Keith Goodall

The study of leadership has been a troubled discipline from an academic perspective. For many years, people have been trying to pin down the essence of leadership and have largely failed.

As more and more is demanded of leaders in a complex and unpredictable world, what should you bear in mind as you develop your own leadership style? We asked a member of faculty, an alumnus, an MBA candidate and a mentor from Cambridge Judge Business School for their thoughts. Cambridge MBA Faculty – Dr Thomas Roulet Dr Thomas Roulet is University Senior Lecturer in Organisation Theory with research interests which include economic sociology, organisation theory and social evaluations. How do leaders deal with uncertainty in an increasingly uncertain and fast-moving world? Leaders have to accept they are not omniscient – like anybody else, they are boundedly rational. They cannot anticipate the future, especially in the current context, and they cannot be aware of all the macro and industry-level trends that might affect their organisations. Yet, they can build a system of awareness by surrounding themselves with a diversity of opinion to help and support decision making. Leaders will have to take risky decisions, especially as market conditions move so fast, but they also have to be prepared to take responsibility for mistakes and carefully evaluate the costs of those mistakes. Ensuring that their followers are supportive of a course of action…

The Cambridge MBA can claim a unique approach to teaching the "doing" of management with its Management Praxis course. Faculty and candidates explain why. Cambridge places a unique value on Management Praxis (MP) on the MBA programme. The intensive focus is a measure of the importance of the subject says Dr Matthew Jones, one of Cambridge Judge Business School's faculty who teach the course: "Management Praxis is about the 'doing' of management and provides an opportunity for students to develop more flexible, self-aware and skilful practice related to their personal business and management objectives. This deep emphasis on the practice, as well as the theory, of management is a distinctive feature of the Cambridge MBA." The Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) In order to achieve this blending of theory and practice, Management Praxis runs in parallel with a live project working with a local company. This Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) offers a safe environment in which students can try out ideas from the Management Praxis course, enabling them to reflect on and experiment with different ways of being a manager and a team member. "Management Praxis cannot simply be taught in the classroom" says Matthew. "The CVP was therefore designed, from…