Advance Your Skills: Leading for the Future

The next session starts in September 2023.

The Leading for the Future Pathway in Alverno College’s Advance Your Skills Pathways Program offers a highly relevant and flexible learning track to equip professionals with the skills needed to foster environments of inclusion, engagement, and innovativeness for organizations to thrive in dynamic and disruptive states of change.

How it works

• The program is fully online, and is designed to be completed in six months.
• Each unit is 4 weeks. There are 6 total units per pathway.
• Professionals may enroll in the entire pathway or individual units, based on career interest.
• Classes meet once a week for 2 hours live on Zoom.
• There is asynchronous work (reading, videos, and projects).
• Those who successfully complete the pathway will earn a professional certificate.

Developed and taught by Alverno faculty and industry professionals, the Leading for the Future Pathway blends synchronous and asynchronous learning and fits into your busy schedule. Professionals will benefit from Alverno’s well-regarded model of experiential learning and highly sought interpersonal skills, developing knowledge and abilities that are immediately applicable to the workplace.

Register here. Registration deadline: September 19, 2023. To learn more, or to discuss how our program can serve your organization, please contact us.

LEARNING CONTENT

Unit I: Cultivating a Leader Identity (September 26-October 17, 2023)

In this unit, you will understand the significance of your story in owning and shaping your leader identity. You will assess your own skill set and behaviors to deepen the self-awareness necessary for an ongoing practice of self-leadership. You will explore different leadership styles and the power that stems from harnessing the versatility among them. You will learn how to cultivate a growth mindset to develop new leadership traits and create a dynamic leader identity necessary to meet the evolving needs of teams and organizations.

Unit II: Navigating Complex Roles to Build Strong Relationships and Organizational Commitment (October 24-November 14, 2023)

In this unit, you will explore the increasing complexity of various roles put upon leaders and the complicated network of stakeholders they serve and are accountable to. You will learn to streamline such complexity by developing strategies of goal alignment and cross-boundary collaboration within both external and internal environments. You will learn how to build trust and credibility that is rooted upon open communication and an authenticity of action. You will learn how to be both a connector and networker with the ability to leverage others and allow others to leverage you. You will learn how to build a shared identity among employees to foster strong organizational commitment.

Unit III: Balancing Analytical and Emotional Intelligence (November 28-December 19, 2023)

In this unit, you will individually explore what it means to possess analytical and emotional intelligence. For analytical intelligence, you will understand the power of fast and slow thinking to develop different strategies used to logically analyze, problem solve and develop critical rationale for decision making. For emotional intelligence, you will understand the power of emotion in guiding thinking and behavior and learn strategies to manage it for yourself and your teams to achieve positive outcomes. You will learn the significance of harvesting both and how to successfully balance this paradox of intelligence necessary to be an effective leader.

Unit IV: Leading with the Power of Data (January 2-23, 2024)

In this unit, you will learn how to develop insights, challenge assumptions and form rationale founded upon multiple data points to inform decision-making. You will learn data strategies that provide visibility into team and individual performance to achieve transparency, ensure accountability, and foster opportunity for ongoing development. You will craft your skills of storytelling with data and learn its importance in developing your validity as a leader. You will learn how to engage and empower your teams in using data and leverage the value of their interpretation and perspective for team and organizational growth.

Unit V: Building Environments of Diversity and Inclusion (January 30-February 20, 2024)

In this unit, you will explore the concept of sense-making for individuals within organizations. You will learn the common misconceptions surrounding true diversity and inclusion. You will learn the two dimensions of diversity and understand how both dimensions provide a pathway to develop inclusion across departments and teams. You will explore the importance of employee engagement, learn how to develop engagement strategies and implement tools with key measures to create a dynamically diverse and inclusive culture that is positioned for innovation and growth.

Unit VI: Navigating a Future of Constant and Complex Change (February 27-March 19, 2024)

In this unit, you will understand how increasingly complex change requires complex leadership to successfully navigate it. You will learn various models to develop agile thinking skills necessary to identify opportunities and make decisions in a constant state of change. You will explore strategies on how to transform organizational learning into an organization’s competitive advantage and be a roadmap for change. You will learn key change leader behaviors to foster a culture of psychological safety, support and mindfulness that inspires innovativeness to help organizations evolve and thrive for the future.

PRICING

The Advance Your Skills Pathways Program costs $3,000 for the entire pathway, while individual learning units cost $500 each.

For more information or to ask about a group rate, please contact adultlearning@alverno.edu.

Cancellation policy: A 50% refund will be issued upon withdrawal during the first unit. A 25% refund will be issued upon withdrawal during the second unit. There is no refund issued upon withdrawal during the third or later units.

The Annual Crime and Fire Safety Report for Alverno College, which includes crime statistics and annual fire safety statistics, can be found online. A hard copy of the report is available upon request. Please send your request to Jason Pilarski, director of Campus Safety.