Leading the Organization
CEOs, executive directors, and c-suite executives are uniquely tasked and responsible for leading their organizations, so they need to hone the skills necessary to excel as a strategic leader. Here is a sample of topics that will be covered:
Leading Change: One of the key skills required of executive leaders is overcoming the natural inertia of complex organizations when change is necessary. During this session, a roadmap will be presented to ensure that change initiatives are successful.
Operational Excellence: Strategy, at a fundamental level, identifies an effective match between an organization’s distinctive capabilities and the selected market/ service / audience. We’ll explore how an organization’s operations function determines some of its most important capabilities and thus plays a central role in the eventual success of a strategy.
Strategy: In today’s disruptive environment, the ability to unify organizations behind winning strategies has arguably become the most important leadership capability of all. More than any other business process, strategy is largely misunderstood and therefore misapplied. This session will clarify our thinking about strategy and its importance in providing the practical process and tools to help us build and lead adaptive organizations.
Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World: The challenge in today's world is not the lack of information but the judgment in using it. What distinguishes the person who consistently makes smart decisions? This session will focus on the skills needed to develop an analytic mindset, which we call Quantitative Intuition, namely focusing on the essential question, quickly sorting through information, and becoming a fierce interrogator of data and analytics not from a statistical perspective but from a face validity perspective, putting the data in the context of the problem, and synthesizing the information to make an effective decision. Bringing these parts together is at the heart of the Quantitative Intuition framework: the key is knowing how to strike the right balance so you can move forward with confidence.
Governance: Boards play a critical role in overseeing their organizations’ missions, finances, and strategic directions. Executive leaders must be adept in leveraging their boards in order to successfully lead their organizations. This session focuses on how to balance the role of board member and organizational leader.
Financial Management: A key capacity for an effective nonprofit organization is the ability to manage finances and use financial information strategically. To ensure sustainability under today’s economic strain, nonprofit leaders must be able to understand and effectively communicate their organizations’ “financial story” as well as establish sound financial management practices. We’ll learn how to define financial goals and objectives, forecast trends based on relevant data, team-build through a financial lens, and establish best practices through the use of effective internal controls.
Leading Others
In order to be effective, leaders must harness the energy of others to serve their organizations
mission, clients, and constituents. Here is a sample of topics that will be covered:
Leading Teams: As a team leader, one must know when to step up and take the reins and when to step back and let the team operate by itself. We’ll discuss leadership styles, coaching opportunities, and emotional intelligence to better understand the role of team leaders and engage in an experiential exercise designed to provide a common starting point for understanding misconceptions about what it means to lead.
Negotiation: Effective negotiators get the most out of bargaining situations, not just in terms of the things they carry away from negotiations, but also in the relationships and reputations they leave behind. Participants will leave the session understanding the different types of negotiations and will apply these principles through hands-on exercises and simulations.
Motivation and Decision Making: Leaders are often faced with the challenge of how to best motivate others as well as themselves. We’ll explore the key concepts of motivation and practical steps leaders can take to become effective motivators. The core of this session focuses on how the competing mindsets of “playing to win” or “playing not to lose” guide decision making processes and behaviors.
Leading Inclusively: Research shows that employees who work in more inclusive climates report higher levels of commitment, satisfaction, perceived organizational support, willingness to engage in citizenship behaviors, and a lesser likelihood to leave the organization compared to employees working in less inclusive environments. Understanding how organizations implement employment practices and make decisions can help participants identify where the organization can promote greater inclusion and equity. We will discuss the importance of how this work is undertaken so that longer-term changes to the organizational climate can occur.
Leading with a Racial Equity Lens: As organizations become more aware of diversity and inclusion, operationalizing these practices will lead to decision-making that requires a closer look at racial equity. How can leaders pay disciplined attention to race and ethnicity while focusing on equity in both process and outcomes? Using an equity lens will help leaders develop goals and outcomes that will result in improvements for all groups, including the target group for which the strategies were developed. We will learn about frameworks to help integrate equity into your organizational and leadership practice.
Inspired Jewish Leadership: Jewish leadership today faces unique challenges and opportunities. We’ll investigate this topic by examining a combination of Jewish sources, reflective questions, current Jewish communal challenges, and personal anecdotes. Participants will learn what qualities inspirational Jewish leaders should possess to effectively lead their staff, volunteers, and boards, as well as respond to today's environment.
Leading Self
In order to effectively lead and manage others, leaders must have deep self-awareness to begin to understand why and how they do what they do. By exploring and understanding their authentic self, they are able to fulfill their potential and become all they can be. Here is a sample of topics that will be covered:
Values-Based Leadership: Faye Wattleton said that the only safe ship in a storm is leadership. In a crisis, leaders need to know what they stand for, and need the guidance that comes from clarity about their own values. There will be a case-based discussion of the challenges associated with leading and acting according to values (e.g., knowing the values, having the courage, finding support); and an exercise designed to surface individual values in the context of a dynamic, often uncertain environment.
Self-Management: It is often said that leading and managing others begins with leading and managing oneself. We will discuss various strategies that successful executives use to get the most out of themselves and the people they lead and manage. One of the cardinal prerequisites for effective self-management is self-awareness, and one of the main drivers of self-awareness is feedback.
Leveraging Networks: Leadership can be enhanced and bolstered by the social capital that a leader successfully develops and utilizes. However, networking can be an intimidating aspect of leadership and organizational strategy. This session will provide the opportunity for you to analyze your own network as a leader as well as consider how to better harness and grow the network you already have to support your mission more effectively.
360 Feedback and 1:1 Coaching: One of the most common leadership problems executive leaders face is the discrepancy between how they think of themselves as leaders and how others in the organization think of them. The 360-Degree Survey, which will be administered prior to the program, provides feedback on various aspects of leadership requirements. Certified coaches from Teachers College and Columbia University will provide one-on-one coaching based on the 360-Degree Survey for all program participants.
Impact Projects and Pods: You will have the opportunity to focus on one of your organizational challenges and to benefit from the ongoing input of a small group of fellow participants in the program.
