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University of Phoenix Material

Doctoral Learning

Note: COM/705 lectures are provided by the University of Phoenix for use in COM/705. The author is the University of Phoenix, not the course facilitator. Although APA formatting has been applied to some portions of the lectures, the primary purpose of these documents is personal communication, not publication. Therefore, the lectures should not be viewed as a model of APA style or tone. If you wish to cite the lectures in your coursework, please indicate the University of Phoenix as the author, and follow APA citation and referencing guidelines.

As doctoral students, it is now time to engage in authentic, autonomous, and independent learning. It is time for you to establish yourselves as independent scholars, researchers, practitioners, and leaders by assessing your current competency level and determining where you need and want to be. Independence, however, does not mean isolating yourself from other students or faculty. Independent learning in this context means assessing yourself as a scholar and leader and developing future academic and career goals. Think of this assessment process as the beginning of a leadership development plan in which you conduct a personal gap analysis. Assess yourself rigorously and consistently, and consider the feedback you receive from fellow students and facilitators. You will begin to realize strengths and weaknesses. Strive to capitalize on your strengths and modify your weaknesses. Create an action plan for converting weaknesses into strengths, integrating double- and triple-loop learning practices to maintain continuous monitoring, and modifying your plan as you develop and grow.

Independence in this context also means using critical thinking to define your reality, differentiate truth from distortion, and exercise sound, consistent judgment. As doctoral students, you will be reading and integrating volumes of information. You must be able to apply critical thinking to differentiate between valid and invalid sources of data. Lipman (1995) defined critical thinking as “skillful, responsible thinking that facilitates good judgment because it (a) relies upon criteria, (b) is self-correcting, and (c) is sensitive to context” (p. 146).

Critical thinking is an important cognitive skill applicable in almost any situation. However, many authors present critical thinking as a topic reserved only for classrooms or academic environments. In reality, adults use critical thinking in a variety of personal and professional situations. For example, a manager may use critical thinking to assess an employee’s work performance, or a friend might use critical thinking concepts in order to give sound advice. In this way, critical thinking is a trait of the scholar/practitioner/leader – an analytical mode funded by practical and academic knowledge and used to assess situations in both environments. Furthermore, critical thinking enhances people’s professional and personal lives, providing a means for making decisions and enacting judgment that is both internally consistent and externally sound.

Operationalizing Critical Thinking

As doctoral students it is not enough to understand the definition of critical thinking. You must integrate critical thinking behaviors into your daily repertoire. Integrating critical thinking into your daily cognitive process will enhance scholarship and help you further define your personal trajectory. Brookfield (1987) identified the following characteristics of critical thinking:

a. Expressing intellectual curiosity

b. Asking clarifying questions

c. Identifying hidden or unstated meanings and assumptions.

d. Assessing the validity of an idea

e. Evaluating the credibility, accuracy, and reliability of data/sources

f. Questioning and re-evaluating one own ideas or framework

g. Determining when one's own point of view is weak and others’ are strong

h. Recognizing bias, propaganda, and stereotypes

By operationalizing, or converting, critical thinking into practice, you will be a more effective student, follower, and decision-maker. You will also be more effective in conducting the type of intensive self-assessment needed to lead people and organizations effectively. Using critical thinking in the self-assessment process involves conducting a candid critique of one’s own beliefs, values, and assumptions to uncover fallacious or unfounded reasoning in these areas. Using critical thinking in the self-assessment process also involves critically and realistically analyzing strengths and weaknesses. This critical analysis can result in a leadership development plan, one that will guide both scholarly interest and practical application.

Leadership Development

As a part of your doctoral program, you should work on developing a personal leadership plan (this process is formalized in some programs’ curricula). You were introduced to the topic of leadership development in Week One. Now, as you conclude the COM/705 course, you must apply your learning to future doctoral classes. You are also at the point where you must begin to apply COM/705 course content to enhance your leadership effectiveness, converting the strategies learned in this course into leadership actions and behaviors. It is also time to begin the leadership self-assessment process. This process involves identifying your leadership strengths and weaknesses and creating an improvement plan. The Week One lecture discussed 21st century leadership competencies, and by this point in the course you can begin to assess yourself against these competencies by determining your skill level in each. In conducting a self-assessment against these leadership competencies, you must also seek externally derived feedback and data, asking supervisors, co-workers, and peers (often called raters) for their perception of your leadership behavior, as well as searching scholarly literature for insights into your findings. Once you receive and aggregate the feedback, you can integrate what you learn into your personal improvement plan. Clearly, obtaining feedback is a rigorous self-development activity, but it yields substantial results.

Rothwell (1994) introduced the term leadership readiness to differentiate between individuals with future leadership potential and those actually ready to lead. According to Rothwell, the ability to integrate feedback received from raters marks the sign of an individual ready to lead. Successful leaders demonstrate the following competencies: (a) accept feedback non-defensively, (b) integrate feedback and make observable change, (c) seek learning from a variety of sources, and (d) persevere even when learning is difficult. There are many ways to enhance leadership skills and develop leadership readiness. Rothwell suggested the following:

1. Supporting People: Engaging in experiences which provide opportunities to lead, supervise, coach, or mentor others

2. Managing Profit and Loss: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to lead or manage an operation, major project, or business with end-to-end responsibility for performance

3. Developing New Directions: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to start something new, make strategic changes, or carry out a reorganization

4. Serving Customers: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to interact directly with external customers

5. Leveraging Technology: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to transform technology into profitable products and services

6. Managing Business Diversity: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to have multi-functional responsibility

7. Working Internationally: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to develop global business understanding and cultural awareness

8. Inheriting Problems: Engaging in experiences that provide opportunities to fix problems created by former incumbents

9. Having High Stakes: Engaging in experiences where high visibility and responsibility for success or failure is clearly evident

10. Experiencing Job Overload: Engaging in experiences where the sheer size of the job require a large investment of time and energy

11. Proving Oneself: Engaging in experiences where one has to prove his/her ability to handle the job

According to Effron and Gandossy (2004), companies that invest in developing their leaders enjoy long term profitability. As doctoral students engaged in the rigorous study of leadership, it is your opportunity to examine the other possibilities inherent in leadership theory and development.

Conclusion

Throughout COM/705, you have essentially worked to resolve some of the dualisms that exist within our understanding of practice and scholarship, personal and professional life, as well as self and group. In the process of resolving, you will likely have come to see these concepts situated dialectically – opposing, yet informing one another, points on a continuum that need consistent mediation in order to yield meaning and effectiveness. Practicing pure scholarship would likely never allow one to come to a final, practical decision; conversely, sole reliance on practice does not account for a rich understanding of the context and history behind decisions and situations. A leader is, thus, charged with finding his or her way of living in both modes – making decisions, but funding those decisions with data and interdisciplinary, critical thinking.

The resolution of dualisms also served to indoctrinate you into the culture of the University of Phoenix’s doctoral programs. The University has designed these programs to model a community of practice, with students and faculty bringing theoretical and practical knowledge to bear on organizational issues in every course; however, in this model, both students and faculty are the active proponents and owners of this learning. In every conversation, you must see yourself as a student and a teacher, growing as you foster others’ growth. In this way, the Learning Team is not merely a model of how organizations currently exist – it can be a model of how a team feels organizations should perform in the future. As students and leaders, it is now your responsibility to imagine, define, research, and communicate these new ways of being.

Enjoy the challenges you face ahead in your program, but never forget the reason you have undertaken them or the responsibility that comes with them. You are working towards being better leaders, for your life, that of your organization, and that of the greater community.

References

Brookfield, S. D. (1987). Developing critical thinkers: Challenging adults to explore alternative ways of thinking and acting. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Effron, M., & Gandossy, R. (2004). Leading the way: Three truths from the top companies for leaders. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Goldsmith, M., & Morgan, H. (n.d.) Leadership is a contact sport: The follow up factor in management. Retrieved December 6, 2005 from .

Lipman, M. (1995). Critical thinking: What can it be? In A. L. Ornstein, & L. S. Behar (Eds.), Contemporary issues in curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Rothwell, W. (1994). Effective succession planning. New York: Amacom.

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