COR 293 - Leadership and Governance in Practice: Structures, Culture and Performance

Course Description

As organizations scale and operate nationally and internationally, leadership, governance, and organizational structures play a defining role in shaping culture, collaboration and team performance.

This course explores how formal systems, such as governance frameworks, policies, organizational structures, interact with informal systems, including leadership behaviours, norms, rituals, and decision-making practices, to influence day-to-day operations and team effectiveness. You will examine the various levels of leadership and their function in governance within organizations and how these roles carry distinct accountabilities and expectations.

Leaders will be equipped with the insights and tools to intentionally shape culture through systems, leadership practices, and structural design, ensuring that teams thrive even in complex and evolving business contexts.

Course Details

Upon completion of this course, successful students will be able to:

• Recognize that leadership roles function as governance models across different levels (e.g., executive, middle management, team leadership), and how leadership behaviours or governance models influence culture and team dynamics.
• Describe tools that help diagnose personal, team and organizational cultures and get a deeper understanding of culture and how to design and maintain it.
• Explore the concept of power in leadership roles and how leaders influence strategic decisions in governance frameworks using different power dynamics techniques in multicultural global business environments.
• Assess the strengths and limitations of their own existing organizational structures and operational routines in achieving strategic goals using cultural and structural diagnostic tools.
• Examine how to integrate and align your Leadership level, scope of work, organizational role and redesign your leadership-level governance structure and team organization to align with governance models within organizational design, especially considering existing leadership roles and governance needs.
• Develop a personal leadership and governance roadmap with interventions that strengthen cultural alignment, improve cross-team collaboration, enhance operational and support a healthy, adaptive, and high-performing organizational culture in a global context.