This white paper is designed to guide graduate students in understanding and applying the Current-Ideal Model as a leadership framework in creative decision-making. The creative process initially focuses on a student’s leadership development can be applied to leading teams and organizations in the pursuit of excellence.
The author has intentionally created the document as a teaching/learning tool for leadership graduate students at the Madden School of Business, Le Moyne College.
Comments on the document and process are invited and appreciated.
Note: APA standards are not met in this draft.
The Creating Futures: Current-Ideal model is a framework to guide users in capturing their perceptions of current-ideal behaviors on a particular topic or life process. In the 20 years of exploration of over 800 graduate students the model has evolved as a creative mental thinking strategy to understand current behaviors and alignment, create future idealized behaviors, and paths to get there. Whether focused on topics such as leadership, lifestyle, health, or career the process of creating behavioral statements and rationale can provide clarity on aligning patterns of behavior. The model has emerged from ongoing developmental research on behavior change lead by Dr. Hart with graduate students at Syracuse University, Utica College, and Le Moyne College. The “mental model” provides a guide to understanding internal voices, candidly identifying current behaviors, both positive (+) and negative (-), and creating an ideal state of behaviors. Through this exploration and ongoing thinking of current- ideal behaviors students can gain an understanding of the behavioral patterns that create or mitigate their success. Student success has been captured in reflection statements of value of the model in various courses taken over the past 20 years. Over 75% of the approximately 800 students have found the process the number one greatest learning of the graduate course taken. This paper explains the historical underpinnings, creative process, and application of the model in academic and professional settings.