Background
Leading highly skilled people engaged in scientific work is always a demanding job. Highly-skilled people are autonomous in some resepcts and highly rule-oriented in others, they are difficult to replace and demand much from their leaders. When operating with research on occupational health and safety and work life, the bar is raised further due to the involvement of multiple disciplines and institutions and researchers bringing in different scientific backgrounds, traditions and beliefs.
Success in work life projects depends upon the establishment of a well-thought-out organisation. This means clarifying strategy, structure, activities, and administrative procedures, all designed to guide the project towards its stipulated goal and to keep the time frame and resource expenditure under control. Setting up the project organisation follows the well-established techniques of project management.
In the area of work life, research project management techniques are necessary, but not sufficient, as they are less suited to handle the unexpected, vague, conflicting or ambiguous, all qualities strongly present in complex projects. What is needed in addition to project management is project leadership, which is the main topic of this course.
Project leadership picks up where project management ends. Proper project management poses a frame, not a prison, for the project, and this frame is based on future elements that are foreseeable, known or susceptible to estimation. Yet research projects - particularly in work life research - contain numerous surprising and unexpexted elements that cannot be anticipated. Project leadership can be construed as the creative acts of a leader coping with the unexpected and making the most of it.
Real leadership is based on a profound understanding of the social structures and processes in the project's ecosystem as it is formed, disrupted, and reformed around unexpected results, achievements not materialising, interpersonal disagreement, lack of external support, and other such elements. Competent and creative leadership turns what might otherwise be a conflict or a crisis into constructive learning points and beginnings for new routes of development.
The present course focuses on leadership on work life projects with the aim of moving beyond project management. Building on the same discipline, the course supplements it with the notion of leadership as an ability to do better in complex situations in and around projects. The course offers models and tools to analyse situations and to establish a recommended course of action. The course also identifies and develops practical competence in the actual implementation of leadership or ways in which acting leaders can influence the situation and initiate a movement forward with both short and long-range improvement in mind.
Objectives
The objective of the course is (a) to teach adaptive leadership as a useful way of handling the more complex elements of work life projects, and (b) to help the individual participant to identify the course of action that would be the most useful in the participant's own projects or home organisation.
This means that during the course each participant will associate the models learned to his or her own situation. Also participants will develop a personal leadership improvement plan to be applied after finishing the course.
Target group
The course is targeted to project and programme leaders in occupational health and safety.
Research directors and other people advising or coaching project leaders will also benefit from this course.
Course content
Course material is primarily from the last 5 years, thereby offering contemporary viewpoint to leadership in complex projects. The theoretical angle of the course views leadership as productive involvement in complex organisational processes.
The course consists of three parts. In Part 1, the participant reflects upon his or her job and organisation. In Part 2, the course discusses the various aspects of the models for leading scientists and scientific projects. As important emphasis in the teaching is placed on challenges faced by the participant in his or her own organisation, techniques found useful from the participants' viewpoint are in particular focus. Part 3 consists of summing up the learnings from the course, and each participant will prepare a personal implementation plan.
Description of parts 1-3:
- Part 1: Overviewing my situation
Using an appropriate thinking process, each participant prepares a personal list of his or her most important leadership challenges. As the course goes on, it will propose leader actions addressing each item on the list, and by the end of the course the participant should be able to work upon every challenge on the list.
- Part 2: Analysing my situation and knowing what should be done
Part 2 constitutes the heart of the course. This part presents a comprehensive insight into modern management models and techniques as relevant to leading scientists and leading scientific projects.
Part 2 is divided into the following sections:
A. Understanding the nature of research projects and the ecosystems surrounding them
B. Analysing the two parts of the project leader's job: organising and leading. This includes identifying the rationale and assumptions behind traditional project management, as well as recognising the strengths of adaptive leadership
C. Going deeper into the facets of adaptive leadership, establishing the situation, planning action, and taking action. Finding ways to act in sometimes problematic conditions and to initiate progress.
D. Overviewing the range of personal competencies and situational factors in the workplac; this will help to realise the potential of adaptive leadership
The teaching is presentation of theory mixed with hands-on activities. Participants are expected to pick-up leadership strategies and techniques relevant to their personal challenge list (initiated in Part 1).
- Part 3: Establishing a plan on how to improve my work as leader
By now the participant will have acquired a number of interesting action strategies to improve his or her leadership style. In Part 3 of the course a holistic view is applied, and each participant develops a personal plan for leadership enhancement. This is done by reviewing the challenge list, which by now contains promising leader actions added during Part 2.
Next, participants plan a stepwise implementation that will consider the available time and power relations in their organisations. By the end of Part 3, the participant will have a clear picture of the specific changes to be implemented in his or her work.
Learning methodology
The course generates intensive learning by problem-focused teaching of research management in science-based organisations.
The participant will gain from the course a number of leadership actions found relevant to the particular challenges in their work as well as a personal plan on how to implement these leadership improvements.
Lecturers
Steen Martiny, Executive Programme Developer and Visiting Aassociate Professor at
Copenhagen Business School and partner in Innovia, a management consultancy in Copenhagen and Otto Melchior Poulsen,
Director of Research, National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, and guest speakers from academic
and industrial research organisations.
Participants
The maximum number of participants is 30.
Time
Five days starting Monday morning and ending Friday at noon.
Location and accommodation
The course will take place at the Hotel Gentofte about 10 km North of the
Copenhagen city centre, Gentoftegade 29, DK-2820 Gentofte. The organiser will reserve rooms for the participants at the
course venue. The full board price comprising accommodation, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and conference coffees will amount to
DKK 1 427,- per day. A so called day meeting with conference lunch and conference coffees totals DKK 475,-. The price of an
additional night is DKK 795,-. Minor changes in the prices might be possible. More detailed information about the practical
arrangements will be sent to the participants after the registration deadline. Please also visit the web pages of the hotel
at the address www.gentoftehotelcopenhagen.dk.
Registration deadline
Application forms are available from the course co-ordinator. They are to be completed and returned to her not later than
10 March 2008. A letter of confirmation together with the detailed programme will be sent to the participants after the deadline for applications. You can also register to the course using NIVA's web site address: www.niva.org.
Course fee
EUR 550 (accommodation and meals not included).
When paying the course fee please, indicate:
1. Your name, 2. Course fee (in EUR), 3. Course code: 4801.
The fee has to be paid four weeks before the start of the course to:
NIVA
Nordea Bank Finland Plc
Meilahti Branch, Tukholmankatu 2
FI-00250 Helsinki, Finland
Account no: 226238-2043
IBAN: FI79 2262 3800 0020 43
Swift code: NDEAFIHH
Please, note that if you cancel your participation
later than four weeks before the start of the course, (without an acceptable reason, e.g. illness) the organiser is obliged to charge a cancellation fee of EUR 273.
Language
The language of the course is English.
Scholarships
NIVA can grant a few scholarships to participants from north-western Russia (the St. Petersburg area and Karelia). Application forms are available from the NIVA office and on Internet:
www.niva.org. A scholarship covers the course fee and accommodation costs, but the participants are requested to take care of travel arrangements themselves.
Finnish participants can apply for financial aid from the Finnish Work Environment Fund (Työsuojelurahasto). Scholarships are granted three times a year, and the deadlines are: 2 January,
2 May and 1 October 2008. Application forms are available on Internet: www.tsr.fi.
Other Nordic and international participants may turn to their own national education authorities, the Ministry of Health, or the Ministry of Labour for further information about financial
support.
Course leader
Steen Martiny
Copenhagen Business School
DK-2000 Frederiksberg, DENMARK
Innovia
Langebjerg 6, 4
DK-2830 Naerum, DENMARK
Tel. +45 45 80 62 88
Fax +45 45 80 73 88
E-mail: sm@innovia.dk
Course co-ordinator
Gunilla Rasi
NIVA
Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A
FI-00250 Helsinki, FINLAND
Tel. +358 30 474 2497
E-mail: gunilla.rasi@ttl.fi
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