital disruption, this course equips students with the economic literacy and ethical frameworks needed to lead responsibly in global, complex, interconnected systems. The course blends macroeconomic understanding with a critical exploration of capitalism, global trade, financial markets, labor dynamics, and development. Students will assess how leaders influence and are influenced by global economic structures, with particular attention to ethical dilemmas, stakeholder responsibility, and sustainability. Students will develop the capacity to make values-aligned decisions while navigating uncertainty and identifying opportunities for systemic justice with a long-term impact. Recommended Text: The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (Mazzucato, 2018)

This course integrates theory, practice, and personal insight to prepare students to lead transformative change in complex global environments. As the pace of global disruption accelerates—from climate change to digital transformation to shifting geopolitical power—leaders must develop adaptive, systems-aware approaches to navigate uncertainty and drive meaningful, sustainable impact. The course examines the interplay between global systems, organizational change, and human behavior, emphasizing the leader’s role as a sense-maker, conscious bridge-builder, and catalyst for transformation. Students will explore frameworks for leading change across cultures, sectors, and worldviews, with particular attention to inclusive leadership, collaborative strategy, and resilience in the face of resistance and complexity. Recommended Text: Social Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results (Stroh, 2015).

This course explores the intersection of global leadership, a core competency, with human-centered design as a means to address complex, systemic challenges in international and cross-cultural contexts. Immersion in this course equips students with the conscious mindset, innovative methods, and creative tools to design inclusive and contextually responsive solutions that align with the ethical, social, and environmental responsibilities of global leadership. Students will learn how design thinking, systems design, and strategic foresight can be integrated into leadership practice to foster collaboration, generate insight, and guide transformative action. Emphasis is placed on working across cultures, power structures, and institutional boundaries to co-create solutions that are sustainable, scalable, and deeply human. Recommended Text: Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Meadows, 2008)

This course integrates global conscious leadership competencies with applied strategic thinking to identify, evaluate, and act on real-world global business opportunities. This course challenges students to reflect and synthesize knowledge from conscious leadership, systems thinking, global economics, innovation and creativity, sustainability, cultural intelligence, and ethical considerations into actionable business strategies. Students will work individually to assess emerging markets, global trends, or international challenges and propose leadership-driven solutions that create economic, social, and environmental value. Emphasis is placed on opportunity recognition, cross-cultural strategy, and the design of inclusive, scalable initiatives within complex global systems. This course contributes directly to the final capstone project (MGL7070) through applied knowledge. Recommended Text: Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010)

This final capstone course provides students with an opportunity and accountability to integrate and apply the full range of knowledge, skills, and perspectives gained throughout the Master of Global Leadership (MGL) program. Through individualized directed studies, students will finalize a self-designed, faculty-supervised project, case study, organizational intervention, or research initiative that addresses a contemporary and pressing global leadership issue. Emphasis is placed on critical reflection, synthesis across disciplines, and the demonstration of applied knowledge of advanced leadership competencies in a global context. Ongoing mentorship meetings and peer discussions support collaborative learning, constructive feedback, and professional development. The course culminates in a formal presentation and written report, serving as a professional artifact that illustrates the student’s growth and readiness to lead effectively in complex global environments. Recommended Text: Leadership: Theory and Practice (9th ed.; Northouse, 2021)