Mindful Manager
Fully exploit your potential. Develop your practical wisdom - your capacity to make good judgements in the volatile, complex, and ambiguous world with which you contend. Navigate your way to a postgraduate certificate, diploma or master's.
About the programme
This course is for managers at any stage of their careers who are interested in:
- dramatically enhancing the quality of their decision making
- developing the fundamental capacity of learning from experience
- building a resilient mindset that imaginatively engages with the world of choice we face
- understanding better how to successfully navigate the complex world of organisations
- gaining the vital capacity to engage in productive imaginative dialogue
- rapidly lifting the standard of their critical thinking - their ability to construct & deconstruct arguments, and evaluate evidence & knowledge
This course is designed to assist you in developing your capacity to make good judgements – the fundamental skill all managers require – but one that is vital to anyone aspiring to be a senior strategic leader.
Key facts
Programme content
Mindful Manager is unique in its focus on developing practical wisdom - the capacity for good judgment in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world of management. This is a ‘wicked’ world of divergent interests and clashing perspectives that is suffused with paradox – a world far removed from the caricature of the management textbooks. For this reason, the Mindful Manager course focuses on the development of Practical Wisdom, or Phronesis, as Aristotle termed it – namely, one’s capacity for good judgement.
The course is focused on students developing the nexus of dispositions and capabilities that constitute practical wisdom and underpin good judgement - the capacity most crucial to effectiveness at the most senior levels of management.
The course endeavours to assist students in the development of practically wise dispositions towards self (reflexivity), others, knowledge/evidence, experience and issues/problems, and the core capabilities of reflectivity, reasoning, imagination and dialogue.
This course will heighten student awareness of the intrinsic political and ethical character of managerial work, and enhance their cognitive, collaborative and emotional conduct.
Each week comprises different simple but stretching activities - self-awareness/development exercises, reflective journal work, reading-then-listening engagements and collaborative reading.
Formative feedback will be provided throughout the course in support of reflective/reflexive portfolio development, and in preparation for summative assessment.
Accordion
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Module 1
By the end of this module a successful student will have:
- Developed a practical understanding of the conceptions of reflexivity and reflectivity and their foundational role in the pursuit of good judgement.
- Developed a practical understanding of the capabilities of reason & dialogue and their role in ‘good’ judgement.
- Developed a practical understanding of the form and impact of dispositions towards experience, others, knowledge/evidence & issues/problems that facilitate ‘good’ judgement.
- Developed an understanding of the complex political-ethical character of the wickedly problematic milieu of managerial/leadership work and the role of practical wisdom for its successful navigation.
- Developed an understanding that knowledge, reality, and truth are not simple conceptions, and that objectivity is a pursuit not a possibility.
- Critically analysed the notion of 'practical wisdom' in terms of contribution to effective management, exploring aspects that are controversial and/or contradictory.
- Identified complex/wicked management problems drawn from current professional practice and selected and justified the application of 'Mindful Management' ideas/thinking in their resolution.
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Module 2
Students successfully completing this module will have:
- Crafted a personal, highly practical, path to practical wisdom – a personal HOW targeting the dispositions and capabilities of ‘The Wise One’
- Developed a degree of cognitive self-discipline that is foundational to the practice of practical wisdom.
- Developed a strong/embedded habit of reflexivity, reflectivity and cognitive-collaborative-emotional conduct that underpins good judgement.
- Demonstrated a practical understanding of the capability of imagination, and its role in ‘good’ judgement
- Demonstrated a practical understanding of the conception of Mindfulness and Mindfulness Meditation and their self-disciplining character.
- Applied methodologies, techniques and strategies derived from the domain of 'Mindful Management' in informed and valid ways, that demonstrate the ability to turn practical wisdom learning into practically wise action.
- Reflected critically on how the capabilities of reason, dialogue and imagination, prompt the emergence of new approaches and/or conduct that affect self and others.
- Synthesised learning from Modules 1 and 2; creating new connections between perspectives, methods, and strategies: demonstrating knowing HOW rather than simply knowing THAT.
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Duration, attendance, and delivery
Each module lasts approximately 15 weeks.
The delivery of this module is through our online+ model for distance learning, consisting of online learning, self-study, reflection, discussion and sharing learning with and from others, application of learning to your organisational context and the completion of assessment tasks.
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Assessment
Module 1
Essay(s) (Compulsory): 50%
Portfolio (Compulsory): 50%
Module 2
Groupwork (Compulsory): 40%
Written assessment (Compulsory): 60%
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Entry requirements
You will need to be in a work role (paid or unpaid) which allows you the scope to put the concepts learned into practice. There are no formal qualification requirements for entry; we assess suitability on each individual application.
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Start dates
We are recruiting now for start dates throughout the year. To discover more about the programme, please make an enquiry.
NB: CETAD reserve the right to cancel or move the course to a later date if the number of students registered for the advertised course is not sufficient.
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Course fees
Each module is 15 credits. See Course Fees for more information.