Teaching Leadership When there are no Easy Answers
Leadership courses often seek to move beyond frameworks and theory to help students practice judgment in complex, ambiguous situations. These two recent Kellogg teaching materials are designed to do just that, immersing students in difficult decisions where competing interests, conflicting values, and interpersonal dynamics shape the path forward. Together, they provide rich opportunities for discussion, reflection, negotiation, and leadership development.
Moral Complexity in Leadership: Evaluating Personal and Professional Integrity helps business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Through a compelling narrative and guided discussion, students discuss the ways in which such matters should be (or, at the very least, could have been) handled, learning valuable lessons about the importance of leading any company or organization with honesty, empathy, and integrity.
Mars & Jupiter: A Nuclear Negotiation between the United States and Iran immerses participants in a high-stakes international negotiation inspired by real-world geopolitical tensions. As they work toward an agreement, students must balance competing national interests, security concerns, political pressures, and relationship dynamics while navigating uncertainty and conflict.
Together, these cases invite students to wrestle with questions that leaders face every day:
- How do you navigate competing interests and values under pressure?
- When should you challenge authority, and at what cost?
- How do relationships, power dynamics, and moral convictions shape difficult decisions when the path forward is uncertain?
Ideal for courses in negotiation, leadership, organizational behavior, business ethics, public policy, social impact, and international management.
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