IMPACT

During times of crisis, the measure of a leader is tested. This program helps you prepare for these situations that are bound to arise in any executive’s career, helping you build an organization that is robust and responsive when the time comes.

Specifically, you will walk away knowing how to:

• Strategically and successfully manage yourself and your organization through times of crisis
• Avoid making the wrong leadership decisions under pressure
• Communicate effectively about the crisis with internal and external stakeholders
• Create an environment of psychological safety for your team(s)
• Leverage your core values to guide you through a crisis
• Learn from a crisis so you're better equipped to lead through the challenges of tomorrow

Upon completion of this program, you will earn three days towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

The program is structured around a leader’s responsibilities — leading yourself and leading others — with each day focusing on a different aspect of the framework.

Day 1: Managing external stakeholders during crises

Learn how to communicate with external stakeholders when a crisis arises, including what kind of information you should provide, the style and tone with which you provide it, and how to manage questions you can't answer. You’ll acquire concrete tools for identifying and prioritizing stakeholders in times of crisis.

Day 2: Leading teams during crises

Understand how to produce psychological safety for your team and allow team members to give their perspective honestly — a crucial component to effective decision making in times of crisis. You’ll practice how to get full input from team members in order to make sense of the complexity of a crisis.

Day 3: Leading yourself during crises

You’ll learn about a framework to keep your own foundation of core values intact so you don't get consumed by the reactions of others. Hands-on exercises teach you how to maintain perspective, allowing you to continue to act as a leader and not become engulfed in the chaos around you.

The program features guest speakers who will talk about crises they have managed within their organization or industry. Speaker sessions will be hands-on and interactive with open discussions around the guest speaker’s experiences.

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

The program is designed for executives with significant leadership responsibility of teams, departments, and units as well as professionals in areas such as communications, people, and strategy and that are called in action in times of crisis.

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.

FACULTY

Paul Ingram, Faculty Director
Kravis Professor of Business

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and faculty director of the Columbia Advanced Management Program, Columbia’s flagship residential program for senior executives from around the globe. His PhD is from Cornell University, and he was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Columbia. He has held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Toronto.

The courses he teaches on management and strategy benefit from his research on organizations in the United States, Canada, Israel, Scotland, China, Korea and Australia. His research has been published in more than sixty articles, book chapters and books. His publications have received numerous distinctions, including Gould Prize, and best paper awards in the areas of Organization and Management Theory, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Ingram's current research examines the intersection between culture and social networks. Recent papers investigate questions such as the role of value similarity to foster business networks, determinants and outcomes of individuals’ fit in organizational cultures, and influences on ethical decision making.

He has served as President of the College of Organization Science of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He is currently an Associate Editor for Academy of Management Discoveries, and has served as a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology, a senior editor for Organization Science, an Associate Editor for Management Science and on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Organization. Paul’s undergraduate degree is from Brock University where received the Governor General’s Award as the top graduating student. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Graduate Award from Brock’s Faculty of Business.

At Columbia Business School, Paul has received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, won the Commitment to Excellence Award, voted by graduating EMBA students five times, and thrice been chosen by graduating EMBA students to deliver the keynote speech at their commencement ceremony. He has consulted on issues of organizational design and strategy to leading companies in the finance, health care, insurance, energy, and consumer products industries. Paul was born in Canada to immigrant parents and was the first in his family to attend college.

Along with Professor Ingram, additional Columbia Business School faculty contribute to and teach in the program.