COMM5713 Collaboration for Social Impact - 2022

This course aims to develop your understanding of the key concepts and frameworks of system change and collaborative leadership. Students will gain an ability to apply collaborative practices to complex social challenges. You will build these skills through peer learning, case studies, experiential learning and individual investigation of different approaches to achieve system change. Within the experiential component of the course you will be required to reflect on your strengths, challenges and defaults in collaboration and will be challenged in real time through groupwork and course assessments to reflect on your own learning.

Links to all required and optional resources are on the reading list for your course in the UNSW Library's Leganto system, which you can access via your Moodle course. Please note you will need to login and may be required to enter your UNSW zID and zPass in order to access the library site.

Required readings consist of core texts and their applications. Readings are chosen to provide both theoretical foundation and to illuminate their meaning and usage in professional contexts. The readings are not to be studied in detail but designed to initiate thinking and understanding of key themes in social systems and change. 

Course Authority: Lisa Ryan

Email: l.m.ryan@unsw.edu.au

Centre for Social Impact, 704, Level 7 Science Engineering Building (E8) (referred to as SEB)

Phone: 0419 228 180

Lisa has been active in social change for the past 25 years, with roles including direct client work (supported accommodation for women with mental illnesses; community mental health social work); population health work (HIV prevention); and system change work (senior policy and funding roles in NSW Health; facilitator and coach in Adaptive Leadership). Lisa has worked extensively across NGOs and the NSW Government sector and is a senior Network Member with Collaboration for Impact, a systems-change, place-based network for impact.

Lisa has been teaching, coaching and facilitating in leadership and collaboration for social change for the past decade, including three years as Course Convenor for Collaboration for Social Impact, and three years on the Design and Delivery Team for the highly-regarded Social Leadership Australia flagship program.  Lisa is passionate about facilitating and coaching in service of providing new insights and new ways of working on complex social issues.

Lisa's approach to Collaboration for Social Impact is informed by her own experience growing up in a community that faced multiple social and economic challenges, and her subsequent career in community development, service delivery and policy making, and deep engagement in both practice-based evidence and evidence-based practice.  Lisa has an excellent track record in working with both place-based and issues-based initiatives to apply the theories and skills taught in this subject, and is strongly committed to building collaborative processes that bring together lived experience, service providers, policy makers and others to develop a shared agenda and shared program of action to make real progress. 

The course curriculum and pedagogy has been designed to facilitate experiential, transformational learning and to help you expand the way you think and behave in collaborative leadership situations. 

Working collaboratively to address complex challenges requires a range of skills, including the ability to critically reflect on your own role in the system, and to identify how your own leadership might need to shift in order to make progress.  

As such, COMM5713 will use a transformational leadership development approach to building the three essential habits of mind for collaboration: (1) asking different questions, (2) taking multiple perspectives, and (3) seeing patterns and systems.  

This approach is embedded into the activities and assessments, each of which will require you to explore both system-level dynamics; and your own mindset, habits and learning limits.  

The teaching model in this course is a blended one. You are encouraged to develop an inquiry-based approach to your learning and will be supported in this throughout the course by a clear teaching strategy. The face-to-face teaching will comprise presentations that set the scene, framework and context for the topic being examined to achieve its intended learning outcomes, and then provide questions and exercises for discussion. Classes will also make use of case studies, experiential work in class and activities available on the COMM5713 Moodle site. Additional information on class format will be provided at the first session of the course.

One of the unique aspects of this course is our use of Case-in-Point (CiP) teaching, a method of experiential learning used to teach leadership. An integral part of the theory of Adaptive Leadershipâ„¢ it was developed over the past 15 years by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and their colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The method involves using the actions and behaviours of course participants as well as focusing on the group of which they are members. CIP is an immersive, reflective, and ideally, a reflexive exercise facilitated by an instructor but in best practice, shaped by group/class participants.

This approach compels people to come up against their own learning limits, gain insight into the perspective of others, get more comfortable with uncertainty and conflict, and incorporate those experiences into new definitions of collaborative leadership. Through the use of CIP, learners experience in real time collaborative leadership behaviours such as: testing multiple interpretations; choosing among competing values; engaging unusual voices; working across factions; and attempting to inspire a collective purpose. This method invites people to embody and develop a mindset that is essential for collaborative leadership in the 21st century.

In order to maximise the collaborative and experiential nature of this course, a "flipped" learning and teaching approach will be used that will help to support deeper student engagement and outcomes. The "flipped" approach means you do reading and researching independently and use group class time for active and interactive learning. Each topic will include a range of activities that you will complete before and after the topic is offered. Indicative time frames will be provided to support your learning in this way. Extensive use will be made of the course Moodle site.

You have three major resources to help you learn:

1. The course materials, comprising the topics with readings, references, insights and commentary. You will do much of your learning outside the classroom by working through the course materials, and by completing the exercises as they arise.

2. Your course facilitator who will share knowledge and facilitate class discussion and peer learning.

3. Your co-participants, who are an invaluable potential source of learning for you. Their work and life, and their willingness to question and argue with the course materials, the teacher and your views, represent a great learning opportunity. They bring much valuable insight to the learning experience.

Unit 1 - Introduction

In this topic we introduce the key concepts of collaboration, the phases of collective impact and the practice of adaptive leadership and explore what's required to collaborate in complexity.

Unit 2 - Building the conditions

To effectively build the foundations and create conditions for change this topic addresses how to develop a holding environment to develop a shared purpose. This topic prepares the groundwork to convene the system with an understanding of the dynamics that usually occur in systemic collaborations. The Cynefin framework will be introduced as well as considering the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges.

Unit 3 - Diagnosing the system dynamics

This topic begins to explore diagnostic frameworks to enable identification of technical and adaptive challenges. We will explore tools to assess the readiness of systems for change and collaboration, whilst providing a range of frameworks to interpret progress in the system you are working. This topic will be taught as an interactive case-study based in a community context. You will have the opportunity to either, apply diagnostic frameworks in discussions with the stakeholders of a collective impact initiative and engage with key personnel to add to your learning, or do the same through online webinars. We will also draw on the adaptive leadership framework of building leadership at all levels of the system.

Unit 4 - Working with authority and power

In this topic we begin to explore building formal and informal authority to lead change; and we consider the role of teachers/backbone and the practice of neutrality. This topic will explore a case study on building a collaborative environment. You will have the opportunity to apply diagnostic frameworks with the stakeholders of a collective impact initiative and engage with speakers (either face-to-face or online) to add to your learning. Personal, social and positional power and authority are considered.

Unit 5 - Working politically

Collaboration for social impact exists within a political context. In this topic we consider the practice of engaging allies, doing business with authority, and working with difference/margins/minorities. This topic's goal is to build a practice of learning from diversity by working strategically. You will learn how to make systemic interpretations based on power, loyalties, competing purposes and build skills on engaging diverse stakeholders in these complex settings.

Unit 6 - Community Engagement

In this Unit we explore community engagement, including what community engagement is, why it is so critical in making progress on complex social (and environmental) issues and how to approach community engagement.  

Unit 7 - Convening the system

In this topic we continue our understanding of how to convene and mobilise diverse stakeholders across a system. We will explore a range of approaches to co-designing and designing dialogue, discuss the building block of effective convening, facilitation principles, skills and processes.

Unit 8 - Skills to work with the whole system

Developing structures and processes are one part of developing collaboration. Core skills are required to build and sustain collaborations, which take us into the inter- personal territory. This topic will be highly experiential and focus on core collaborative practices of working with dissent and conflict. Building self and systemic awareness you will deepen your awareness of your personal collaborative leadership challenge and learn strategies and mind-sets to build strategic options. Theory U (Otto Sharma) and Appreciative enquiry (Cooperrider et al.) form part of this conversation.

Unit 9 - Shared purpose

A shared purpose is needed in social collaborative contexts. This topic considers a range of approaches to developing shared purpose including Chrislip's principles for working together. We will also consider the design process of interventions to help achieve the agreed outcomes and will engage in scenario planning activities.

Unit 10 - Role theory

This Unit examines the concept of role theory.  We're using the term role in 2 different ways here - on one level, it refers to your formal role within a system.  Your formal role in a system should be anchored in the system's purpose and your personal purpose.  We will also examine the ways in which your relationships and practices are also anchored in role. 

Unit 11 - Measuring progress & impact

This topic explores approaches to measuring progress of collaborative efforts and their impact on the target population. We will look at frameworks for performance management, formative and summative evaluation as well as examples from collaborations around the globe.

Unit 12 - Synthesising learning

The final topic in the course provides a learning space to demonstrate your understanding of collaborative practices for social change and apply them to the final assignment. Each group will present their case study to the rest of the course followed by group discussion on the presentations and your learnings.

This subject, as with all subjects as UNSW, actively seeks student feedback in order to support ongoing learning and improvement. 

The majority of student feedback has been very positive, with students reporting that the theory and skills have enabled them to be more effective collaborators and leaders within their existing roles and existing workplaces.  Students have also identified the following areas for potential improvement:

• Increased feedback from the course convenor in online Units
• Revision of the Unit outlines

The following improvements have been made to the course in response to the student feedback:

• Mandatory and optional readings have been reduced and re-balanced across the term
• Increased feedback from the lecturer in online Units
• Course notes have been revised and streamlined