Interested in learning more about leadership? Looking for opportunities to develop your own leadership skills?
The Organizational Leadership Institute is offering a variety of leadership development opportunities during the spring 2021 semester. Both programs are open to anyone with an interest in learning more about leadership and in developing leadership competencies.
The two programs being offered this semester are the Leadership Breakfast Series and the Leadership Certificate Program.
The Leadership Breakfast Series consists of four two-hour sessions. Each session addresses an interesting and important leadership issue. Participants can register for individual sessions or can register for all four sessions.
According to Rick Ringer, director the Leadership Institute, the Leadership Breakfast Series is designed to address interesting and unique topics that might be overlooked in a more traditional leadership development program.
“We’ve done sessions on how comedy ‘improv’ can contribute to leadership skills; we’ve done leadership case studies; and we’ve done sessions on how leaders can encourage innovative thinking.
“What we are trying to do in the Leadership Breakfast Series is give participants opportunities to think about—and discuss with others—different aspects of leadership,” Ringer continued. “We keep our sessions small so that we can generate a lot of discussion and interaction with the participants.
“We call it the Leadership Breakfast Series because we normally have a nice breakfast with the session—obviously, COVID has changed that. Our sessions this spring will be virtual, but we’re hoping to be back face-to-face for our fall 2021 series.”
According to Ringer, the Leadership Certificate Program is designed to be much more of a rigorous developmental experience. There are four six-hour sessions in the program; participants attend all four sessions.
“The Certificate Program is designed to be challenging—as most good development programs are. It has a bit of an ‘academic’ element—we do incorporate some foundational readings in each of the sessions,” he said. “But, the sessions also incorporate case studies, lots of discussion and problem solving, and other experiential activities that are designed to help participants develop a deeper understanding of leadership and grow their own leadership abilities.
“We know that 70-80 percent of what people ‘know’ about leadership is learned on the job—trial and error, successes and failures, the examples of others, mentoring and modeling. Those are key to leadership development and growth,” he continued. “We’re not trying to replicate those experiences; we’ve designed a program that provides some foundational learning so that individuals can really benefit from their workplace experiences.”
Anyone interested in learning more about these programs can visit the Organizational Leadership Institute or contact the Institute at LeadershipInstitute@IllinoisState.edu.
