Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

The only leadership course in Australia that takes a psychodynamic view of human behaviour. Students develop insights into individual and group behaviour to create meaningful change in the workplace.

📆 Next intake: July 2023

⦿ Live interactive online

🕓 1 year part-time

Course Overview

Foster your analytic and academic skills by deepening your understanding of the unique demands of particular work systems. Enhance your appreciation of the professional, political, cultural, emotional and ethical nuances of organisational life.

The Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) is designed for work-experienced professionals who wish to develop their managerial capacities through the application of systems psychodynamic concepts to their actual experience of managing.

The course supports the development of individual capacities to shape and take up work roles that are meaningful, values-based, and which serve the ultimate purpose of the organisation.

It provides industry-relevant, post-graduate education grounded in rigorous conceptual development and work experience and provides opportunities for engagement with real-world learning in a social and global context.

On successful completion of this graduate certificate, you will be eligible for entry into the graduate diploma.

Course Description

The Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) integrates work experience with academic theory.

Students can expect a course that:

  • uses international benchmarking to enhance course development, delivery and relevance
  • provides opportunities for engagement with real-world learning in a social and global context
  • facilitates connections across disciplines and contexts through an integration of psychological, sociological, anthropological and philosophical approaches to organisations.

At a glance

🗞 Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) – GCLM(OD)

🎒 AQF level 8 postgraduate coursework 48 credit points

🕓 1 year part-time

⦿ Live interactive online,
with onsite opportunities

📆 Next intake July 2023

📩 info@nioda.org.au

Course Structure

The Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) is offered on a part-time basis to people with an appropriate level of work responsibility and experience.

The course is designed around cohorts of students learning together across time.  It is a ‘temporary’ organisation within which students study the emerging classroom dynamics alongside the issues that concern them within their own organisations.  Small student cohorts (twenty or less) enter Year 1 and remain together as a learning group, as far as possible, across the course duration.

Assessment reflects the focus on work-integrated learning.  The assignments are practical in application whilst also requiring the use of rigorous theoretical concepts.

The course is a carefully designed learning experience that is tailored to support incremental learning that builds semester by semester across the course.

To qualify for the award of the postgraduate Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) students must complete 4 subjects. Total 48 credit points.

Course Outcomes

Psychodynamic theories are studied as a basis for understanding, withstanding and creatively managing unconscious defences which impede work group functioning and task accomplishment.

On successful completion of the Graduate Certificate of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) graduates have the following.

Knowledge
Establishment of the core conceptual frameworks spanning systems and psychodynamic dimensions.

Skills
Cognitive, technical and communication skills to be able to apply a ‘mind’ for systems psychodynamic thinking, which includes:

  • viewing from a ‘systems’ perspective the management of connections, sometimes hidden or unconscious, between people, tasks, structure, technologies and context; to understand and manage the unconscious defences which impede work group functioning and task accomplishment
  • recognising, evaluating and applying the conjunction of technology and human behaviour (socio-technics) as a principal feature of organisation design and the social architecture of work relations; to improve organisational culture
  • establishing the capacity to think with, and to lead others purposefully, in the face of change and uncertainty
  • establishing skills in the clarification of researching, thinking and writing for communication of systems psychodynamic concepts, through creation of working hypotheses, reasoned analyses and articulating research findings
  • establishing an understanding of the ethics associated with the application of the discipline, including attention to principles of integrity and honesty.

Application of knowledge and skills
Establishing competency in utilising ‘Participatory Action Research’ methods for collaborative discovery and problem-solving in work settings.

Units of Study

This course is offered in part-time mode only. Subjects are taught in mixed blocks of day/evening classes (see timetable for details).

Students must complete 4 core subjects of study (48 credit points). Students are able to choose to study one or two subjects per semester.

MLM1 Organisations and Management through the Art of Metaphor (12 credit points).
MLM2 Unconscious Processes in Groups and Systems (12 credit points).
MLM3 ‘Through a Cultural Lens’: Collaboration with the ‘Other ‘ at Work (12 credit points).
MLM4 Systems Psychodynamic Consulting (12 credit points) or MLM8 Leadership and Authority for Role and Task (12 credit points

Admission Requirements

Completion of a three year Bachelor degree or equivalent and at least five years of relevant work experience.

Special entry may be granted to no more than 10% of the intake, in any given year, to those who have not completed a three year Bachelor degree or equivalent, but who have other tertiary qualifications and extensive relevant work experience.

Students entering this degree are required to have a minimum level of English language proficiency (details of these requirements can be found at www.nioda.org.au/policies).

Investment

In 2023 the fee is $3,300 per subject ($13,200 per year, if undertaking two subjects per semester). Fees are payable by the due date before each semester begins.

Payment can be made upfront by direct deposit, credit card or by utilising FEE-HELP. Information for FEE-HELP can be found on the study assist website https://www.studyassist.gov.au/help-loans/fee-help.

There are no incidental fees charged for this course.

Fees are reviewed each year with the new schedule published each October for the following year.

Many employers have study support policies that include financial and other support. Speak to your employer to find out if you are eligible to receive such assistance during your postgraduate studies. Employers gain significantly from the studies undertaken.

Application for ‘Leave of Absence’ must occur prior to the first class in that semester. Fees will not be refunded after the census date in either semester.

How to Apply

Post-graduate application.

Application for the course involves the completion of a written form and an interview. Successful applicants will be made a formal offer of place after which they can proceed to enrol.

Learn More

The Academic Programs Lead is Dr Wendy Harding. Thomas Mitchell is the Master’s Course Lead. Student Services Lead is Ellie Robinson. Email info@nioda.org.au with your queries.

Master’s course preview and information sessions are an opportunity for you to experience a snapshot of the NIODA postgraduate degrees, including the graduate certificate; to begin discovering the value of this type of study; and to meet others who are considering this course.

IHEA logo
QILT

About NIODA

The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA) offers internationally renowned post-graduate education and research in organisation dynamics, and decades of experience consulting with Australian organisations. 

The study of organisation dynamics brings together socio-technical and psychoanalytic disciplines to explore the unconscious dynamics that exist in every group, team or organisation. Learning more about these theories, and reflecting on the experience of them, can support leaders and managers to unlock great potential in their organisations, tackling issues through a whole new light.

Get In Touch

Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.

Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.

At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.

Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.

The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.

Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership

The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.

The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.

Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.

Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience

Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.

We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.

It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.

As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.

Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise

I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?

When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.

My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.

Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities

Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*

It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this,  ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’, Learn more here.

PO Box 287, Collins Street West,
Melbourne  8007  Australia
+61 (0) 414 529 867
info@nioda.org.au

This Get In Touch form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.

Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.

At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.

Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.

The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.

Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership

The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.

The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.

Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.

Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience

Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.

We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.

It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.

As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.

Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise

I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?

When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.

My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.

Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities

Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*

It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this,  ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’. Learn more here.

Professor Emeritis John Newton 

August 2023

Pin It on Pinterest