Leadership & Management Organisation Dynamics

Master’s Course

Welcome to the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia Ltd (NIODA), an Australian registered Higher Education Provider offering you a Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) integrating work experience with academic theory.

This program is designed for experienced professionals to improve your capability and grow resilience as an individual, in groups and within your organisation.

Master of Leadership and Management Organisation Dynamics 2021

Download the White Paper to learn:

🎯 The Art of Reflection
🎯 Systems Thinking
🎯 Unconscious Technology
🎯 Leaders we Deserve
🎯 Creating Culture
🎯 The Myth of Culture and more…

 

By downloading you agree to receive NIODA email communications. You may opt-out at any time.

The individual and group dynamics that create organisational problems are like a giant hairball. Our task is to disentangle it and so make the newly freed threads a fresh resource for the organisation

Dr Brigid Nossal

Deputy CEO and Director of Consulting, NIODA

Master leadership and management 2021 in numbers

*2018 and 2019 graduates accorded the NIODA master’s course a 100% satisfaction rating – unbelievable but true!

We credit this to our incredible teaching staff, who between them have an impressive 183 combined years of teaching experience and 13 master degrees and 5 PhDs.

NIODA students access all this organisation dynamics expertise, to learn to understand what is beneath the frustrations you may feel as a manager and leader.

I have done an MBA… but it didn’t really equip me for understanding the inner work of leadership and management… This course has really changed the way I think about organisations, the way I think about myself, and the way I think about working with other.

Mr Cameron Brooks

Graduate, NIODA

I didn’t quite expect to develop in terms of self-awareness. You become a better manager, a better leader and a better human being.

Ms Nikola Zaorska

Student, NIODA

If you’re a person who’s thinking… ‘Why is it the things I try don’t work as a manager? Why is it that I try my best to fix this problem but the solution doesn’t stick? What is getting in the way of me doing the work that I want to do…

Ms Karen Olver

Graduate, NIODA

Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

This Masters is a world-renowned work integrated program designed for work-experienced professionals who wish to learn to:

  • analyse, understand and manage ‘below the surface’ group and organisational dynamics in organisations
  • identify blockers to change due to structure, culture and technology
  • work with the emotional labour of leading complex systems in fast-changing environments.

Offered part-time, with opportunities to study one or two subjects per semester, as live interactive online classes until 2022, and then you choose to remain live interactive online or a combination of online and face-to-face classes in Melbourne.

FEE-HELP is available for Australian citizens so you can pay as you earn.

Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level 9.

Masters Preview & Information Sessions

 

Master Preview Workshops:

Mondays 17 and 31 January 2022
🇮🇳 2.30 – 4 am New Dehli (eek!)
🇸🇬 5 – 6.30 am Singapore/Perth
🇦🇺 7.30 – 9 am Adelaide
🇦🇺 7 – 8.30 am Brisbane
🇦🇺 8 – 9.30 am  Melbourne/Sydney

Sundays 16 and 30 January 2022
🇺🇸 4 – 5.30 pm New York
🇬🇧 9 – 10.30 pm London
🇫🇷 10 – 11.30 pm Paris
🇿🇦 11 pm – 12.30 am Cape Town

Information Session:

7 February 2022
5 – 6 pm (Melbourne time), Live interactive online

Our preview and information sessions are an opportunity for you to experience a snapshot of the NIODA degree; 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

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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

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