Singapore University of Social Sciences

Leadership for Collective Impact

Leadership for Collective Impact (NPM526)

Synopsis

The non-profit sector is one that is currently highly fragmented with many non-profit organisations operating in silo. As the growing non-profit sector take time to mature, the onus lies in non-profit leaders’ abilities and desires to do good together, prudently and speedily, because beneficiaries can be better served. To reach a state of highly productive and meaningful collaboration entails a new perspective of leading within and across sectors. Leaders can start by taking personal ownership of driving collective impact and moving away from an attitude of delivering services in silo. To do this well, leaders are to have a system view of how politics, economics, and societal impact are interlinked and how that determines information collection, sharing, and flow. The quest for accurate information requires a set of virtues representing an enduring spirit, such as curiosity in inquiries, humility in accepting differences, and courage to pursue truth. NPM526 Leadership for Collective Impact covers the three topics of how leaders can evolve in their Systems Thinking, Information Sensing, and Shared Virtues. As a baseline for pursuing these three leadership practices, two subjects will be covered in-depth: “Understanding Leadership Behaviours” and “Getting to a Collective Purpose.”

Level: 5
Credit Units: 5
Presentation Pattern: Every July

Topics

  • Introduction to Nonprofit Leadership
  • What Covid has taught us about the harm, the good, and the opportunities
  • Redefining Leadership
  • Your Leadership Behaviours, and what causes them?
  • Personal and collective purpose
  • Critical visible Leadership consequences - culture, decision making, ethics and diversity
  • Information sensing - more than data analytics
  • Information sensing - biases and groupthink - the unintended harm
  • Aristotle's Virtues Theory
  • Shared virtues - becoming a virtuous leader
  • Systems thinking - drilling deeper into inter-relationships
  • Systems thinking for human development

Learning Outcome

  • Examine the non-profit landscape and how it is interlinked with the public and private sectors.
  • Improve self-awareness and personal leadership behaviours, by critically evaluating ones values in action, beliefs, bias, world-views, purpose and readiness to change.
  • Appraise the components of Systems Thinking, Information Sensing, Shared Virtues, and what it takes to inculcate new skills.
  • Construct assessments of one’s leadership styles and behaviours.
  • Discuss Systems Thinking, Information Sensing, Shared Virtues in achieving a shared vision, collective purpose, and driving collective impact.
  • Formulate a strategy to create (better still, multiply) impact in the work that you do.
Back to top
Back to top