Stanford Graduate School of Business

Executive Leadership Development

Stanford Graduate School of Business

General Management

Application Deadline Approaching

Last date to apply: February 12, 2027 · Program starts on March 28, 2027

About Programme

Executive Leadership Development is a comprehensive, experiential program that encompasses analysis to action — with an emphasis on the action. It’s a unique blend of intensive learning, immersive lectures, on-the-job challenges, and personal leadership development. You will be able to apply what you learn to real-world business challenges and put new leadership skills into practice.

You will begin developing your leadership style and effectiveness with Stanford’s proprietary 360º leadership assessment. Throughout the program, you will hone your personal leadership skills with three coaching sessions that will keep you engaged and accountable long after you complete the program.

The carefully developed curriculum follows Stanford’s MBA Program across three key themes: business acumen, innovation, and leadership. You will work closely with Stanford GSB faculty, and collaborate in small groups with highly motivated global peers to share business challenges, gain relevant insights, and develop a valuable network that extends far beyond the classroom.

Programme Content

How do you turn an inflection point in your career into an opportunity? How can you catapult your career to the next level?

Executive Leadership Development won’t give you a specific leadership recipe to follow. But it will teach you how to cook for yourself — strengthening your analytical tools, management acumen, and interpersonal skills.

Program Format

The program’s format and multi-disciplinary curriculum follow the Stanford MBA Program across three key themes: business acumen, innovation, and leadership. You’ll learn how to resolve strategic problems, build and motivate effective teams, and drive change in yourself and your organization.

The sessions mentioned below are just a sample of those you’ll experience as part of the program.

Some managerial decisions involve a great deal of attention and effort while others are made on instinct. In this session, you will consider the upsides and downsides of intuition in decision-making and discuss models for effective decision-making in organizations. To make our lessons clear, we will draw on a case study, based on an actual organization that highlights the pitfalls of rash judgment and the benefits of sound decision-making principles. You will engage in a live interaction and debate their preferred course of action.

Personal leadership development is a key focus of the program and the Leadership Coaching offered as an aspect of this program is a highly reviewed benefit by past participants. To enhance your awareness of your leadership style and how it’s perceived by others, we combine classroom learning with Stanford’s proprietary 360º in-depth leadership assessment tool called LEAP, also known as Leadership Evaluation and Action Planning.

With the personalized guidance of leadership coaching, LEAP is designed to help you strengthen your leadership skills so you can improve your performance, energize your workplace, and advance your career. It also helps you gain unique insight into your leadership skills, set priorities, and develop a 100-day action plan with leadership coaching.

In this session, participants will be introduced to a number of novel frameworks to help them strategically create and launch new AI-powered products and services. Participants will learn how to successfully design solutions for external and internal customers that create real value and support your organization’s digital transformation goals. Additionally, participants will learn how to holistically consider the necessary organizational and workflow changes to support long-term cost savings and increased profitability stemming from the growing AI opportunity. The session will include both real-life case studies and interactive discussion and problem-solving.

Every innovation begins with a problem that needs to be solved. And it ends with a solution that is viable. How can leaders help their organization identify problems and turn these into viable solutions? A process paradigm is very helpful. In the process view of innovation, every innovation follows four steps: Define, Ideate, Create, Experiment (DICE). In this session,we will introduce this framework, and use it to explain the development of iconic product and business model innovations. We will also examine popular innovation approaches such as design thinking and agile and explain how these fit into the broader DICE framework. We will also introduce a powerful, but less known approach, called precedent driven innovation that nicely complements some of the most popular ones.

Programme Objective

Practice and improve your leadership with a personalized coaching plan.
Develop greater awareness of your leadership style and how it’s perceived by others.
Improve core analytical skills required for approaching business challenges holistically and making better executive decisions.
Enhance your understanding of the critical interface between execution issues and internal and external strategic challenges to the organization.
Explore strategic frameworks that help you identify problems, drive innovation within your organization, and capitalize on emerging AI-driven opportunities.
Learn design thinking principles to solve business problems — learn effective ways of designing teams, business operations, change management initiatives, and organizational structures and culture.

Programme Audience

High-potential leaders on the fast track who are poised and motivated to take on significant managerial responsibility in their organizations
Mid-level executives with at least 10 years of work experience and a minimum of three to five years of management experience — from any size company, any industry, and any country
Individuals who are eager, engaged, and inspired to make a positive impact in this program and in their organizations
Senior executives and high potential leaders interested specifically in power and influence may want to consider Executive Program in Leadership: The Effective Use of Power

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Speak with an Advisor

  1. Pedagogy (case method, experiential learning, coaching, simulations)
  2. Testimonials
  3. Programme Benefits
  4. Brochure

Prashansa Uttam

Programme Advisor

+91 9403890085[email protected]Mon – Fri, 9am – 5pm IST

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Executive Education Office

Jana Dubovska
+1 (650) 723-3341
NA
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu
Stanford, USA

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Executive Leadership Development | Stanford GSB