Insegnamento a.a. 2025-2026

Leadership paradigms are changing in response to the evolution of business and organizational models and in response to contextual changes.

The necessity to adapt effectively to complex and highly uncertain competitive environments is progressively shifting the focus from structure to people and from pure execution to ownership and empowerment for problem solving, creativity and innovation, with an ever increasing emphasis on learning and ethical concern.

The willingness of the leader to lead with courage aiming at setting the stage for people’s flourishing and his/her ability to set the stage for their empowerment and ongoing development within an inclusive environment, is key to ensure exceptional performance, sustainable and individual wellbeing and professional development.

Considering the globalization of businesses, the complexity and uncertainty of the dynamics that characterize markets and the urgent call for sustainability, leadership abilities must encompass cultural intelligence, the ability to act with integrity and to lead oneself and others in situation where change isn’t the exception rather a constant challenge.

Following up with the Mission of the course, Global Leadership addresses the concepts and competences that are mostly critical to operate effectively in a leadership role no matter at which level in the organization, within a global environment displaying integrity and courage to set the stage for business and individual growth and development.

The perspective is that of the global people leader who sets the stage for the achievement of stronger employee performance and improved business results by enhancing his/her own engagement and empowerment and that of the people s/he works with.

The course is structured into three interdependent modules: (1) discovering one’s potential as a leader and setting the stage for transforming the potential into competence (2) leading self for enhanced impact: self-empowerment and the competences for personal impact and (3) leading others for optimal performance in global and complex environments that is setting the stage for leveraging on differences and for people’s engagement, empowerment and effectiveness.

Two are the main assumptions on which the course has been designed:

-the first, leaders who focus on bringing out the best in themselves and in the people in the context in which they operate, can transform the way their organizations functions achieving great results in a sustainable way;

-the second, leadership competencies are built upon self-awareness and self-leadership abilities which represent the conditio sine qua non for the development of people leadership competencies. This is the reason why participants are provided with opportunities to reflect on themselves and on their interpersonal styles both through self-assessment, class discussions and peer coaching session.

• Making sense of leadership: understanding the concept and its implications to guide self awareness and leadership development
• Discovering the process of “learning to be a leader” with a focus on the challenges of the Transition from Individual Contributor to Manager and to Executive
• Raising one’s self- and others’ awareness to enable leadership development and high impact leadership, with a focus on Personality, Character Strengths, Values and Motives
• Leading self as the first step in the direction of leadership effectiveness: taking on the responsibility of oneself to enhance the responsibility of other through an assertive communication style and setting the stage for the Ideal Performance State managing energy, stress, motivation and focus
• Leading others empowering them for excellent performance both at the individual and team level: enhancing cultural intelligence for effective communication and teamwork in global environments, creating highly engaging and empowering work environments
• Leading others in highly complex environments: the meta-competences for high impact leadership in the VUCA and BANI world.

• Have a thorough understanding of leadership as an organizational process, a formal role/position within the organization and a set of competences and behavioral repertoire for leadership effectiveness in global and complex environments
• Increase the level of self-awareness with reference to personal and interpersonal dispositions (personality), Character Strengths, Values and Motives for enhanced impact with the full realization of one's leadership potential
• Be familiar with the different leadership styles and where/when thay are required for making a difference
• Train and enhance one's emotional intelligence competences for personal and interpersonal effectiveness
• Understand the determinants of exceptional performance and set the stage for personal and collective effectiveness
• Develop and/or strengthen one's ability to learn from experience enlarging one's behavioral repertoire for effective leadership

• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Practical Exercises
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

Starting from the evidence that “adults are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than to think their way into a new way of acting” (Ibarra, 2015) the learning process is built upon both sharing relevant theories and models and on collaboratively crafting opportunities to learn from dialogue and action through individual, peer and team-based activities.

Theory and models are shared to enable a thorough and deeper understanding of emerging leadership issues and to “make sense” beyond “common sense” of the emergent and effective leadership dynamics.

Opportunities for dialogue and for direct experimentation aim at enhancing social and experience-based learning, stimulating curiosity for ongoing learning and consolidating the Experience-Reflection and further Conceptualization cycle for enlarging ones’ leadership behaviors repertoire.

To enhance learning effectiveness:

• self-assessment tools are offered to enable increased self-awareness.
• exercises are proposed as opportunities for individual reflection and action on leadership competences
• a small group assignment is given as an opportunity to learn about leadership within the global small team through the activation of  the Action-Reflection-Conceptualization and Intentional Experimentation cycle
• guest speakers provide insights on how leadership "works" within organizational contexts being also valuable and relevant role models

Small Group Assignment (50% of the final grade -  composed of: 30% crafting and carrying out the presentation + 20% group dynamics and learning experience insights): it represents a fundamental component of the learning process according to the mission and goals of the course. The small group assignment is in fact an opportunity to deepen the understanding of one of the most up to date emerging issues in leadership and to practice one’s leadership skills within a team that is by nature global. The rigor and appropriate application of tools and concepts discussed during the course will be evaluated together with the overall effectiveness of the presentation of the main concepts and implications.

Written exam:  (50% of the final grade) multiple choice questions on bibliographical material/readings, on topics discussed in class and on slide contents and notes

Peer Evaluation: decrease by 1-3 points /team assignment grade if free-riding behaviors occur

Class participation: value added and mode (respectful and constructive) 

Global Leadership is a mandatory course for CEMS students. The status of non attending student must be related to a demonstrated inability to attend to be discussed with the course Director and Bocconi Cems office.

The non attending exam will be oral or written depending upon the number of non attending students enrolled in the exam and it will consist of multiple choice and/or open ended questions (written), open ended questions (oral) meant to verify the acquisition and the ability to effectively represent and discuss the main concepts about leading in global environment described in the book (see Teaching Materials)

• Slides presented and discussed in class and bibliographical materials/articles uploaded on BBoard or to be searched for (Library or web)
• Videos and self-assessment materials highlighted in the slides
• Personal notes

• Gehrke, Claes, Pauknerova, Aust, Bell Lambert, Global Leadership Practices, EE Edward Elgar Publishing 2024