Program Overview

You don’t have to be “in charge” to be a leader. If your position requires you to align your team to pursue a common goal, or to persuade even a single colleague to go along with an idea or make an important change, you need proactive, strategic leaderships skills. Otherwise, you will be in perpetual reactive mode, allowing others to set the agenda and determine your organization’s direction.

Strategic Leadership: Enhancing Your Personal Effectiveness, a one-week, online program from Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education, provides the cutting-edge tools you need to become a more effective leader. Developed by Faculty Chair Robert Wilkinson and featuring experts and scholars from across Harvard University, this program emphasizes four key leadership domains: perception (understanding relevant information), process (engaging with other stakeholders), people (recognizing the role that emotions play), and projection (understanding the stories we tell ourselves and others).

This interactive online program will translate those “4P” concepts into practical tools you can use to improve the way you lead, make decisions, and interact with others.

illustration of schedulePROGRAM CURRICULUM

Grounded in real-world situations leaders face today, the Strategic Leadership: Enhancing Your Personal Effectiveness online executive program relies heavily on active experiential learning. This includes lively, interactive sessions using the Harvard case-study method and featuring small-group discussions, lecture, video, and opportunities to practice and hone new skills. (Self-paced readings and multimedia assignments are required prior to live, online sessions.)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Throughout this intensive online program, you and your global cohort of peers will:

  • Gain greater insight into your own leadership style, habits, and disciplines
  • Acquire new tools and resources to tackle future leadership challenges
  • Learn how to engage with people and groups that hold deeply differing views and perceptions
  • Discover how to work more effectively with teams and manage processes
  • Learn to recognize people’s emotional needs and the impact leaders may have on them
  • Refine your vision and narrative for yourself and for your followers, constituents, and community

Application Information

Strategic Leadership: Enhancing Your Personal Effectiveness is intended for senior leaders in government, corporate, and nonprofit organizations who wish to better understand the personal aspects of leadership and improve their capacity to lead.

Those who will benefit from this program include:

  • Senior leaders in government at the national, regional, and local levels
  • Executive directors and senior leaders of nonprofits and NGOs
  • Senior leaders in the private sector
  • Leaders of social movements
  • Union leaders

This immersive online program has an estimated time commitment of approximately 20 hours of live sessions and five to 10 hours of peer and self-paced work. Be prepared to help shape the discussion by identifying a specific leadership challenge and to question your own ideas about leadership. View a sample program schedule from a previous session. Note that module titles, speakers, and sequence may change.

WHAT PARTICIPANTS ARE SAYING

“This was one of the most impactful courses I have taken. Oftentimes leadership programs are based in a lot of theory and academic concepts, but this program dove deeper into the ‘softer’ skills of leadership than anything I’ve experienced.”
Richard Lorenzen, CEO, Fifth Avenue Brands
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Hear From the Faculty Chair

Learn more about Strategic Leadership: Enhancing Your Personal Effectiveness from Faculty Chair Robert Wilkinson, Lecturer in Public Policy and Leadership.

Faculty & Research

Robert Wilkinson Photo

Robert Wilkinson

Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Leadership

Arthur Brooks Photo

Arthur Brooks

Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership

Naseem Khuri

Naseem Khuri

Trainer, Consultant, Mediator and Facilitator
Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Relations, Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

HKS shield.

Kimberlyn Leary

617-899-4806
Allison Shapira Photo

Allison Shapira

Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy

Dan Shapiro

Daniel Shapiro

Founder and Director, Harvard International Negotiation Program
Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital
Affiliate faculty, Program on Negotiation

Listen to Podcasts on the 4P Model for Strategic Leadership

The 4P Model for Strategic Leadership is a purposeful, intentional reflection from HKS Faculty Rob Wilkinson on the four domains that are most important for great leadership: Perception, Process, People and Projection.

Alumni Perspective

"[Professor Wilkinson] can concisely and wholly articulate concepts into practical applicable actions that anyone can use in their journey towards becoming a better leader! I could not imagine a more effective or impactful instructor on this subject."
James Cox, CEO, Greensboro Housing Authority
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