Applying new science theories in leadership development activities

The University of Tampa Center for Leadership offers extensive leadership development activities, many of which are based on concepts derived from theories collectively referred to as “new science”. New science – those discoveries in the physical and biological sciences during the twentieth century that have challenged us to consider our world from the perspectives of quantum mechanics, self‐organizing systems, and chaos theory – have been translated into specific leadership development activities. Examples include: (1) a focus on heuristic models to guide leader behaviour; (2)the assessment of leadership competence from multiple, non‐averaged,perspectives in contrast to a top‐down or an “average”perspective; and (3) the use of live practice fields which incorporate many complex relationships among both issues and issue advocates to diagnose and learn about leadership effectiveness within organizations.