The Vanderbilt Leadership Development Program helps you grow as a leader alongside your MBA studies. Personalized coaching and resources empower you to define your leadership style, cultivate confidence, and establish a vision for your future.
An MBA program develops your knowledge and skills so that you can advance your career. But what about developing yourself?
The Leadership Development Program (LDP) at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Graduate Management enables you to reflect on your abilities and skills. Take the time to explore the questions: What kind of leader are you? What kind of leader do you want to be?
Executive Director of Leadership Development Programs, Melinda Allen, explains,
“At Owen, leadership development isn’t just a program; it’s part of our DNA. For more than twenty years, we’ve guided students to discover their strengths, embrace new perspectives, and redefine what exceptional leadership looks like in an ever-changing business world. We believe the challenges our students take on here prepare them to lead with confidence throughout their careers.”
Growing as a leader begins with self-awareness. Before you even arrive at Vanderbilt, you’ll take a personality-based leadership assessment used by Fortune 500 companies. You’ll review the results with a Leadership Development Program team member in one-to-one sessions on the beautiful Vanderbilt campus in Nashville, Tennessee, in the United States. And that’s just the first element of the program.
The Leadership Development Program at Vanderbilt isn’t a class. It’s not mandatory either. You can spend as much time on it as you wish. It depends on what you aim to achieve.
If it’s not a class, then what is it? Vanderbilt calls it an “experience layered onto your classes, job search, and student activities.”
In the first year of the Vanderbilt MBA, you will work with one of 40 certified executive coaches. Together, you’ll begin to reflect and explore your current and future leadership style and skills. Your work with the coach will be at a pace that works for you, alongside your studies.
Then, you’ll be able to put the learnings from your coaching sessions into practice during your summer internship.
Imagine you’re entering your second year at Vanderbilt. If you’re ready to build on what you learned in the first year of the Leadership Development Program, you can work toward producing a Leadership Blueprint.
That’s a set of leadership priorities that you can articulate to future employers, but also to yourself. It illustrates that you are intentional about your leadership style and goals. In this intensive program, you’ll continue with executive coaching, work with an LDP Guide, and engage with other students and alumni as you work toward your Blueprint.
If that commitment isn’t right for you, you can still reap the benefits of the Program. You can start or continue your executive coaching. You can also consult with LDP team members about how you can become a better leader as you prepare for your post-MBA career.
Melinda believes, “Students who approach business school with an openness to new perspectives, a desire to learn beyond the classroom, and a willingness to step outside their comfort zone experience growth in profound ways, personally and professionally. Those who lean in to opportunities like LDP and sessions offered by the career management center set themselves up for long-term career success.”
The Vanderbilt LDP isn’t a career planning program. That’s because increasing your self-awareness and defining yourself as a leader is different from planning your career path. That said, it will certainly complement your job search. The confidence that comes from knowing yourself better will serve you well in your career journey.
Since they complement each other, the Leadership Development Program team works closely with the Career Management Center to help students accelerate their career trajectory. When you take advantage of both, you’ll access the self-knowledge, skills, network, and vision to achieve your biggest goals.
Every student who participates in the Leadership Development Program emerges with a different outcome. That’s how it should be, since the program is designed to match your personal needs and goals.
Here’s what some students had to say about their experience:
One student said they learned techniques to reduce stress and to be more proactive in managing stress. “I learned there were three things I always had to do each week to help me better manage my stress – exercise, do something social with people outside of Owen, and get what’s in my head out on paper.”
Another student took steps to overcome their fear of voicing their opinion. “I was challenged by my coach to raise my hand at least one time a week in class as a starting point. As I grew in confidence, it grew to once per class…This helped me grow my confidence, find my voice, and, ultimately, get over the fear of being wrong. I was just recently named the CEO of a financial services organization.”
A third student learned to tame their inner critic through focusing attention on the positive. “The positives started to calibrate and even outweigh my negatives, which gave me more confidence. I have now started my full-time consulting job and continue to write in my journal every day.”
Your development as a leader certainly doesn’t stop after graduation from Vanderbilt. That’s why the Leadership Development Program resources remain available to all alumni. They’re collected on a constantly evolving online platform. You can pair those resources with continuing executive coaching. In parallel, alumni are eligible for career management services as well.
The Vanderbilt Leadership Development Program offers you a tailored, personal way to grow as a leader. It works hand-in-hand with your MBA studies, helping you understand yourself better and put what you learn into practice with the help of an executive coach. It can help you clearly define your leadership style and goals, as well as build your confidence. That’s key to your success, even long after you’ve graduated.
Want to study at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Graduate Management? Take our eligibility quiz to see if you qualify!
