Black Leadership Program

Community and capabilities. The Black Leadership Program strengthens both. This one-week intensive leadership program creates the space and support to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities of leadership today. This is a leadership program unlike any other. Yes, youll gain valuable skills and insights from faculty to bring back to your organization. But its about much more than that. Its about nurturing a broader perspective so you can help inspire positive change.

Through real-time, faculty-led lectures, small-group exercises, guest speakers, and facilitated conversations, youll enhance your leadership capability. Youll learn to manage power more effectively, influence others even when you dont have formal authority, and communicate with greater impact. Youll explore how identity shapes leadership and how to navigate the dynamics that influence career success. Most importantly, youll gain new skills, insights, and approaches to grow as a leader. And youll put all that learning into action by working on a capstone project a personal career advancement project that kicks off while on campus and continues for several months with small-group coaching and peer feedback.

The Black Leadership Program is a learning journey of action, shared experience, growth, and transformation. This program is open to individuals from all backgrounds who wish to advance the diversity of leadership in business.

How do you understand and manage peoples perceptions of you? How do you talk across differences?

Leadership requires exceptional skills from critical analysis and communication to self-awareness, interpersonal acumen, and situational awareness. Being a leader also requires humility, curiosity, compassion, and courage. The Black Leadership Program curriculum helps you discover and develop these skills and values.

The Black Leadership Program offers a highly specialized curriculum. Youll explore how identity shapes leadership, learn how to use your power, and transform your leadership skills and career trajectory. Sessions focus on leadership, power and relationships, communication, and cultivating networks to help you address the most critical and complex issues in the workplace.

The program also includes a capstone project where you:

Identify career advancement goals and develop and refine your action plan.

Work in self-directed small groups from September to November for feedback, coaching, and accountability.

Gather as a class in a culminating session with a faculty director and peers to share and celebrate your progress.

Program Highlights

Below is just a sample of the sessions youll experience as part of the program.

Clarifying Goals Self-Awareness: Reflecting on Identity

Successful leadership in todays fast-changing and challenging environments requires leaders who are intentional about developing their leadership competencies, clearly articulating their values, and building strong support systems. This session will be a conversation about identifying who you are, who you want to become, and what truly matters to you.

Honing Your Communication

Business leaders often struggle to convey their messages in a clear, concise, and compelling manner. When your communication resonates with your audience in a well-organized and clear way, it is far more likely to be impactful and acted upon. In this session, you will learn how to design and integrate your messages in service of your story and speaking goal(s)regardless of the delivery format (e.g., emails, memos, slides, or answers to questions).

Networks of Support vs. Influence

In these sessions, youll learn the difference between mentorship and sponsorship and why its important. Youll explore how social identity can impact career advancement and learn strategies for building and leveraging professional support networks.

Youll also learn a framework for assessing the health and optimization of your social networks. Then, we will discuss the importance of reframing networking as a relational activity and how to build stronger, more authentic professional relationships.

Influence Without Authority

The ability to exert influence without relying on the power of a formal title can often be critical to effective management. In this session, we will analyze strategies and tactics that will help you influence others when you lack formal authority.

Discover leadership strategies to achieve your goals and cultivate self-awareness to succeed along the way.

Have meaningful conversations about leadership challenges and opportunities tied to identity.

Learn how to manage power more effectively up and down the corporate ladder.

Build a productive and meaningful network you can leverage throughout your career.

Develop communication skills to lead with courage and compassion.

Participate in a capstone project to reach your career advancement goals.