City University of London Strategic Leadership Programme

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CASS Business School

City University of London Strategic Leadership Programme

13 – 16 June 2022

Overview

Today’s leaders and managers must deal with high levels of uncertainty, an ever-changing competitive landscape and diverse virtual teams. This Strategic Leadership Programme will provide participants with evidence-based, cutting-edge tools and frameworks to succeed in today’s uncertain business environments.

The programme will cover high-level leadership skills, such as strategic decisionmaking for leaders (2 days) and building networks and collaboration across silos to fast-forward a leadership career (1 day). The skills, mindsets and behaviours unpacked during the first three days of the programme will then be put into practice to understand one of the most exciting and growing trends of our current time: the diffusion of Environmental, Social and Governance metrics to evaluate companies and the key leadership challenges posed by these metrics (1 day).

Programme Brochure

The programme will be composed of 3 modules over four days:

ESG Leadership: Leading Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) challenges (one day)
Strategic Decision-Making for Leaders (two days)
Fast-forward your Leadership Career: Build Networks and Break Silos (one day)

Learning outcomes

Understand how strategic leaders make good decisions and how to establish a discipline of good decision making in your organisation and professional life.
Learn how to analyse and remove barriers to good decision making, including social and psychological biases, thus creating the right environment for great decision making.
Learn how to build information-rich and opportunity-driven professional networks and how to collaborate across cultural, professional and geographical barriers.
Learn how to master the leadership challenges posed by the increasing emphasis on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues and metrics.
Learn how strategic leaders think and act to solve new and complex problems.

Programme Structure

ESG Leadership: Leading Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) challenges

1 Day (½ day ESG + ½ day Game)
June 13th, 2022

Professor Daniel Benz

The session will introduce participants to the leadership challenges posed by the new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics by which investors increasingly evaluate companies around the world. The session will start with a role-play game that places participants in the shoes of the CEO of failed Wall Street bank Bear Stearns, one day before its crisis in March 2008. It will continue with a evidence-based discussion of how leaders should communicate with investors and other stakeholders, focused on the Spanish sovereign debt crisis of 2012. In the second half of the session, participants will consider the dilemma faced by senior executives at British insurer Aviva, who had to decide whether to divest or not from a lucrative mining company with a controversial track record in human rights. This will be followed by a evidence-based discussion of “engagement,” that is, the tendency of investors to actively lobby companies to improve their social or environmental track record. The discussion will be based on the case of engagement pioneer Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

Taken together, the session presents participants with the latest leadership challenges posed by ESG metrics worldwide and particularly from the perspective the City of London, equipping them with best practices to deal with such challenges. Overall, the session will leverage the City of London’s unique experience and expertise of to learn how to lead global ESG challenges.

Strategic Decision-Making for Leaders

2 Days
June 14th and 15th, 2022

Professor Laure Cabantous

This is a highly experiential module that blends theory and practice. Participants will learn a framework for analysing and making complex decisions that incorporates multiple stakeholder perspectives; discover our human biases and the way we are all affected by them as well as strategies for diffusing them. Participants will learn to apply decision-making tools to analyse situations as well as key pitfalls of intuition, leading to smarter decisions that achieve better results. As a result of the programme, participants will be able to transfer their learning to the workplace and have confidence in the strategic decisions they make.

On the first day, the session begins by looking at the theory and frameworks behind effective decision-making and focuses on process over outcomes. Participants will explore how to master the key principles of behavioural decision science and equip themselves to make decisions that are complicated by the constraints of time pressure, imperfect data or too much data. On the second day, participants will work in small groups on decision-making tools, analyses and cases while gaining hands-on experience on modelling objectives, trade-offs, uncertainties, and risks. The day has two main objectives, to create a safe environment for participants to get input and feedback from their peers and to enable participants to work with these tools after they return to their organisations.

Fast-Forward your Leadership Career: Build Networks and Break the Silos

1 Day
June 16th, 2022

Professor Santi Furnari
Associate Dean for Executive Educations

In today’s uncertain business world, leaders need to think outside the box and leverage relationships that break the silos typically characterising industries (external silos) and organisations (internal silos). Hence, being able to build and nurture effective cross-silos networks is critical to fast-forward a leadership career and business growth. This session will develop the skills, mind-sets, and capabilities needed to leverage networks and opportunities across silos in industries and organisations. Many opportunities for growth and leadership development are missed because they fall into the cracks between silos, but can be leveraged by enhancing collaboration and networking across silos.

The session will include a group-level, interactive simulation to practice different networking styles and identify the right style for different types of leaders and situations. In addition, the session will include a self-assessment exercise where participants will reflect on their own professional networks using evidence-based network metrics. This will in turn inform an exercise about various strategies to further enhance one’s networks. Overall, the day will be based on the most up-to-date thought leadership and will be highly interactive.

City University of London Strategic Leadership Programme

CASS Business School

City University of London Strategic Leadership Programme

13 – 16 June 2022

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