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Certificate in Leadership

Certificate in Leadership

Navigating a pandemic, managing inflationary pressures, mitigating supply chain challenges, and recruiting/retaining talent — the expectations for leaders have never been greater. Effective leaders know their value lies not only in managing teams, but inspiring others, developing purposeful and achievable goals, and creating a culture of personal and performance excellence.

The Certificate in Leadership is comprised of several one-day workshops designed to provide tools founded in theory and proven in practice to lead from a place of authenticity and confidence. By completing four (4) of the available leadership open enrollment programs, participants will earn a Certificate in Leadership from Wake Forest Executive Education and the Allegacy Center for Leadership and Character at the School of Business. This is an opportunity for immersion in topics of key personal interest and professional development, ultimately serving as recognition for the commitment to advancing your career.

Join us as we introduce proven tools to enhance leader performance, refine fundamental skills, and address various leadership challenges being faced in your organization!

Workshops are offered on a rotating basis throughout the year. Not all courses will be open for registration at all times. Join our mailing list to stay up to date on program offerings and registration deadlines.

Certificate Objectives and Expected Outcomes

Strengthen your skills as a people manager and effective decision maker

Identify, leverage, and adapt proven leadership principles to organizational challenges

Enhance personal and organizational communication and build a foundation for a common leadership language

Engage and learn with other program participants from a variety of industries, backgrounds, and roles

Develop a shared level of trust at all levels of an organization

Strategies to shape a learning culture to better engage and retain talent

Tools to help an organization embrace and lead change

Certificate Topics

Authentic and Effective Leadership

This 1-day program will provide the participant with the foundation of authentic and effective leadership, while exploring who the leader is as a person. Fully understanding the factors driving behavior enhances leadership authenticity, assists in building trust with others, increases leader effectiveness, and contributes to personal fulfillment and team performance.

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Building and Leading Effective Teams

Effective teams spur innovation, facilitate adaptation, and ensure efficient functioning in almost all organizations. Teams that are led effectively have greater cohesion, employee engagement, and creativity which result in superior performance and satisfaction. Learning how to build, lead, and sustain effective teams provides leaders and organizations with a competitive advantage.

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Leveraging a Growth Mindset for Personal, Team, and Organizational Success

This interactive program is designed to help you embrace challenges as opportunities, to be more resilient in the face of adversity, to pursue your goals with reckless abandon, and to help others do so as well. We will focus on your own development of a growth mindset as well as ways to influence your workplace and team to adopt this way of thinking.

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Leading Effective Change

To stay relevant, teams and organizations must continuously change and adapt to their ever evolving internal and external environments. This makes it imperative leaders understand and possess the skills to effectively lead change. Furthermore, it is also important that leaders know how to shape a learning culture to facilitate continuous adaptation and improvement. Leaders who can effectively lead change gain a competitive advantage for their teams and organizations.

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Executive Decision Making

Making decisions in a dynamic fast-paced business environment is a challenge for most employees. Decision making and problem solving skills become critical when moving into leadership roles in order to drive business growth. Leaders with a developed system for effective decision making are best equipped to lead their teams through times of uncertainty.

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Enterprise Leadership

Enterprise Leadership entails specific skills and a mindset focused on leading the organization at scale, cross-functionally, and with a holistic firm-wide perspective that brings the firm in line with its external operating environment.

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Leading Through Uncertainty

This one-day immersive workshop is designed to equip leaders with the critical skills needed to navigate today’s fast-changing and unpredictable business landscape. The program will explore the principles of adaptive leadership, helping participants develop resilience and foster agility within their teams, and effectively manage volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments.

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Setting Strategy as a Leader

Successful leaders influence and drive success for their organization by creating value through strategic initiatives. The course equips participants with the essential skills to navigate complex challenges, from aligning strategic objectives to managing diverse stakeholder relationships.

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Leading Across Cultures and Generations

This 1-day program equips people managers with the insight and practical tools needed to lead effectively across cultures and generations. Participants will explore how cultural and generational differences show up in the workplace and learn strategies to manage individuals in ways that honor those differences while aligning teams around shared goals, purpose, and values.

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“Wake Forest University Executive Education’s Certificate in Leadership program gave me the background and practice to better lead situations I face in my current role. The program is well organized – research is presented, discussion is held, and finally, role plays are executed to gain experience. The content is well structured and designed to cover a variety of situations in which (your) leadership is essential. Dr. Sweeney is very thoughtful and engaging, which made the program both enjoyable and practical.”

— David Kaiser, Certificate in Leadership Recipient, 2021