Leaders take initiative, think and plan strategically, overcome obstacles and impact the bottom line. The Executive Education Graduate Certificate in Leadership program is designed to help participants put effective, collaborative methods of leadership to work in their organizations and leverage the leadership potential of all members of their teams. Participants will focus on developing their own skills, as well as exploring strategies for building a high performing team, overcoming communication challenges, managing politics in the workplace and taking accountability for results.
Who Should Attend
The certificate is designed for participants who aspire to become more effective in their leadership and to take on greater leadership challenges; particularly suitable for those transitioning into roles with greater leadership responsibilities.
Program Focus
Essentials of Leadership
During the foundation course, participants will develop an understanding of the importance of leadership at all levels (i.e., leadership capacity) within highly successful companies. They will begin an introspection of their own leadership styles, which will be re-examined throughout future leadership programs. Participants will consider the differences between leadership and management and that leadership is critical in any successful change initiative. Participants will also examine the role that individual disposition plays in the development of leadership style, team interactions, and leader effectiveness. Ultimately this course focuses on helping participants identify the areas of their management style that are strengths and will support their transition into greater levels of responsibility and, perhaps more importantly, identify critical development areas that may hinder their future performance
Leader as Coach
It is a widely accepted truth that for most organizations, it is the capability of the workforce that provides the company’s greatest competitive advantage. Following this insight, it then becomes evident that great leaders not only plan, organize and control – they develop strong capability in their people. This short course is designed to help leaders understand the frameworks and actions they can use to serve as talent magnets for and within their organizations as well as fully developing the capabilities of those leaders junior to them. We will examine differing levels of leadership, transition points between these, and the balanced use of different systems to grow leadership competency. We will pay close attention to coaching and mentorship as primary mechanisms, while understanding the roles that networks, job rotation, action learning and 360 degree feedback play in developing the total leader. We will also examine motivational concepts that support the best utilization of these activities, while matching these to the participants’ natural leadership style. As the war for talent continues to be a competitive differentiator, this short course provides the capabilities to not only win talented individuals into organizations – but to embed the development of leaders into the management culture itself.
Leading Change
The focus of this module is to examine change inhibitors that create stress, waste resources, slow change efforts, or lead to outright failure, and discover how to lead, cope and win in the face of great change.
At the end of the module, students will be able to:
- Understand and apply fundamental areas that are necessary to lead effective individual, team and organizational change efforts.
- Analyze and evaluate behaviors that lead to successful change initiatives in organizational settings.
- Managing personal change and the change of others
- Prepare a change case study and develop an action plan for achieving successful change
- Serve as an organizational change agent
Politics and Control in Organizations
This module gives a realistic understanding of politics in the organizational context as the art and science of getting things done. Being "political" at work usually has the negative connotations of "dirty politics." Politics as we use the term in this module, however, means something much broader. The term covers many organizational activities that can build more cooperative, productive, and satisfying professional relationships. The political aspects of organizational life include a wide range of means used to resolve differences of opinion and competing interests--various ways of influencing people so that choices get made and decisions get implemented.
Leadership Communications
In order to lead, leaders must be understood. Miscommunication is a common barrier to effective leadership. Explore communication challenges in today's workplace and learn techniques to manage them. Participants will examine successful approaches to organizational communication, create a profile of their own communicative abilities, and formulate a strategic communication approach for their company. Participants will also develop approaches to communicating with stakeholders, the media, and industry analysts.
Leading and Managing High Performing Teams
Teams can be a success story or a nightmare. Good teams harness the creative energy of many people into a single dynamic force. Ineffective teams are hampered by internal conflict and poor decision-making. Learn how to avoid these pitfalls by analyzing the characteristics of high-performing teams. Understand preferences of individual team members and how those preferences affect larger team dynamics. Discover techniques to successfully organize teams, create organizational enablers, guide teams through conflict, promote positive action, and derive successful outcomes.
Thinking Strategically
Perhaps the most significant impact leaders can have on organizations is through their ability to think strategically. This is a substantially different activity than building a strategy. The strategic thinker is capable of the following, and thus these will form the elements of the module:
- Easily sift through data and identify critical information
- Develop, adopt or accept a desired future end-state
- Identify key information requirements, resources and decision points along the path to reaching the end state
- Balance the big picture awareness with tactical level understanding and details
- Develop, maintain and adjust mental simulations that continually assess the elements above
Length of Program/Cost
Length of Program:
Certificate – 12 days
(6 different modules offered at varying times with the required foundational module taken first)
Individuals Modules – 2 day classes
Program Details:The foundational module of this certificate is
‘Essentials in Leadership’ and is required. To complete the Graduate Certificate in Leadership, participants elect 5 from the remaining 7 modules.
Pricing:
| Certificate Cost: |
|
Individual Modules: |
| $11,900/person |
|
$2,500/class |
Fees includes all educational materials, instruction, coaching, breakfasts, lunches, snacks, parking, commemorative gift and a certificate of completion.
Contact the Executive Education Office to register or for more information: 713 348-6060 or RUEE@rice.edu
Full payment must be received at least 10 business days prior to the first day of the first module. To cancel, the registrant must notify Rice University Executive Education at least 10 business days before the start of the program, and a 95% refund will be issued. If RUEE does not receive notification within 10 business days, no refund will be issued.
Schedule of Modules
Program Details:The foundational module of this certificate is ‘Essentials in Leadership’ and is required. To complete the Graduate Certificate in Leadership, participants elect 5 from the remaining 7 modules.
Spring 2012
Essentials in Leadership
March 22-23, 2012
Leader as CoachApril 10–11, 2012
Leading ChangeApril 17–18, 2012
Politics and Control in OrganizationsMay 8–9, 2012
Leadership CommunicationsMay 24–25, 2012
Leading and Managing High Performing Teams TBD
Thinking StrategicallyTBD
Faculty
D. Brent Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Executive Education
Associate Professor of Management and Psychology
Dr. Smith is currently Associate Dean of Executive Education and Associate Professor of Management and Psychology at Rice University. Prior to his current academic appointments, Dr. Smith was a member of the faculty at London Business School and Cornell University where he taught in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He has also taught for shorter periods at the University of California at Berkeley, Oxford University, and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and has conducted executive programs around the world for companies such as Shell, IBM, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Barclays, KPMG, ExxonMobil, BP, ADCO, Lufthansa, DeBeers, Schneider Electric, Microsoft, El Paso Energy, Veritas, Dynegy, ONGC, CGG Inc., Marathon Oil, Citibank, RedBull, Phillip Morris International, Swedbank, Ulster Bank, RBS, and Total. His teaching interests focus primarily on leadership and management development. Dr. Smith’s executive programs include Leading and Managing Change, Talent Development and Coaching, and Leading and Managing High Performance Teams. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Maryland at College Park. Read More...
Michael Grojean, Ph.D.
Professor in the Practice of Management
Executive Director, Rice University Executive Education
Dr. Michael Grojean joins Rice University Executive Education as Professor in the Practice of Management and Executive Director, coming from a managing Partner’s position in an Executive Development Consultancy firm. Prior to that, Dr Grojean was a member of the faculty at Aston Business School in the United Kingdom where he served as Associate Professor of Management, Head of Executive Education and Associate Dean for Corporate Activities and Partnerships. Additionally, Dr Grojean’s broad experience base includes having served as the Leadership Policy Officer for the U.S Army as well as the Director of Human Resources for a 28,000 member organization. Of note, as the Leadership Policy Officer, he was responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing leadership and leader development policy and doctrine for the 1.4 million person active and reserve force in the U.S. Army. In this role, he also authored the Army’s mentorship doctrine, critically changing the organizational paradigm of developmental relationships. Read More...
Rick Schell
Lecturer in Management Director of the Undergraduate Business Minor
Rick Schell teaches Leadership Communication and Consultative Selling in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. He is also the Director of the Undergraduate Business Minor program, where he teaches Business Communications. Read More...