Leadership | Queen's Executive Education Program

About the program

Queen's Leadership Program provides insights and one-on-one coaching that will change the way you think about leadership and the way you are perceived as a leader.

The Program takes you through an intensive five days of self-discovery, one-on-one coaching, classroom discussions and team exercises. You will leave the Program with a better understanding of yourself and a powerful personal development agenda.

Key elements of the program include:

Personal Leadership Assessment
Anchored by the 360-Degree Feedback instrument, your executive coach will help you better understand how you are perceived by your colleagues and how Program content relates to your personal situation.

Valuable Insights into Transformational Leadership and Coaching
Learn how to communicate authentically, create enthusiasm, and bring out the best in others. Develop a plan to coach and mentor people for peak performance.

Personal Leadership Exercise
Work with an executive coach to address a leadership challenge that you are currently facing in your workplace.

Post-Program Support
Queen's offers several ways to continue your learning after the Program, including: repeating the 360-Degree Feedback process; following up with your executive coach; alumni events and networking opportunities; and updates on the Program and material.

Who should attend

Managers and executives in any functional area of their organization who want to strengthen their leadership skills.

This program is designated an approved recertification program by the HRPA.

You might also be interested in: Neuroscience of Leadership, Learning to Lead

Personal Benefits

The concepts and tools taught in the program will greatly enhance your leadership skills

Learn the personal and organizational skills you need to be an effective leader
Gain a better understanding of your leadership capabilities
Learn how to apply the principles of transformational leadership
Expand your coaching, team leadership, and project management skills
Exchange ideas and experiences with Queen's faculty and fellow participants
Build better relationships within and outside your organization
Return to work with proven tools to achieve lasting change in the way teams work together
Learn how to lead a healthy and balanced life through the Program's optional Lifestyle Component

Organizational benefits

Enhancing your leadership skills will have a significant impact across your organization

Achieve your strategic goals with stronger, more committed teams
Help the people you work with perform at their peak
Create an atmosphere of trust, mutual support and open communication
Develop a high-performance culture in your organization
Benchmark against the best leadership practices of the world's most successful companies
Build high-performance expectations into everyday management practices

Program content

The program leverages the educational power of multiple teaching tools, including class discussions, exchange of ideas and perspectives with faculty and fellow participants, one-on-one coaching, exercises, and the development of a self-directed action plan for improving personal effectiveness.

Program curriculum:

Understand Your Leadership Capabilities

Using the 360-Degree Feedback instrument and working with your executive coach:

Assess your leadership style and strengths
Understand how you are perceived by others
Define your core beliefs and understand how they influence you as a leader
Identify barriers to effective leadership
Understand how the Program content relates to your personal circumstance

Analyze and Reflect on Your Leadership Style

Reflect on your leadership strengths and areas for development
Identify aspects of your leadership style that could create barriers to your success
Develop approaches for using your influence more positively and effectively

Action Learning

During a series of situational exercises that mirror the workplace, you will learn to:

Diagnose and address problems that undermine individual and team effectiveness
Enhance your communication skills
Build insight and self-understanding through structured feedback in team meetings and problem sets

Personal Leadership Exercise

Work with an executive coach to prepare a plan to address a leadership challenge you are currently facing.

Transformational Leadership

Through a series of class discussions, you will learn to:

Communicate a vision clearly and authentically
Inspire, create enthusiasm, and bring out the best in others
Coach and mentor people for peak performance
Address behaviour and performance issues effectively and with confidence

Enhance Your Leadership Skills

Through a series of situational exercises:

Practice giving and receiving feedback
Enhance your decision-making and problem-solving skills
Develop your coaching skills by working with fellow participants in the program
Develop an ability to handle leadership dilemmas with integrity
Learn how to bring out the best in others

Advanced Coaching

Your executive coach will help you to prepare an effective strategy for developing your leadership capabilities and avoiding past mistakes.

Action Plan

Develop and commit to an action plan for making positive change in your leadership behaviour

Set objectives and timelines for your progress
Build high-performance expectations into your everyday management practices
Develop a plan to coach and mentor the people around you
Translate your personal vision into tangible actions on the job

Session Leaders & Speakers

Session leaders include senior professors from Smith School of Business and knowledgeable experts from industry. These outstanding teachers are constantly in touch with today's business world through real-world business experience, Board memberships and their own consulting practices.

Dr. Julian Barling
Organizational Behaviour, Smith School of Business

Julian is the author of The Science of Leadership: Lessons From Research for Organizational Leaders, which was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in January, 2014. His research interests focus on the nature and development of transformational leadership and employee well-being, and he is also the author of well over 200 research articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of several books, including Employment, Stress and Family Functioning (1990, Wiley & Sons); The Union and Its Members: A Psychological Approach (1992, Oxford University Press); Changing Employment Relations: Behavioral and Social Perspectives (1995, American Psychological Association); Young Workers (1999, American Psychological Association); and The Psychology of Workplace Safety (2004, American Psychological Association). He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Workplace Violence (2006, SAGE Publications), and senior editor of both the Handbook of Work Stress (2005), Handbook of Organizational Behaviour (2008), all published by SAGE, The Psychology of Green Organizations (2015) and Work and Sleep: Research Insights for the Workplace (2016), both published by Oxford University Press).

Julian was formerly the editor of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, served as the chair of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Workplace Violence in 2001-2, and was the chairperson of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety to the Ontario Minister of Labour from 1989-1991.

Julian is a Fellow for the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Canadian Psychological Association. Julian was the recipient in 2016 of the Distinguished Contributions to Industrial and Organizational Psychology by the C-SIOP Division of the Canadian Psychological Association.

MacLean's magazine named Julian as one of Queen's University's most popular professors in 1996. Julian received the National Post's "Leaders in Business Education" award in 2001 and Queen's University's Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision in 2008.

Julian received his Ph.D in 1979 from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he subsequently taught in the Psychology Department. He joined Queen's University in 1984, initially teaching in the Department of Psychology. Julian moved to the School of Business in 1994; and served as the Associate Dean with responsibility for the Ph.D, M.Sc and Research programs in the School of Business from 1997-2011.

Peggy Baumgartner
Director of Training, Third Factor

Peggy Baumgartner has dedicated her life to teaching and coaching excellence. As Third Factor’s Director of Training, she works extensively with the most senior level of organizations, including CEOs and their executive teams. In addition to her corporate work, Peggy works to prepare Olympic athletes for competition. For the past three Olympic cycles, she has led sessions for the Women’s Hockey team heading into the Games, an experience Hayley Wickenheiser described as “the most stressful part of the entire quadrennial." Finally, Peggy is a key enabler of coaching at Right To Play, a Canadian not-for-profit advancing peace and development goals through play, where she has led the adaptation of the Coaching for High Performance program to meet the needs of 15,000 volunteer coaches, and traveled to Rwanda to lead the roll out.

Dr. Bill Blake
Organizational Behaviour, Smith School of Business

A native of Kingston and a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, Dr. Bill Blake spent six years in a variety of leadership positions in the Canadian Navy prior to entering the University of Western Ontario where he completed an MBA and a Ph.D. in business.

Dr. Blake joined Smith School of Business in 2001. In 2002 he was appointed Associate Dean, MBA Programs, and served in that capacity for 6 years. During that time, the Accelerated MBA and Executive MBA Americas (a Queen's-Cornell partnership) were launched and the Full-time MBA was named #1 in the world outside the U.S.A by BusinessWeek in three successive biannual rankings.

Dr. Blake's research and teaching have focused on characteristics of effective leaders and the relationship between cultural adaptability and international effectiveness. He has been actively involved in consulting and executive development and he has delivered programs in leadership, cross-cultural management and human resource management nationally and internationally.

Peter Jensen, PhD
Founder, Third Factor

Peter Jensen is the author of The Inside Edge, Ignite The Third Factor and Thriving in a 24/7 World, the founder of Third Factor, and a longstanding instructor at Smith School of Business at Queen's University. A dynamic speaker with a Ph.D. in Sport Psychology, Peter has attended 9 Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian team and helped over 70 athletes medal. With the world of Olympic sport as a laboratory, he has developed a deep understanding of what it takes to be a successful leader of high performers. Peter is a renowned innovator—bringing coaching and personal high performance to corporations worldwide. As a teacher, Peter has the power to invigorate audiences through his compelling use of humour, personal experiences and concrete, actionable content.