This has also got a lot to do with how modern society and the modern workplace has evolved. Before, power was associated with authority and force. Nobody wants to see that in the modern workplace. The modern currency of leadership is effective communication, empathy and authenticity. Leaders with such qualities produce better results. As some who worked with a lot of female colleagues and leaders during my own banking days, I can attest to this personally. I believe women have a lot to offer and there are still some glass ceilings that need to be broken.
This is why some of the world’s top universities have created leadership programs specifically for women. For the most part, leadership traits are common across genders but these programs have been tailor-made to help women overcome the specific barriers that they face.
1. Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme
Who is this for?
Women leaders looking to overcome gender barriers and learning skills like negotiation, building and using influence, developing as a leader, and charting their future career paths.
Course Review
The first step to becoming a successful leader is understanding yourself and knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are. The first part of the course focuses on exactly that. You will identify and assess your leadership style and learn how women can become effective leaders. By identifying crucible moments in your life, you will learn to chart your part to successful leadership.
Negotiation is a crucial part of leadership. This is really where top business leaders add value and learning how to navigate this “dance” as I like to call it is crucial to being a good leader. You will learn about the basic principles and frameworks of negotiation as well as the strategies and tactics that go into it. You will articulate cultural dimensions, investigate how women must adapt to this activity and asses your own personal negotiation style and skills.
Leadership is also about building and exuding influence. This is especially important for women leaders who have to go the extra mile. You will learn to identify the various sources of power and how to use them to lead and influence others. This also includes being able to manage difficult conversations and use power, influence and effective communication to create value in any situation. This is the good stuff.
Depending on where you are in your career, you would also want to think about the future. Self-developing, mentoring, coaching others, preparing for senior level interviews, using tools like networking to develop as a leader and creating an action plan that encompasses all of this. You will also have to identify future trends and figure where you fit in as a women leader. Leadership is lifelong development and growth, and you need to plan for the future, which is exactly what you will do in the last few weeks of this course.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 6 weeks, 9-12 hours a week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
2. Women’s Leadership Program: Leading With Power and Influence from Yale School of Management
Who is this for?
Women preparing for leadership positions. Focuses on creating change within the organization and wield power more effectively as a woman.
Course Review
The course has a very interesting beginning. The very first module tries to reframe the definition of power as a two-dimensional entity of strength and connection that needs to shifted along that scale based on the context. How this power is created and exercised in organisations, how personal values affect its user and how to adjust this power based on any situation or cultural context.
As I said in the intro, exuding a positive energy is a necessary trait of leadership in the modern workplace. How to crate this energy, how to channel it and how to crate positive outcomes is discussed in the next module. You need to be able to identify all the positive energizers including for yourself. After all, being self-motivated through self-care and self-compassion is also crucial to leading effectively.
A company’s organizational structure also plays into how power floes through it and learning to navigate it and uncovering its roots is the first step to plan for change or improvements. The course uses PARC analysis (people, architecture, routines, culture) to understand the organizational structure and use it as a basis for change. You will learn to apply this model to your organization.
The next module focuses on the importance of moving to a growth focused mindset instead of the traditional results focused mindset that only creates short term results. The growth approach has its own benefits that are explored, along with details into how to achieve it as well as the practical challenges associated with implementing such a strategy in any organization.
We wrap things up with some everyday strategies to create meaningful impact within the organization. Overall, this is an interesting course that does things well even though it does things differently. I guess that is sort of the point and it’s a good opportunity for women preparing for senior leadership roles to have a few courses like this one from top universities like Yale under their belts.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 6 weeks, 4-6 hours per week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
3. Women’s Leadership Program: Leading Teams from Yale School of Management
Who should take this?
Female team leaders in any industry. If you are dealing with a lot of employees on a daily basis, this course offers a unique model to dealing with any and all leadership challenges,
Course Review
The course dives right into the thick of things with an introduction to the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model. This is a research backed approach that helps leaders make superior decisions while leading models. It is based on decision making in real world situations and then assessing their effectiveness. The premise is that decision making is situational and contextual rather than trait based.
This contextual approach to decision making well help you better align your leadership style with the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model and help you make better decisions while leading teams. Your culture, gender, industry and personal. Professional experiences all play a part here and the key is to making the model work for you rather than the other way around.
Next we move on to the use of network based leadership. Networks have benefits and drawbacks and identifying these is key to using them effectively. Gender has a tole to play here as well and the course makes effective use of highlighting the finer nuances. You can leverage your network to identify opportunities and engage with key stakeholders. I think networking is one area where women have to struggle a bit because the existing makeup of corporate leadership is so male dominated. So it is good to see Yale focusing on networking for women.
The last few weeks focus on leadership in every day situations. This means everyday junctures where you can make decisions that matter to people in the organizations and how you can nudge key moments towards a positive outcome. Making a habit of doing this, in my opinion, can go a long way in making good leaders.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 6 weeks, 6-8 hours per week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
4. Women Leading Change: Shaping Our Future from the University of Cambridge
Who should take this?
Best suited for the public sector including governmental organizations and non-profit audiences. This is about change and transformation in the organization and the societies those organizations operate in.
Course Review
The introductory weeks focus on understanding the current situation. You will dive deep in the economic, social and environmental challenges that are impacting women, the value that women can bring by leading change, what barriers they face while championing such changes and how to overcome them. Being an agent of change is always an uphill task but by learning the ever-evolving theories of leadership and the characteristics of female leadership, women can play their role in transforming both business and society. The levers of this change and the female gender traits that influence leadership are explored in depth.
Then we move on to methods that women can use to build confidence and personal impact. The characteristics that impact your leadership style, the strategies that build resilience and confidence, the communication techniques need to maximize effectiveness, inspirational communication style and creating a personal narrative that fits your leadership style. This is all about personal positioning.
Next up is dealing with organizations and teams. Creating a psychologically safe workplace that is built upon strong relationships leads to long time success. You will learn how to foster this culture, how to identify your role in it and practice techniques that improve the effectiveness of organizational relationships. Such teams are resilient and better equipped to handle complex and challenging situations.
Stakeholder engagement is a crucial component of leading effectively. By collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, you can drive sustainable transformation. Women’s role in this collaboration is explored along with techniques that can help maximize the benefits from such strategies. You will then develop an action plan based on all that you have learned, including dealing with any setbacks.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 8 weeks, 7-10 hours per week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
5. Women’s Leadership Program from Yale School of Management
Who should take this?
I would recommend this mostly to HR leaders although anyone whose jobs involves leading large teams can benefit from this.
Course Review
This is a holistic offering from Yale created specifically for shaping the female leaders of tomorrow. The course begins on a strong note with value driven leadership taking centre stage. Identify core leadership values and including humanistic and business focused leadership characteristics. Even though leaders are assumed to be infallible, their emotions can set the tone for the entire team or organizations, and you will learn how this affects business outcomes and success.
Before you become an effective leader, you need self-mastery and self-knowledge. The next module aims to help you achieve exactly that. You will learn how emotional triggers affect decision making, hoe you respond to triggers given your emotional intelligence and self-awareness, how to regulate emotions and how to use emotional regulation to achieve positive outcomes. Innovation and experimentation are also important to leadership and considerable time is spent on those topics as well.
The next module focuses on emotionally intelligent feedback, the ability to read other’s emotions in challenging environments, how negative feedback impacts things and how it is different from effective feedback, how emotional awareness can help you navigate difficult conversations, and how psychological safety and create healthy workplaces. Networks are also important in fostering innovation and allowing people to develop their strengths and this is the topic of the penultimate module.
Lastly, we wrap things up on a positive note with positive leadership. Positive practices lead to improvement in personal leadership capabilities and strengthens the overall organizations. This is backed up how research and positive traits like charisma, compassion, understanding etc. are leveraged to maximise results.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 6 weeks, 6-8 hours per week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
6. Women in Leadership from Roman School of Management
Course Review
Women still face a lot of historical, cultural and personal barriers when trying to advance in the workplace. The first module aims to identify the role of women in the workplace and look at finer nuance like intergeneration trauma, healthy and unhealthy gender roles and how these social constructs affect practical life for women. This essentially create a solid framework from which to approach the issue.
Motivation is a key component of effective leadership and you will learn how your internal and external factors affect this. Inner obstacles to success need to be overcome and biases like imposter syndrome need to be destroyed.
Next we move on to the role of emotional intelligence and non-verbal cues in leadership. This is something we do subconsciously everyday but it is rarely explored formally. Articulating and exploring this formally can go a long way in creating effective leaders. Communication and conflict management through verbal skills is equally important thought and is the subject of the next module. Difficult conversations can be de-escalated using special techniques and you will learn to better appreciate your own strengths and weaknesses on this front.
Click here and use code GS-AF-BBD15 for a 15% discount on this course!
Summary
| Duration | 6 weeks, 6-8 hours per week |
| Format | Fully online, on-demand |
| Level | Executive |
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