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Accessibility statement
Qualification dates
StartEnd
03 Oct 2026Jun 2027
Leadership is everywhere and is a widely studied and practised concept because it addresses the big questions about the direction of groups, organisations, and societies. In this module, you’ll explore the major concepts of leadership, including personality, skills and behaviours, collective approaches to leadership, ethics, and the influence of technology. You’ll also develop the ability to engage critically with leadership ideas in different contexts, from work to personal life and wider society. As you progress, you’ll be encouraged to reflect on your own perspectives and experiment with new leadership concepts and practices in meaningful ways.
Leadership is a practice and area of study that has persisted for so long for good reason: people find it incredibly appealing as an idea. In addition, people tend, for good or ill, to find the idea of leaders exciting, even bewitching. You'll learn about many of the major concepts of leadership, one of the oldest organisational concepts, with a history stretching back thousands of years.
You will no doubt already have ideas and experiences that are relevant to studying leadership, and you will be able to build on and critique those as you progress through the module.
You'll cover a broad range of ideas, from those that focus on individual leaders and their characteristics, to collective approaches that focus on relationships between people, to how values and ethics play a role in leadership, and to ideas beyond humans that include the places we live in and the technology we engage with.
Block 1 provides a solid foundation for the module, offering a broad overview of historical approaches to leadership and outlining the skills you need to succeed in your studies.

Block 2 focuses on approaches to leadership that consider individual personality traits, skills, and behaviours, as well as how leaders connect with followers.
Block 3 moves on to focus on collective leadership approaches, including how leadership can be distributed, how relationships between people can enact leadership, and ideas that approach leadership in this way from around the world.
Block 4 delves into how values relate to leadership and the world of ethics, expanding what we might consider the point of leadership to be and considering if ethical questions and tensions can really be resolved.
Block 5 looks to push the boundaries of what we might consider relevant to leadership, including the places we live in, the technology we use, how we see, hear, and feel leadership, and how non-human elements can play a role.
This is an OU level 2 module, and if you have no previous experience of studying business subjects, it is strongly recommended that you first study a relevant OU level 1 module.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the module, please speak to an adviser.
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
All of the materials you need will be on the module website, which includes:
The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying B211 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.
Understanding leadership starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2033.
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