Organizational Leadership is a 36-credit Master of Arts degree program designed for individuals who seek to create positive change in their personal life, community, and career. The program treats leadership as a profession, with skills and protocols that promote a sense of “possibility” in all organizational imperatives.

At The Graduate Institute, leadership is recognized as a dynamic, creative expression of an individual’s evolving self. The M.A. in Organizational Leadership creates a context in which you can discover the qualities of authentic leadership that are uniquely yours. Colleagues are embraced as change agents – bold and creative innovators whose leadership touches on all aspects of their life.

Leaders are traditionally assumed to be those with positional authority. But the way leadership is emerging in this post-modernist, high-tech era has changed—it is taking on more of its original, root meaning. Leadership is, once again, associated with guiding people. Today’s leaders are not just those in authority, but those who also “walk ahead.” As an emergent function, leadership often manifests as a quality of presence that shows up in the right time and place. In this view, context empowers leading with as much reality as position. To be a leader arising in context involves the kind of inner growth observed by Robert Quinn in Deep Change:

These people ‘know how to get lost with confidence.’ That is, they know how to learn their way into the new and emerging world. They may be found at any level in an organization. They are master change agents capable of making deep change in themselves, in their relationships, and in their organization. They are internally driven leaders who understand the process of deep change.^[1]

Colleagues in the M.A. program explore the art, the science, and the craft of effective leadership from a number of disciplines and ideologies. Leadership principles including trust, cooperation, co-creativity, and stewardship are examined on interpersonal and organizational scales. The program also addresses diverse community-building strategies and investigates the way that communication and language impact change and what is needed to lead change.

The Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership is grounded in an interactive approach in which each colleague’s commitments to leadership inform the context for learning in the program. Colleagues engage in real-time initiatives that have strategic value measured in terms of real-world results. We call these breakthrough initiatives. Throughout the course of the 22 month degree program, each participant generates a high-performance “breakthrough” project that effects a lasting contribution. This approach enhances each colleague’s lifelong career as an effective leader.

The program embraces leaders from the arts, education, social services, healthcare professions, not-for-profit industry, and all who are ready to take their leadership to the next level of performance, commitment, and contribution.

[1] Quinn, R. (1996). Deep change: discovering the leader within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

photo courtesy Maureen Edwards:www.maureenedwards.com