"It's All About U" Leadership Course: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper explores the inspiration, design, delivery and evaluation of the “Its All About U” leadership course held in Mataura, New Zealand in 2009. Leadership challenges within the Mataura Taskforce was one of the inspirational forces behind the course development. The course was designed within the trialectic theoretical framework of Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U and Experiential Learning Theory. Its content came from a combination of intuition and evidenced based materials. It was delivered in an unconventional manner with no course content given to the participants prior to delivery and a desire to provide a safe yet challenging learning environment. Participants enrolled out of curiosity and interest in the topic. Interviews with individual participants provided the bulk of data. A case study design was used to evaluate the formative and summative thematic aspects of content, process and sustained learning.