Designing A Course

by Joëlle Piffault, Research Associate, HEC

Laurent Lapierre is professor at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal. He teaches almost exclusively with the case method because he finds it difficulty to understand how students could reflect on management and leadership without learning by doing. He also believes that to fully understand the influence of a manager's personality on his work, students must begin to deal with concrete elements because most of the time learning can't be done except through ex perience. He also states that case method teaching gives him the opportunity to obtain deeper, and longer-lasting results.

Laurent Lapierre also uses case method teaching because it fits his vision of management. Management is a discipline where subjectivity plays a basic part. He concedes that management has objectively measurable aspects, i.e. a company's strength and weakn ess or the environment's characteristics. But, he stresses that decisions which can bring success or failure always bear somebody's mark. When used accordingly, case method teaching tends to communicate managers' inner world, not to establish it as a mode l, but as a way to behave and practice which will allow us to find our own subjectivity, and what is best. Consequently, the experiences of others can become a tool as powerful as our own acquired experience.

A Vision and a Passion to be Shared: Management, Leadership and the Personality Course

Usually, professors who want to design a course, start writing down the elements of their syllabus which include a series of concepts to be taught. After that, they look for adequate material which will allow them to illustrate those concepts. Laurent Lap ierre does just the opposite. Inductively, he will find some material which is captivating, and stimulating, which is an invitation to prospect further. He reads cases, and articles, views video-cassettes and looks at his colleagues' syllabi. Says Laurent Lapierre I create my syllabus with the same preoccupation I used to have when I was an elementary school teacher or when I was discussing theatre programming. [In the sixties, Laurent Lapierre was an elementary school teacher. At tracted by the theatre milieu, he agrees to become the University Laval's theatre manager, and later he holds the same position at Theatre du Trident in Quebec City.] I am always looking for interesting material. I ask myself if I can stay for an hour and fifteen minutes in the classroom and still manage to stimulate and interest students ... Ultimately, if I had to teach a management course and would not have interesting material for one particular session, let say planning, I would n ot teach it ... I can't work exclusively with theoretical concepts. If there was absolutely nothing written, I would ask myself questions : Why is there is no written material?, Is it impossible to create interesting material to illustrate this conce pt?, Why did nobody ever think about writing on that particular topic?. And I would try to write about it. If I could not create or find interesting teaching material to illustrate a concept, I could believe that it is a professor's delirium, and, therefore, that the topic does not pass the test of reality. My approach is simple, and is based on clinical, and empirical material.

Laurent Lapierre's approach is not totally inductive. At the beginning, there is a vision, some preoccupations, and an interest that guide his approach because he believes that some aspects are important in the management of an organization: imaginati on, intuition, rivalry, politics, realism, management skills, aggressiveness, guilt, career, anxiety to be persecuted, anxiety of competition, fear of success, fear of failure ... I have an obvious bias: personality is an important part in my life, as is subjectivity, and emotional aspects. I am selecting materials which show the link between a m anager's personality and his practice managing a company because this is what I want to convey in my class. My syllabus has elements which fascinate me, and cases which strongly interest me. Assigned readings on syllabus are not harmless, they fill a purp ose and students are perfectly aware of it.

Although he feels quite directive in the classroom, Laurent Lapierre prefers to consider himself like a guide with a long-standing passion for management and leadership questions. Consequently, I have the advantage of experience over the students. I i nvolve them in my interest, and after that, there is no need to have a master class. I get farther following students' reflection than if I asked them to follow me. I am still able to be filled with wonder, students are teachers to me and teachers to themselves. But because of the advantage of experience, they know that I am in charge.

The syllabus that students receive is an important document which is very detailed. In the first half, Laurent Lapierre explains in general terms the course perspective, the objectives, the teaching method (mostly based on written or filmed cases), the ev aluation of students' work, the listing of mandatory material, individual tasks to be performed, and appropriate questions to facilitate learning.

The other half of the syllabus is a careful description of each session. The course Management, Leadership, and Personality which is running for 14 sessions has a different theme every week. And each theme has a different purpose asking students to reflec t on a particular question that will let them talk about individual dynamics, the influence of the personality in management practices, power, business skill, managing change, conflict or career management.

During each session, discussion is based either on a case, sometimes two, or a video or a film. Theoretical references are part of the discussion. They come from readings that students have to do in order to prepare for class. The syllabus also offers a s elective bibliography of basic books in the discipline, and of course books that will interest students.

What are Laurent Lapierre's criteria when he selects a case? He will choose a case where the emphasis is put on the description of one manager's personality, his habits, his preferences, his reactions to situations. Very often, the manager's biography is extensive, going back to childhood, describing the interaction with parents, brothers and sisters, looking at crises and notable events, giving students an opportunity to go deeper in analysing what may have determined this individual's operational modes. Choosing a case is very important for Laurent Lapierre because he wants to instill passion, st imulate, provoke or even disrupt students. I believe in disruption. A good case is also a good report: it has to be faithful to reality. One reads the first page and has a desire to go on. There is no need for analysis. Americans are very good at that, Europeans generally tend to put too much emphasis on analysis. I love short cases with developmen ts, full of facts, descriptions, and quotes. It allows everyone to have their own projections, and as in real life to make a choice. I also love cases in series where the tunnel gets narrower, step after step, and forces decision making fitting each situation and everyone's personality.