Women's Strategic Leadership Program
Online program
Unleash your unique sources of power and learn how to use them to propel yourself, your teams and your organization toward success.
5 months, including 1 week orientation and 2 week-long breaks.
6–8 hours of self-paced learning per week, entirely online.
Email: yale.som.execed@getsmarter.com
Call: +1 203 439 4771
About this program
Despite continued efforts to promote gender equality, women remain underrepresented in leadership roles across industries. This can be attributed to various factors, including gender biases, societal expectations, and organizational structural barriers.
With the Women’s Strategic Leadership Program from the Yale School of Management Executive Education, you will discover the qualities that will allow you to excel in all aspects of leadership. Alongside a network of professionals, you will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to navigate the external and internal challenges that may hinder your advancement, while also inspiring and uplifting the next generation of women leaders.
You will earn a certificate of participation from the Yale School of Management Executive Education at the completion of each section of the program as proof of your newly acquired skills and knowledge, and your commitment to lifelong learning.
What this program covers
This program is designed to develop your professional skill set, help drive your career forward, and address the specific challenges you face as a leader.
In section one, you’ll investigate how emotional self-mastery can influence situational outcomes and inform your strengths, while learning to amplify your leadership style by grounding it in your core values. You’ll also gain the tools to use experimentation to deploy your unique strengths to enhance and develop your approach to leadership and innovation.
By drawing on emotional intelligence to facilitate difficult conversations, you’ll discover how constructive feedback can be used to help you become a more effective leader and create a psychologically safe environment.
In section two, you will focus on three key topics that will elevate your ability to lead others — decision-making, understanding your network, and everyday leadership — and gain practical approaches to leveraging each effectively. Over six weeks, you’ll learn to connect your personal experiences with functional skills and strategies and uncover ways to improve your overall leadership style.
Finally, in section three, you’ll gain practical strategies for developing your influence and power to become a more effective leader. You’ll explore the importance of positive, energizing interactions for leadership, and address the internal factors that sometimes obstruct them. From there, you’ll learn how to conduct a PARC (people, architecture, routines, culture) analysis to understand where power lies in organizational structures and assess which areas may be leveraged for change. You’ll also reflect on the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of creating a growth culture to transform your organization. Finally, you’ll investigate how everyday junctures can be used for power and change, equipping you to become a changemaker in your own context.
A powerful collaboration
The Yale School of Management Executive Education is collaborating with online education provider GetSmarter to create a new class of learning experience — one that is higher-touch and personalized for the working professional.
About the Yale School of Management
The mission of the Yale School of Management is to educate leaders for business and society. The school’s learners and faculty are committed to understanding the complex forces transforming global markets and using that understanding to build organizations — in the for-profit, nonprofit, entrepreneurial, and government sectors — that contribute lasting value to society.
An integrated curriculum, close ties to Yale University, and active connection to the Global Network for Advanced Management ensure that students both acquire crucial technical skills and develop a genuine understanding of an increasingly complex global context.
About GetSmarter
GetSmarter, part of edX, helps working professionals gain verifiable skills from leading global universities and institutions to thrive in an ever-changing work environment.
Technology meets academic rigor in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are certified by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.
As a participant of this program, you will also gain unlimited access to edX’s Career Engagement Network at no extra cost. This platform will provide you with valuable career resources and events to support your professional journey. You can look forward to benefits including rich content, career templates, webinars, workshops, career fairs, networking events, panel discussions, and exclusive recruitment opportunities to connect you with potential employers.
What you’ll learn
Week 0: Programme orientation
You’ll be welcomed to the program and begin connecting with fellow participants, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning journey, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed. You’ll be required to complete your participant profile, confirm your certificate delivery address, and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.
Week 1: Values-driven leadership
Explore your core values and traits to become an effective leader.
- Identify the role of core values in leadership
- Review the gaps between the humanistic and business-focused leadership characteristics that you value in leaders
- Interpret how a leader’s emotions set the tone for their team
- Differentiate between leadership styles
- Reflect on your leadership characteristics in order to identify your core values and traits
Week 2: Self-knowledge and self-mastery
Learn about the value of having self-awareness and practising self-mastery.
- Explain the factors that influence emotional intelligence
- Identify your emotional triggers and trigger responses
- Interpret how you respond to triggers using emotional self-awareness
- Determine the importance of emotion regulation
- Select techniques for practising emotional self-mastery
- Reflect on how emotional regulation leads to positive outcomes
- Evaluate whether there is a relationship between your strengths and your emotional intelligence
Week 3: Leading growth through experimentation
Use experimentation to develop your personal and organizational approaches to leadership and innovation.
- Review the relationship between innovation and transformational leadership
- Determine your role in developing innovative practices that align with the type of innovation at your organization
- Compare experiences of organizational innovation and experimentation
- Reflect on how your organization can promote growth through experimentation
- Design an experiment that develops your leadership approach or supports your goals
Week 4: Emotionally intelligent feedback
Draw on emotional awareness in order to have difficult conversations and use feedback effectively.
- Recognize your innate ability to read others’ emotions
- Describe emotionally intelligent responses to challenging environments
- Discuss the effects of negative feedback
- Show how effective feedback results in improved professional performance
- Analyze how psychological safety and clear communication contribute to developing emotionally intelligent workplaces
- Investigate how emotional awareness can facilitate difficult conversations
- Reflect on how feedback can be used to develop leadership strengths
Week 5: Networks and structures of innovation
Understand the role networks play in developing personal strengths, innovation, and leadership.
- Discuss how networks support innovative practices
- Show how networks can be used to develop strengths
- Determine your network type and explore how it can be used when implementing innovative ideas
- Analyze the importance of leveraging your network to achieve your goals
Week 6: Positive leadership
Understand how using positive leadership practices can improve your personal leadership capabilities and strengthen your organization.
- Review research-based arguments that support positive leadership approaches
- Articulate how understanding your strengths is a trait of effective leadership
- Show how charisma and compassion enable presence
- Select methods and techniques to practice self-compassion
- Evaluate your identified strengths to understand how they influence the way you engage with your environment
- Draft a best-self development plan that embodies principles of positive leadership
Week 7: Program break – Orientation to Women’s leadership: Leading teams
Week 8: Decision-making for team leaders
Discover the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model, a research-backed approach to making superior decisions when leading teams.
- Discuss situational and contextual decision-making when leading teams
- Examine the myth of trait-based leadership
- Illustrate the benefits and drawbacks of manager-centered and group-centered approaches to decision-making
- Use the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model to make decisions in real-world situations and gauge its effectiveness
- Analyze how the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model can improve your approach to decision-making
Week 9: Contextual leadership and decision-making for teams
Discover the role of contextual factors in your decision-making and how the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model can improve your approach.
- Review your leadership style in relation to the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model
- Articulate how culture, gender, and industry differences can impact decision-making when leading teams
- Assess areas in your professional and personal life where you align with, or diverge from, the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model
Week 10: Understanding your network
Reconsider your perspective on networks, and explore the benefits and drawbacks of your own network.
- Describe common challenges associated with building your network
- Identify the benefits and drawbacks of different types of networks
- Determine your network type
- Investigate how gender can impact networks and the role it can play in professional success
- Evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of your network
Week 11: Leveraging your network
Learn how to strengthen and build your network.
- Identify strategies to leverage the opportunities in your current network
- Determine the key stakeholders in your network that can support your professional development
- Investigate how you can establish high-quality connections
- Create an action plan to improve your existing network and accelerate your professional development
Week 12: Leadership in the everyday
Engage with moments of impact that make up the experience of everyday organizational life.
- Identify everyday junctures and how and when they matter to peoples’ lived experiences in organizations
- Determine what leaders can do to nudge key moments toward positive impact
- Practice effective skills and mindsets that could improve your approach to everyday leadership
- Reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of your current approach to everyday leadership, and identify personally relevant areas for growth
Week 13: The future of leadership
Face the future of work with agility.
- Discuss the potential impact of the changing leadership landscape on you as a future-ready leader
- Identify key capacities for future-ready leadership
- Articulate how selected leadership skills and mindsets can help you navigate the future of work
- Investigate which future-ready leadership capacities may be impactful in your context
Week 14: Program break – Orientation to Women’s leadership: Leading with power and influence
Week 15: Reframing power
Examine power as a two-dimensional entity of strength and connection that can be shifted depending on the context.
- Outline the expanded definition of power
- Describe how power manifests in organizations
- Determine which personal values influence how you use power within your organization
- Examine a framework for understanding power which considers strength and connection
- Analyze how your power can be adjusted in response to the demands of a situation, team, or cultural context
Week 16: Leading with positive energy
Explore positive energy as a powerful predictor of leadership and organizational success.
- Explain how positive relational energy is used in effective leadership
- Examine the attributes of positive energizers and de-energizers
- Determine the impact that positively energizing leadership has on individuals and organizations
- Select strategies and behaviors to cultivate positive relational energy
Week 17: Harnessing your power
Address the internal factors that can prevent you from harnessing your power.
- Identify the types of positive energizers
- Illustrate the importance of practicing self-care and self-compassion
- Select approaches to develop positive energy with yourself and combat the factors that limit your ability to be a positively energizing leader
Week 18: Navigating structures of power
Explore how to navigate organizational structures and generate power from within.
- Articulate the importance of understanding where power lies in the organizational structure before planning for change
- Explore the PARC (people, architecture, routines, culture) analysis as a tool to investigate organizational structure
- Reflect on the strategies that can be used when planning for change in organizations
- Conduct a PARC analysis of your organization
Week 19: Growth and power
Explore the practical implications and challenges associated with implementing a growth approach in organizations.
- Describe a results-focused mindset versus a growth-focused mindset
- Determine the benefits of adopting a growth approach
- Analyze what it means to be more growth focused and how this can be achieved
- Assess the practical implications and challenges associated with implementing a growth approach
Week 20: The power of the changemaker
Explore what you can do in everyday junctures to create a sense of agency and meaningful impact.
- Identify everyday moments within organizational settings when power dynamics are in action
- Determine the power of lived experience and emotions within the workplace
- Investigate strategies to use everyday junctures for power and change
- Conduct a power inquiry of your organizational context
Please note that module titles and their contents are subject to change during program development.
Who should take this program
This online program aims to empower women leaders at all stages of their careers, regardless of their experience or background. Senior leaders, including professionals in C-suite positions, who want to harness their influence will find this program useful, as will mid-level women managers and aspiring leaders looking to enhance their leadership capabilities. Moreover, individuals who advocate for women's leadership development will also benefit.
This program is highly relevant for any female professionals who want to learn effective strategies for navigating power dynamics successfully and taking the next step in their career.
This program is for you if you want to:
Drive advancement
Develop the skills and knowledge to leverage your unique strengths as powerful leadership tools to propel yourself, your team, and your organization forward.
Build relationships
Learn to utilize your relationships, connections, and interpersonal interactions as a catalyst for growth and achievement of your goals.
Grow your career
Craft a self-development roadmap that will pinpoint your strengths and guide you toward future growth and success.
Be inspired
Join a cohort of diverse women, united in their pursuit of adding value to their organizations.
About the certificate
Upon successful completion of each section of the program, you’ll receive a certificate of participation from the Yale School of Management Executive Education as proof of your newly acquired skills and knowledge, and your commitment to lifelong learning.
Assessment is continuous and based on a series of practical assignments completed online. In order to be issued with your digital certificate, you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the program handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the program.
Your digital certificate will be issued in your legal name and sent to you upon successful completion of the program, as per the stipulated requirements.
Who you’ll learn from
These subject matter experts from Yale SOM guide the program design and appear in a number of program videos, along with a variety of industry professionals.
Your program co-conveners
Emma Seppälä
Lecturer in Management, Yale School of Management; Faculty Director, Yale School of Management’s Women’s Leadership Program
Rodrigo Canales
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management
Heidi Brooks
Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management
Marissa King
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management
Michael Kraus
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management
How you’ll learn
Every program is broken down into manageable, weekly modules designed to accelerate your learning process through diverse activities:
- Work through your downloadable and online instructional material
- Interact with your peers and learning facilitators through weekly class-wide forums and reviewed small group discussions
- Enjoy a wide range of interactive content, including video lectures, infographics, live polls, and more
- Investigate rich, real-world case studies
- Apply what you learn each week to quizzes and ongoing project submissions, culminating in three certificates from the Yale School of Management Executive Education
Your success team
GetSmarter, with whom Yale SOM Executive Education is collaborating to deliver this online program, provides a personalized approach to online education that ensures you’re supported throughout your learning journey.
Head Tutor
A subject expert who’ll guide you through content-related challenges.
Success Adviser
Your one-on-one support, available during University hours (9a.m.–5p.m. EST) to resolve technical and administrative challenges.
Global success team
Available 24/7 to solve your tech-related and administrative queries and concerns.
Technical requirements
Basic requirements
In order to complete this program, you’ll need a PDF Reader. You may also need to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, as well as read and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel.
Additional requirements
Some programs may require certain software and resources, which will be communicated to you upon registration and/or at the start of the program. Please note that Google, Vimeo, and YouTube may be used in our program delivery.
