MBA Leadership DevelopmentOwen Graduate School of Management | Owen Graduate School of Management

Leadership Development at Owen

The Leadership Development Program (LDP) is an integral part of the Vanderbilt MBA experience. Designed to help students better understand themselves as leaders, the program focuses on developing self-awareness, strengthening leadership capabilities, and translating insight into action.

Rather than a traditional classroom course, the Leadership Development Program is a co-curricular experience that complements academic coursework, career development, and leadership opportunities across the MBA program.

Through assessments, executive coaching, reflection, and practical application, students gain a deeper understanding of their leadership strengths, motivations, and potential derailers. These insights allow students to grow intentionally throughout their MBA experience and beyond.

Participation in leadership development activities is flexible. Students can engage with coaching, reflection, and programming in ways that align with their individual goals and schedules.

Your Leadership Journey

Member of LDP sits with student smiling The Leadership Development Program helps students build self-awareness and strengthen the leadership capabilities needed to lead effectively in complex organizations.

The program emphasizes:

Self-awareness and personal insight
Leadership skill development
Reflection and feedback
Application of leadership principles in real-world settings

Students begin their leadership journey before arriving on campus by completing a leadership assessment. Throughout the MBA experience, students have opportunities to work with executive coaches, reflect on leadership experiences, and translate insights into practical leadership behaviors.

Leadership development is intentionally personalized. Students can engage with the program at a level that best supports their individual leadership goals.

Why Participate?

Students who participate in the Leadership Development Program are typically self-motivated to improve their leadership skills. They see their time at Vanderbilt as an opportunity to do more than develop technical expertise. It is also a chance to better understand themselves, broaden their perspective, and strengthen the way they lead.

Example Outcomes

Every student who participates in our Leadership Development Program (LDP) reaches different outcomes—which is by design. Our program is intended to provide a process that can be tailored to your unique personal needs and goals. Here are actual examples of what student outcomes can look like:

Manage Stress

I totally stress myself out. As part of LDP, I spent my first year learning how to manage my stress level better and building techniques to help me manage through the stress. With the help of the Leadership Development Program and my shared approach group, I learned there were three things I always had to do each week to help me better manage my stress–exercise, do something social with people outside of Owen, and get what’s in my head out on paper. I also gained insight into my “tells” or warning signs that my stress levels were elevating, so I could be more proactive versus reactive in how I manage my stress. I continued to do this throughout my second year and am now doing it as I start my new job.
Find My Voice

I don’t speak up. My fear of saying something stupid, being wrong, or lacking confidence as compared to the other “experts” in my classes kept me from raising my hand or contributing to my full potential. I was challenged by my coach to raise my hand at least one time a week in class as a starting point. As I grew in confidence, it grew to once per class. I asked a friend in class to hold me accountable. I also asked my team members to hold me accountable to speaking up in group meetings. This helped me grow my confidence, find my voice and, ultimately, get over the fear of being wrong. I was just recently named the CEO of a financial services organization.
Tame the Self-Critic

I’m really hard on myself. I ignore good feedback and focus only on the negative. The very first thing I was told to do for homework was to write down three things I did well every day. It sounded ridiculous to me, but I agreed to do it for two weeks. At first, I wrote things like, “I walked my dog today” and “I took out the garbage” as it was very hard to recognize and acknowledge my strengths. But after two weeks, the items in my log started to have more meaning. Things like “I was able to clearly articulate my thoughts during the marketing presentation” and “I received an SP on the strategy homework” started to surface. The positives started to calibrate and even out my negatives, which gave me more confidence. I have now started my full-time consulting job and continue to write in my journal every day.
Suspend Judgement

During my coaching conversations, I realized I have a tendency to write people off who I assume are stupid or don’t add value. I got feedback that my quick judgments of people were felt by those around me, which affected my ability to work effectively in teams. So, I worked hard to suspend judgment and give people the benefit of the doubt. I learned to “take a back seat” from time to time during team meetings to allow my teammates to lead and contribute. I quickly learned others on the team were more capable than I thought they were, and I had been making snap judgments that weren’t always right. I also realized the outcomes of the team were better than if I’d done it alone AND I ended up with less work to do when I relied on others more and wasn’t taking everything on myself.
Manage Through Conflict

I HATE conflict!! As a result, I’ll back down in a team meeting if people don’t agree with my idea, even if I know I’m right. I avoid delivering a tough message or feedback, even if it needs saying, as I don’t want to make anyone mad. I realized through the course of LDP that what I viewed as conflict wasn’t always really conflict to everyone else. My coach had me observe what situations existed when I found myself holding back or avoiding a difficult conversation. I was able to better understand my tendencies and be more intentional about speaking up and stepping into those situations. Funny thing was, after about one to two times, I realized no one got mad and the conflict I anticipated was only in my head, which made it easier to continue the new habit to great result.

42

The number of professional executive coaches we hire and work with each year as part of our Leadership Development Program for students and alumni.

Meet Our Team

FAQ: LDP Experience

Q: How do you match students with coaches?

A: This process is part art and part science. We leverage our conversations with you, your survey data, your Hogan results (with your permission) and what we know of the coaches to make the match. Every coach we have is capable of coaching any student, so match is really about trying to help ensure an expedited rapport-building process to help you maximize the four sessions you have with your coach. The thing to remember is that the coaches aren’t your best friend, which means you don’t have to have a permanent relationship with them to learn from them.
Q. How does the program mirror best practices from industry?

A. We reach out to industry often to stay current with best practices and to learn of ways we can incorporate it into LDP. A great example is Mentor Circles. We modeled this second-year LDP program based on a similar, highly successful, program offered at AT&T based on the recommendation of an Owen alum who is also a senior executive at AT&T. LDP also resembles best practice in industry in the ways we help develop students as organizations develop their high-potential leaders. For example, we use experienced executive coaches and pair it with tools and resources used widely in industry, such as the Hogan Leadership Assessment suite and Korn/Ferry VOICES 360 and leadership competency suite.
Q. Is the leadership development program part of the curriculum?

A. No, LDP is not part of any curriculum at Vanderbilt’s business school. By design, LDP supplements your academic work to help you develop as a more capable, well-rounded business professional. Just like in full-time jobs, 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.
Q. If LDP is not part of the curriculum, why do students participate?

A. What you learn about yourself through LDP can shape how you perform during your internship, how you lead or contribute to high-functioning student and work teams and how you set goals to build your career.
Q. Who are the executive coaches?

A. 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 leaders in industry. Their primary clients are corporate leaders, and they take on as many Owen student coaching clients as their schedules will allow each year. Our coaches are qualified and certified by the International Coaching Federation.
Q. Is there a Leadership class that I can take?

A. There are lots of classes at Owen that teach leadership skills, like Leading Teams and Organizations (LTO). These classes are part of the curriculum, and while often LDP partners with them, they are not part of LDP.
Q. What is the Hogan Assessment?

A. The Hogan Assessment is a personality-based assessment used by more than half of the Fortune 500 to hire and develop individual leaders like you. Hogan was developed to improve workplace performance and is used among companies globally to do so. By taking Hogan, you will get three reports that give insight into your natural leadership style, how you approach stress and your values and motivations.
Q. Can I take Hogan in my native language?

A. Hogan is offered in 42 different languages, including German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. You can take the assessment in your native language if offered but all reports will be generated in English.
Q. How accessible are the LDP resources? Is there a limit to the number who can participate?

A. The LDP resources are very accessible. Anyone who wants to participate can if you sign up by the deadline. There is no limit to the number of students who can participate in the Individual or Flex Approach in Year 1, or in Year 2. There may be some supplemental speakers or programming that are space limited based on the format or room location. But in general, the opportunities are accessible and open to all.
Q. What are the types of things students work on with their coach in Individual and Flex Approach?

A. It varies widely from student to student, by design. To help give you a picture of what types of things students work on, 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.

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