As we consider a future of online learning facilitated by high-tech platforms and accelerated by Covid-19, I am struck by the viability of existing frameworks within this new context. As a clinical professor of managerial psychology at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, I teach a course, ‘The Leadership Capital’, using a methodology I have been developing for nearly 20 years. I am fortunate the model I follow is easily adaptable to a fully distributed learning environment.

This approach helps build an individual’s wisdom, courage, and capacity to lead through a long-term commitment to personal reflection and a self-authored identity. We spend time considering questions about our experiences, behaviors, priorities, and strengths, reflecting on those, journaling in response, and sharing the data of our experiences as a group to follow up.

Students are encouraged to actively choose leadership and take responsibility for their professional development. They are challenged to articulate their point of view on leadership. Over time with experience and a growing understanding of their own identities, the students’ perspectives evolve. At each point along the way, they must determine what matters most to them individually.

They see visible progress in their capacity to lead once they become motivated to leverage personal insight and begin to experiment by changing the way they behave. They begin to see themselves differently and ultimately lead with greater confidence and courage.

The course is taught with a balance of asynchronous learning and synchronous group discussion that can be adapted across subject matters. For business executives seeking leadership training, it offers a practical approach to skill development that is viable despite current circumstances.

An overview of the model follows three basic steps:

1. Asynchronous learning
2. Find online resources

Whether one creates online materials, collects existing links, or combines resources, the first step in facilitating this model is to establish an archive of digital materials that students can access on their own. For example, I created a series of short videos to accompany my course and workbook.

Topics in my archive range from defining leadership to juxtaposing leadership and management, focusing on strengths and managing meaning through language.

The electronic archive should provide a classroom-like introduction to and illustration of key concepts in the course. As formal lessons, they are available for students to review as often as desired from any location.

• Create writing prompts

To follow up the online lessons, teachers create writing assignments that personalize the concepts in the materials. For example, the first video in my series orients students to the notion that they are acting on their definition of leadership, a definition that is either enabling or inhibiting their choices. The primary step in gaining a greater capacity to lead is to understand your leadership behavior by developing a unique point of view about how leadership is defined.

Build an individual’s wisdom, courage, and capacity to lead through a long-term commitment to personal reflection and a self-authored identity

After watching the ‘Defining Leadership’ video, students are prompted to consider how they define leadership and to take a few minutes to write a zero-draft definition.

This self-reflective activity helps them mine their own experiences in developing wisdom to know and understand when, why, and how to lead others.

• Collective wisdom
• Schedule a virtual meeting

The next step in the process is to bring students together in small breakout groups where they are given 15 minutes to discuss their reflections on the video and reactions to the prompt. Students contribute to the larger group by submitting their zero drafts online. A word cloud made of their thoughts can be generated on the spot as the basis for further discussion.

This activity helps them learn through reflecting and sharing and helps them build community among themselves as they begin to gain collective wisdom.

They also begin to refine their point of view. This is important when students are asked to go beyond their zero-draft definitions of leadership and write a first-draft definition. This one is based on what they think is the essence of leadership. It should reflect their personal growth, as well as the collective wisdom of the group.

• Practice new behaviors

Practice new behaviors The program follows the same framework for each of the lessons so that students practice certain behaviors again and again, effectively building skills such as articulating, facilitating, coaching, and acting with integrity.

Over time in the course, students gain confidence in their reflections as well as in sharing them in a group setting. As with anything, the more we practice something such as courage and community building, the stronger those skills become. When students succeed in changing their behaviors, they succeed in changing their identities and in gaining greater strength, capacity, and courage to lead.

3. Wiser, younger

a. Return to reflection and writing

The final step in each lesson is for students to return to their workbooks to reflect on the discussion and revisit their initial written responses. They are invited to add any new ideas or insights they gained from the group discourse and peer coaching.

Through this activity, students begin to learn to mine not only their own experiences for knowledge but also the experiences of others. They are encouraged to expand on ideas shared in the group and learn from others’ lessons. In this way students learn vicariously, by-passing the time it takes to have a direct experience and thereby become wiser, and younger. We can never be younger than we are at this moment, but we can be wiser.

b. Continue to grow

Former United States President John F. Kennedy wrote “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” For students sincerely hoping to lead, his quote is indispensable. I encourage them to engage in continual education through self-reflection, turning experience into insight, and drawing on collective wisdom. Students should document personal reflections and create evolving definitions of leadership over their entire lifetimes.

When students continue to collect and organize the data of their experiences, they come to understand that much of their individualized wisdom is in their own hands.

It is my personal goal to help create a grassroots leadership movement, and distributed learning as an educational model is well suited for this purpose. Using asynchronous teaching and digital technology, anyone seeking improved leadership skills can get started right now. They can begin to recognize their leadership capital and grow it, despite and in service of a worldwide pandemic.

Educators seeking guidance on how to teach a range of courses through remote learning can adapt this methodology to their subject matter. It has worked with executives, physicians, coaches, and a range of other students because it is based on self-motivation, personal insight, and visible progress. It enables people to see themselves differently, behave differently, and ultimately lead others toward a different and better tomorrow.

It is my personal goal to help create a grassroots leadership movement, and distributed learning as an educational model is well-suited for this

To my mind, asynchronous resources bring out the best in synchronous learning. The pandemic’s capacity to underscore the merit of this model may be an unexpected benefit of this time.