Columbia Business School

Overview

Inspired by Professor Hitendra Wadhwa's teachings on Personal Leadership in Columbia Business School's MBA Program and Executive Education courses, Personal Leadership (Online) uses breakthrough research in psychology, neuroscience, and psychotherapy to provide powerful techniques for tangible personal improvements and greater leadership skills. The online program offers a distinctive set of video-lectures, delivered with a flexible learning schedule, and self-reflection exercises that maintain engagement among participants and faculty members.

Personal Leadership (Online) is a unique leadership program based on research and focusing on a rigorous study of the inner lives of great leaders. The program provides powerful insights and tools to help you gain mastery over your goals, values, purpose, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, mindsets and motivations, so you can operate at your best in all moments, become a more effective leader, build stronger relationships, and experience greater fulfillment at work and  in life.

The program runs for 10–12 weeks. Participants go through two to three sessions each week. Each session has around 60 minutes of video lectures and 30 minutes of reflections and group discussion. There are also rich opportunities to connect, share, discuss, and practice with other participants. All participants can interact with faculty members in live sessions where they discuss participants' experience, ideas, and questions.

Program Options

The Essentials Edition provides a 10-week, 18 session journey through the Five Pillars of Personal Leadership. It is ideal for participants seeking to invest in themselves so they can seek to operate at their highest potential in work and in life. Included in the course are three live webinars with the faculty, and a range of opportunities to interact with other participants online.

The Executive Edition is relevant for professionals who are seeking to improve their effectiveness as leaders. It provides the same content as the Essential Edition — plus an additional live seminar with the faculty members ("My Critical Leadership Challenge") and five other advanced modules (e.g., "Practicing Mindsets that Maximize our Impact as Leaders"). It also includes two one-on-one coaching sessions with faculty members on how you can use Personal Leadership to address your specific workplace challenges and aspirations.
For more information on these two versions of Personal Leadership (Online), please visit http://www.personalleadership.com/programs/course-details.

Audience

Personal Leadership (Online) is designed for all levels of executives. It is also a convenient option for teams within an organization to learn together. We can train your internal facilitators in conducting a blended learning program that integrates online, high-quality video lectures with in-person team discussions, and exercises.

Alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for programs lasting up to seven days. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

Benefits

Personal Leadership (Online) provides a number of learning benefits: Each week, participants learn at their own pace and time by watching video lectures, doing reflections, and interacting with other participants — all on their own schedule. They can deep-dive on, or fast-track, course content based on their individual interests. They can form collaborative relationships with other participants online that will continue to stay active beyond the program.

The program delivers powerful insights and practical techniques to gain greater success in your professional and personal lives through an enhanced understanding and mastery over your inner environment. Lectures are supplemented by exercises involving introspection, self-evaluation, and the application of specific techniques.

Summary of Benefits

• Learn what impact your internal environment has on your success
• Understand your current level of mastery over different aspects of your inner environment and how it compares with top performers
• Discover practical techniques to cultivate a winner's mindset that will allow you to perform at your optimum
• Implement techniques that further develop your personal leadership skills
• Personal reflections, group discussions and applications of personal leadership techniques
• Gain a deeper understanding of your core values and how to align your day-to-day behavior and priorities with these values
• Find ways to turn personal and organizational adversities into unique value-creating opportunities

Upon completion of this program, you will earn one day towards a Certificate in Business Excellence. Learn more. Participants also receive a Certificate of Completion from Columbia Business School Executive Education and the Institute for Personal Leadership.

Faculty

Hitendra Wadhwa Professor of Professional Practice in Marketing

Curriculum

Sample Sessions

The Three Pillars of Personal Leadership

• How the conventional view of leadership limits us
• What science and the lives of great achievers are teaching us about personal leadership

Goals, Values and Purpose

• What the new science of happiness is showing about how we often engage in a futile pursuit of goals
• The difference between a goals-driven and values-driven approach to life; the path taken by great achievers
• What science is telling us about the impact of infusing our work with a sense of purpose
• Closing critical gaps that exist today between our values and our day-to-day life
• How our values can evolve—lessons from the lives of great achievers

How Much Can You Change?

• The extent to which it is possible to fundamentally change our personality, character, temperament, and intelligence
• How our mindset can stimulate or inhibit our personal development
• Recent findings from neuroscience on how much the brain can change in adult life
• The extent to which great achievers have been able to transform themselves

The Science of Personal Development

• The four-step method for developing new skills that is being used by world-class performers
• What new findings in neuroscience tell us about how the brain can be re-sculpted
• Why our resolutions to change ourselves often fail and the right way to eliminate destructive drives and cultivate positive habits

Mastering Your Emotions and Moods

• The pros and cons of anger, anxiety, and optimism. How they affect our performance and our health
• The optimal state for each of these emotions
• Typical ways in which we have been taught to deal with our emotions and how they get us in trouble
• The science of emotional mastery. Practical steps you can start today to make rapid strides toward this mastery

Role of Forgiveness in Leadership

• Why we often misunderstand the meaning of forgiveness
• Recent scientific findings on the importance of forgiveness
• Practical methods to practice forgiveness and how great achievers practiced it

Managing Adversity

• The three levels of managing adversity
• What the latest science is revealing about how people manage adversity, what is optimal and how this relates to our performance and health
• How great achievers have approached adversity

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.