Leadership

LEADERSHIP INTERVIEW ASSIGNMENT

Much of class to date has focused on measurement, but there is much more to management than just looking at the numbers. Managing a public health program also involves leadership, the ability to motivate people towards a common goal. While there are many books on leadership, much can be learned from interviewing a leader and hearing what they do to lead.

For this assignment, you are expected to conduct a 20-30 minute interview of a public health or healthcare leader. It will be best to conduct the interview in late March or first week of April after the first few classes on the topic. However, you will want to select someone before then. The person you select should have experience in managing a program and directing the activities of others. Your goal is to learn more about what leaders do, how they exercise leadership, and how they are successful. Challenges they encountered and how they were overcome can also be very instructive.

Before going into the interview, you should prepare some interview questions. These questions should be based on what you want to learn so everyone may have different things they ask. If you want feedback on the questions you can send them to me for review. The questions should serve as a guide to the interview but you should feel free to deviate from the questions to pursue interesting things that might come up during the interview.

There will be two products from this assignment. Students will be asked to give a 5 minute presentation in class about what they learned during the interview. These will occur beginning April 9. This oral presentation is ungraded. All students will be asked to submit a 2-3 page write up. This write-up should briefly describe who you interviewed, what you discussed, and what insights about leadership that you learned from the interview. This is due April 12.

Let me know if you have questions about whom to interview. Some of you may have difficulty identifying someone. In that case we will try and identify a good person for the assignment.