Women’s Business Leadership Certificate 2023-2024

Certificate Topics:

This certificate program will feature a different topic for each of the 10 program sessions. Topics are chosen using attendees' feedback, workplace trends, and various opportunities. Topics for the 2023-2024 cohort include:

Kick-Off Event
The Women's Business Leadership Certificate program begins with an informal dinner event where participants can learn more about the program and their fellow cohort members. This kick-off event lays the foundation for relationship-building and networking throughout the program.

Authentic Leadership
How do you use your unique thinking and behavioral preferences to provide effective leadership to others while being authentic to who you are? How do you most provide value to your team and organization? In this program, you will develop an understanding of the key considerations that determine which leadership approaches will be most effective to accomplish your goals. Upon completion, you will create your own plan for applying insights from this transformative journey to becoming a more effective leader in your organization.

Strategic Thinking and Planning
While strategic thinking and planning are the roadmaps to success, implementation is the vehicle that gets you there. Leaders must decide the most important things that need to get done, execute the key to-dos, and know when to say "no" to achieve your organization's strategic goals. Participants will leave energized and ready to be more strategic thinkers and implement their strategic plans. They will also discover ways to effectively communicate their strategies to colleagues at different levels of the organization.

Mastering the Unwritten Rules at Work
American business was designed centuries ago. Women are now fully participating in the workplace, yet only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. By mastering the unwritten rules and learning to negotiate, you will have new tools to help you be your successful best. This program discusses topics not covered during orientation including how decisions get made and how work really gets done in the office. You will leave with a number of concrete actions you can use immediately.

Exploring Enneagrams
To become an effective leader, you must first understand your natural tendencies and what strengths you inherently have. Participants will complete the Enneagram assessment to learn key insights into their own personalities. Then, they will explore how people with different traits interact with each other to be successful and where they need to become more intentional. Strategies to lead a cohesive team will be presented, and participants will create an action plan to put their newly formed skills into practice.

Critical Conversations
When we are stuck because we are avoiding a needed conversation, or having the same conversation more often than we want, it is a sign that we are talking but not really conversing. Learning the proven skills that help frame how, when, and what we say can yield amazing results. These tools improve relationships, reduce stress, minimize conflict, improve productivity, and best of all, increase our ability to be effective. This discussion-based program will feature interactive exercises that allow you to gain critical conversation tools, such as: identifying roadblocks to managing relationships and conflict, learning to practice and apply specific skills geared toward effectiveness, recognizing and addressing individuals displaying disruptive behavior, focusing on interactions common to the corporate environment.

Building Trust for Leaders
Part of a leader's responsibility is to create a culture and environment where all team members are comfortable speaking their truth and trusting one another. Participants will explore the skills they need to effectively gain the confidence to build trust with colleagues and direct reports through honesty, integrity, and authenticity. Interpersonal savviness, openness, flexibility, and adaptability will be examined through the lens of a leader. Finally, participants will be able to identify what behaviors, methods, and roles they need to incorporate into their own leadership to be the most effective with their teams.

Keynote Speaker - Learning From Failure
Success depends largely on how the idea of failure is viewed and treated. In this brief conversation and keynote speech, participants will discuss what failure truly is, and how they can learn from it to achieve greater success.

Leading with DEI and Inclusive Mindset
It takes many different strengths, experiences, and types of diversity to make an organization successful. Leaders need to understand the elements of creating an environment that welcomes and includes each employee. These environments both feel good and make good business sense. Participants will explore how to create leadership behaviors that model inclusivity, create safety in the workplace, and truly understand and promote individuals’ strengths.

Managing Change
There are few guarantees in the workplace today. However, change is one of them. More than ever, organizations and their environments are in a state of flux as processes are streamlined, technologies are upgraded, new products are introduced, and organizations increasingly compete in the global market. In some cases, these changes are planned. In others, they are not. Sometimes the forces for change are internal to the organization, and sometimes they are caused by external conditions.

Finance for Leaders - Simulation Game
As a leader, no matter what area of the organization in which you work, decisions need to be made with an understanding of the financial impact on the company. Finance for Leaders is a simulation-based program played in teams that helps you build confidence in understanding finance, the language of business, so you can speak with your peers using the correct terms, concepts, and appropriate foundational knowledge. You'll also develop an understanding of all of the key financial documents, how to interpret them, and why they are important. Financial terms and calculations will be explained in a way that makes sense for both financial and non-financial business professionals. Finally, you will also be challenged to apply what you learn in class by analyzing how your work and your decisions are related to the overall performance of the company.

Moving Forward as a Leader
This interactive, engaging, and thought-provoking session will help yo understand yourself and others in order to build strong, productive relationships as a leader. Not every team member can be managed and developed in the same way, so leaders must understand how to be effective in many different situations, such as meetings and brainstorming sessions. You will learn how to connect better with colleagues and employees whose priorities and preferences differ from yours - saving you time, energy, and money.