Alumni Leadership Development

Alumni Leadership Development

Your gateway to leadership development resources

Next Challenge Please

If you are ready for the next challenge in your career, you are not alone. Whatever the reason—boredom, limited opportunity for growth, changes in organizational dynamics, or others—figuring out what changes to make in your career, your company, and yourself can be difficult.

Video Vignettes

A brief scan of the leadership books available to you as a consumer suggests that there are some skills that most of us struggle with, such as dealing with conflict or having difficult conversations, managing and motivating others, giving and receiving feedback, and leading change to name a few.

The Journey and What You Can Do Along the Way

Start by gaining insight into and awareness of your personal leadership habits. Uncover your strengths and natural tendencies and weaknesses. Go back to feedback you recently received – positive or negative – as that will start to give insight into how others perceive you.

Diagnostic: Are you ready for coaching?

Depending on where you are in your journey, coaching may or may not be the next best step for you. We have crafted a short assessment to help you gauge your own readiness.

Optimizing My First 90 Days in a New Role or Company

In your first three months, you will be learning a new role. Regardless of your skills or previous experience in the field, you can expect a learning curve before you fully understand and adapt to the new environment.

Home

Owen Courtyard

Welcome to your personal leadership development website, which has emerged from conversations that our Leadership Development Program (LDP) team have all the time with students and alumni just like you. We took many of the topics most frequently brought to our attention over the past decade and created a host of questions, pathways and frameworks to spur your thinking about how you develop as a leader.

The site provides you with a set of tools, but for them to be effective you have to do the work. That means spending time to reflect, plan, and practice new leadership habits. You have to find your own answers as you explore what is important to you. This is not a prescriptive website; instead, it is an organic, growing collection of ideas that will evolve over time in response to alumni needs and suggestions.

What is leadership development?

Since its inception, leadership development at Owen has been focused on empowering you with tools and skills to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and overall effectiveness—in other words, setting a foundation of self-awareness and using this knowledge to reflect in a structured way. The end goal is for you to better learn from your experiences and build personal development and growth habits.

How is this different from career planning?

Leadership development impacts a career, without question, but it is not a replacement for career planning and development. Alumni Career Management offers resources that can help guide you through the job search process and assist you in re-evaluating your career trajectory. If, however, you are transitioning to a new role, seeking to develop or improve a specific leadership skill, wanting to understand what leadership development resources can do for you, or interested in working individually with an executive coach to address any of these topics, then you are in the right place!

Will this replace my organization’s development planning?

You should view these resources as a supplement to any leadership development resources offered by your organization or other sources. The line of questions and pathways provided here will offer you a road map to be a better consumer of your company’s resources and leadership development by showing you how to best leverage what your organization offers and filling in any remaining gaps using alumni leadership development resources.

Are these resources intended to be used on my own or in collaboration with others?

These pages include individual tools that you can use on your own to guide your thinking and process, as well as tools and suggested points in which collaboration, such as engaging with an executive coach through the Owen Coaching Network, might yield more powerful results. We also encourage you to discuss the topics and frameworks offered throughout the site with your colleagues, family and friends as you engage in the leadership development process.

The Structure of this Website

The leadership development pages are organized into four main sections, designed to help you get to what you are looking for as quickly as possible.

  • Laying the Foundation
    to empower you with a process, tools and skills to assess your current strengths, weaknesses and effectiveness
  • Managing Transitions
    to help you navigate the changes, shifts and moves that take your career—and YOU—to the next big thing
  • Developing Skills
    to help you gain skills or improve in key skill areas, especially as the leadership skills you need may shift over time
  • Leveraging Executive Coaching
    to access the Owen Coaching Network, a carefully vetted collection of seasoned executive coaches qualified to help you enhance your personal development as a leader

Some of the resources here are provided at negotiated rates that you pay out of your own pocket. However, many of the resources are offered free of charge if you are not in a place to make a financial investment in your leadership development at the moment.

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