Developing a Collaborative Leadership Curriculum

Abstract: The Collaborative Leadership Program (CLP) at the University of Washington’s (UW) Puget Sound Institute (PSI) is capturing the 50-year history of collaborative policy making in the northwest region of the United States; making that ground-breaking history accessible to scholars, students, researchers, and the public; and building on that work to foster the next generation of collaborative leaders. As part of the latter effort, PSI is partnering with UW Tacoma’s Milgard School of Business to develop a course on collaborative leadership, to develop private sector leaders with the collaborative skills and competencies needed to protect and recover Puget Sound—the second largest estuary in the United States. In this Teaching-Focused/Experiential Activity session, course co-creators/co-instructors Zoe Barsness (Milgard School) and Michael Kern (PSI)—who shared the CLP’s oral histories and documentary film at last year’s IACM conference—will introduce this new curriculum, which they will be piloting for UW graduate and undergraduate students in Summer 2026, and which is intended for replication at other institutions. The curriculum is designed to develop collaborative leadership competencies required to engage effectively in the multiparty, cross-sector partnerships necessary to solve complex civic, environmental, social and other complex problems. The course draws on the CLP’s oral history and documentary archive of collaborative leaders to leverage the wisdom and expertise of diverse civic, non-profit, private sector, and tribal leaders and ensure that these are passed on to empower the next generation of collaborative leaders. The presentation will include an opportunity for attendees to experience one or more interactive exercises from the course.

Keywords: Collaborative leadership; natural resource conflict and governance; experiential learning