Beginning in January, I will have twenty-some-odd graduate students looking to me for insights into things like transformational leadership and leader member exchange theory. I will be answering their questions about the practical implications of power differentials amongst teammates, and shedding light on the usefulness (and overreaching folly) of trait-based leadership theory.

It’ll be a good class. Students, if you’re reading this, I can promise that we will have discussions unlike anything you’ll have experienced before. We’ll have fun. I mean it. If we’re going to spend 3 hours every Thursday night together, I don’t care if we’re talking about leadership, geometry, or football, you can bet your butt that I have the same desire as you for me to not be boring.

(As a matter of context, the last time I was in an academic classroom, I sat in the back row, literally and figuratively… in fact, I wonder if I can teach from back there… during discussions, maybe I can make the speaker take the floor, so I can sit in the back and join with the other back rowers in grilling him. Or her. That could be fun… Or, maybe I’ll charismatically and forcefully espouse my beliefs as the ultimate compendium of all that’s useful from academia’s leadership canon, ruthlessly brainwashing my charge in my own school of thought and encouraging a dangerousu combination of narrow-minded groupthink and the proselytizing of others. Instead of calling them students, I can call them acolytes. Hmm. Lot’s to think about here. On a lighter note, there is also the question of whether or not I require my book as part of the syllabus. I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I will. I think it would be awesome to go Fleeber on my class and refer gratuitously to my own text. Wow, the choices a teacher has to make. Who knew it could be so complex?)

Then there’s the other side of the equation: the students. I wonder what the students will be like. I wonder if they’ll do the readings, or if they’ll ignore them, deciding that I picked a bunch of esoteric crap with no practical value whatsoever. I wonder if I did pick a bunch of esoteric crap for them to read that has no practical value whatsoever. I wonder if they’ll put effort into the assigned papers or if they’ll grind through them with minimal effort. I wonder if they realize that plagerizing from the web is one of the things I list in How to Self-Destruct.

Now mind you, I don’t much care about these things–it’s their perogative to blow me off and sink their chances of graduating on time–but I do wonder. I’d like to know what I’m dealing with. Because the more prepared I am, the better I’ll do.

Molding the minds of tomorrow’s leaders is a big responsibility, you know.

All those shapeless lumps of mental clay, waiting to be plied into shape.

By me.

Like I said, this is going to be fun.

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