My Leadership Academy: Flexible Continuing Education Programs for Dynamic Times

The WU Executive Academy’s new continuing education program, featuring fifteen different half-day seminars, will be launched in fall 2022. The program will cover various topics ranging from leadership and personal development to communication and corporate culture as well as strategy and digitization.

“The My Leadership Academy will provide business leaders and entrepreneurs with the right tools to acquire the practical know-how and relevant skills they need to cope with their most pressing challenges,” explains Christof Stögerer, Head of Continuing Education at the WU Executive Academy.

“Pick and Learn” – How Does Continuing Education at the My Leadership Academy Work?

Participants can compile their own individual continuing education program according to the principle of “pick and learn,” choosing from various seminars that will be held on site or online on two half-days. These seminars can be booked individually. The WU Executive Academy offers attractive discounts to those who book two or more seminars. After having completed four of these short seminars, the participants will receive the My Leadership Academy Certificate. “Our idea was that, as these short seminars easily fit into the busy schedules of managers, participants can simply select the seminars that will provide them with updates on the topics of their choice, preparing them for the challenges of the 21^st century in a targeted manner,” says Christof Stögerer, who’s responsible for the Leadership Academy’s teaching contents.

Research and Practice Rolled into One

As usual, the WU Executive Academy offers a perfect combination of research and business practice: lecturers either teach at WU Vienna or are successful business leaders themselves. This means that, while participants will be brought up to date on research results, there is also a strong focus on sharing hands-on experience.

Which topics does the My Leadership Academy address? The My Leadership Academy focuses on issues that are particularly relevant for leaders – now and in the future. The fifteen short seminars zero in on the following subject areas:

• Leadership

“Good leaders have to know themselves,” Christof Stöger analyzes. Self-reflection, as an aspect of self-management and self-awareness, is thus central to leadership. The question is which message leaders want to actively convey to their teams in the face of current challenges and which tools they can use for this goal. “A sense of purpose has become very important in today’s world of work,” Stögerer explains. Even though remuneration and career opportunities still play a key role, people are less and less willing to sacrifice their private lives for a fast climb up the career ladder. This means that these four Ws have become more important: what (kind of tasks) are you doing for whom (employer) in which amount of time (share of work in the work-life balance) and, in particular, why (purpose). This is not only true for members of the younger generations. Particularly during the corona crisis, also members of older generations started giving more thought to their future professional journey.

• Personal Development

If you want to react fast to a crisis while keeping your cool, you need mental strength. “This makes it so important to achieve and strengthen your personal resilience in a targeted way,” Stögerer explains the approach of the My Leadership Academy. Former top athletes can serve as good examples in this regard: in the course of their professional careers, they have to learn how to cope with failures and setbacks, framing them as learning opportunities which help them grow. “Leaders are faced with difficulties every day, some of them occurring completely out of the blue. The right set of tools can be of enormous help in these situations,” Stögerer says. Seminar participants will learn several different practical approaches to using their own professional capital (including know-how, formal education, networks, and status) and self-management most efficiently to identify individual roads to success.

• Communication

“These days, good communication skills are more sought-after than ever,” Stögerer shares. Soft skills are generally becoming increasingly important, but today’s leaders were often not sufficiently prepared for this development in the course of their studies. “We try to make up for that by providing the right input, for example in our short seminar on coaching competence for leaders, which tries to answer the following questions: What is coaching? What do I have to pay attention to when I’m coaching members of my team? Which methods are useful? How do I react to strong emotions? How can I support sustainable decision-making processes?” The conflict management seminar provides participants with the right tools for managing tensions and conflicts to the benefit of their companies, because controversies are important sources for innovation and development. At the same time, unresolved conflicts are what sets people back on their career paths the most. This makes it all the more important for leaders to acquire the right conflict management methods and tools.

• Organization and Corporate Culture

A healthy and open corporate culture is what companies need to be able to weather any crisis (or rather: crises). There are thus two central questions: First, how do I want to organize my company in the face of a dynamically changing environment? “Organizations have to become better at adapting to the constant instability and permanently changing framework conditions in which they operate,” Stögerer explains. Antifragility and self-organization are important buzzwords in this regard. Second, how can I establish a feedback culture as an integral part of my corporate culture? “Humans are social beings. They want to be more than just a cog in a big wheel, they want to make meaningful contributions that increase their self-efficacy,” Stögerer shares. Many leaders are not used to openly addressing these things. Stögerer is convinced that, in the long run, only those organizations that are willing to embark on this new path and actively shape it will survive.

• Strategy

This topic will cover a wide range of aspects, including digital transformation and sustainability. “Strategy is about a potential re-orientation of an entire company, but also about resilience and getting prepared for future developments,” Stögerer explains. Shareholder value will be replaced by stakeholder value and purpose. When it comes to the practical implementation of this fundamental change, strategic know-how and mental factors often blend together.

• Digitization

Digitization will, of course, be an indispensable topic at the My Leadership Academy. There will be seminars fostering a fundamental understanding of the consequences of digital transformation, including the fact that everything is becoming faster and more complex, and discussing successful digital business models such as the platform model (Amazon), the freemium model (LinkedIn), or the ecosystem model (Google). Trends such as Web3 and metaverses will also be covered. Establishing networks among the participants is, of course, also an essential part of the seminars, making sure that they will be able to continue exchanging ideas on important trends also after the end of the seminars.
 

More Info about the My Leadership Academy