It is a collaborative, mutually designed relationship between you and a qualified executive coach. It is a formal engagement for a period of agreed upon time and to reach agreed upon goals. It is about exploring together to create a path of where you are today and where you want to be in the future by determining what the gaps are and how to close the gaps through learning and action.

Our executive coaches in the Owen Coaching Network are a carefully vetted, high-performing set of independent coaches whose full-time job is to coach executives, leaders, and future industry leaders. Five coaches specifically work with the Executive MBA students. Their primary clients are corporate leaders, and they take on as many Owen student coaching clients as their schedules will allow in a given year. Our coaches are qualified and certified by the International Coaching Federation, and the coaches who work with Executive MBA students are a specific sub-set of the larger network. Our coaches all have extensive experience working as executives and/or coaching experienced executives.

Throughout the Executive MBA program, the LDP Team is always a resource to you. We are happy to meet with you one-on-one to support you during coaching, if needed, as well as once you have finished the coaching engagement to determine the best course of action for you.

It varies widely from student to student, by design, but here are some examples: increasing confidence, dealing with ambiguity, becoming less of a perfectionist, managing stress, reducing self-critical thoughts, managing conflict, speaking up when you aren’t an expert on a topic, enhancing listening skills, and asking more questions just to name a few. 

Since the leadership journey is a lifelong one, we try to help you break down the larger themes into manageable chunks with specific strategies and tactics for addressing them. Despite starting with small and seemingly simple tasks to help improve each desired area doesn't mean that those specific strategies and tactics are easy, which is what makes leadership so challenging and so rewarding. 

Our goal is for each student to leave Vanderbilt with greater self-awareness and improved leadership skills and for them to leave with the tools for continuing to grow their leadership capabilities throughout their career.

Leadership development is about empowering you with the tools and skills to assess your strengths, weaknesses and effectiveness so that you can better learn from your experiences and build personal development growth habits as you progress through your career trajectory. Career management is about planning and evaluating your career trajectory.

There are several options, depending on how much (or little) you would like to focus on your personal leadership development journey. Your meeting schedule and/or programming may also differ depending on which program track you select. Learn more on the Leadership Development Page. If your priority and/or focus is career, then participate in programming offered by the Career Management Center.

No, LDP is not part of any curriculum at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management. By design, LDP supplements your academic work to help you develop as a more capable, well-rounded business professional. Just like in business, when your company offers you access to resources dedicated to high-potential leaders, your level of initiative, openness to new challenges, and drive for success is demonstrated by how you leverage those resources.