Across all industries, organizations need strong leaders to develop and implement growth strategies, manage change, and make key decisions. In the workplace, leaders translate big-picture visions into everyday actions, helping employees understand how their work contributes to their organization’s overall success. They also serve as coaches, assisting employees with individual goal-setting and providing constructive feedback.
Master of Business Administration (MBA) in leadership programs provide a strong foundation in the knowledge and skills leaders need to fulfill their essential roles in organizations. If you’re thinking of pursuing an MBA, this guide will give you an idea of what to expect, covering what you’ll likely learn in a graduate program. You will also see how Aurora University’s online MBA with a Concentration in Leadership program can provide the advanced training you need to grow in your career.
What Leadership Skills Will You Build in an MBA Program?
Through coursework, faculty guidance, and interactions with students, MBA programs help instill leadership skills and qualities. At all levels of management, leaders get called upon to analyze available data and use the conclusions reached to inform decisions about company strategy. When unforeseen obstacles arise, they must find ways to overcome them. In an MBA program, you can expect to gain experience with strategic decision-making and creative solutions to problems that all leaders need.
A strong leader also needs to be able to interact positively with their team. MBA programs provide opportunities to develop oral and written communication skills, often through collaborative assignments. By requiring students to work together, these projects teach the skills of delegating tasks, resolving conflicts, and working collaboratively, which help leaders connect with their teams.
MBA programs also prepare graduates to assume leadership roles in today’s corporate climate, where corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to grow in importance. CSR ensures that companies pursue economic opportunities while remaining committed to social and environmental responsibilities. Universities prepare students for the challenge of striking this balance through coursework and assignments related to ethics and accountability.
Organizational Change Management in Leadership Training
To remain competitive, businesses must constantly adapt and evolve. When launching a new strategy or initiative, organizations rely on leaders to guide their teams through changes. The term for this process of leading people through transitions is organizational change management. It is the process of helping employees understand, accept, and adopt corporate changes.
Many business management positions require a strong background in organizational change management. As a result, the topic is a core focus area for many MBA in leadership degrees. The following aspects of organizational change management are covered in many programs.
Organizational Change Management Frameworks and Strategy
When preparing for a significant change, such as implementing a new software system or restructuring a division, an organization’s leaders first decide how best to approach the transition. They set goals and clearly define their overall objectives, developing a basic organizational change management strategy to implement.
MBA in leadership programs prepare students to make high-level decisions about change management strategy. Through coursework, you can expect to learn about organizational change management framework, such as the Kotter Methodology and the McKinsey 7-S Model. These frameworks provide overall structures and philosophies for affecting organizational change. Understanding them can help you choose the right strategic approach to lead teams through change.
Organizational Change Management Process
After developing an organizational change management strategy, leaders must then make practical choices about how to execute it. They map out the step-by-step workflow needed to achieve the final strategic goals. The name for this workflow is the organizational change management process.
MBA in leadership programs typically teach students how to convert a strategy into an actionable process. They cover the key steps that affect management workflows and how to evaluate the success of each stage.
Organizational Change Management Plans
Once an overall organizational change management process is in place, leaders turn their attention to specifics. They must decide who will be responsible for each stage of the process, when each stage should be completed, and what resources are needed to accomplish each step. To communicate these important details, leaders usually develop and share a written organizational change management plan.
In an MBA in leadership program, you can expect to learn the fundamentals of change management planning. You will find out what an effective plan contains and likely have opportunities to practice developing sample plans of your own.
What Are Key Strategies for Leading Change Effectively?
Regardless of which organizational change management framework best applies to an organization, leaders must convince others of the importance of the transition. By explaining key benefits, they can demonstrate value and build buy-in across teams and key stakeholders, such as directors and investors.
Once the organizational change management process is underway according to the agreed-upon plan, leaders must closely track progress. To do so, they monitor predetermined metrics and receive regular progress reports from team members. They remain mindful of key deadlines and budgetary constraints. When issues arise, they must quickly identify the cause, devise a solution, and modify the organizational change management plan accordingly.
Obtaining buy-in, monitoring progress, and other key elements of organizational change management strategies are commonly taught in MBA in leadership programs. Students often have the opportunity to learn about organizational change management through independent and collaborative case study analyses. In this way, universities equip graduates with a wealth of tools and knowledge to draw from when called upon to act as transformational leaders.
Advanced Business Knowledge for Leaders
Managing organizational change is just one essential duty of business leaders. Effective leaders must also take responsibility for a variety of core business functions to help organizations achieve both short- and long-term success. To give students thorough preparation for the demands of leading in the modern workplace, MBA in leadership programs include coursework that equips students with advanced business knowledge.
Leaders at all levels contribute to an organization’s financial success. To help students understand the big picture, leadership MBA programs typically familiarize students with common financial statements and performance metrics. They also teach key financial management principles, including budgeting, forecasting, and controlling costs.
Operations management is another core component of many MBA programs. In them, future leaders learn how to identify inefficiencies and develop processes to address them. You can also anticipate discussions of risk management and regulatory compliance in your coursework.
Finally, MBA programs typically teach students the fundamentals of marketing. Lectures, readings, and assignments explain crucial concepts like developing brand strategy and profiling target customers. Moreover, classes will often demonstrate best practices for translating data into decisions, showing you how to leverage market research, focus groups, data dashboards, and visualization tools and other information sources to arrive at sound conclusions.
How Does Aurora University’s MBA Prepare Leaders?
AU’s online MBA Leadership Concentration program can help prepare you for tomorrow’s leadership roles. The Higher Learning Commission-accredited program emphasizes leadership development and strategic thinking. It fosters in-demand skills for the modern workplace, such as budgeting and problem-solving, and includes coursework on organizational change management framework strategies, processes, and plans. As a result, graduates are well-positioned for success in a wide range of leadership roles.
To meet the needs of busy professionals looking to take the next step in their careers, AU’s MBA Leadership Concentration online degree boasts a flexible, online format. The university even provides a full suite of career services and resources to support you on the path to your professional goals.
Prepare to Lead With Aurora University’s MBA Program
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that demand for skilled professionals in management occupations will increase by 6.1% by 2034, and that roughly 1,148 leadership positions will open annually during the decade. These jobs include operations manager, sales manager, administrative services manager, production manager, purchasing manager, and many other titles. Completing the online MBA with a leadership concentration from AU can prepare you to take on these types of leadership roles.
Through an industry-aligned curriculum, Aurora University’s affordable program builds essential skills and equips you with the knowledge needed to effect positive organizational change. With the flexible online program, you can balance your professional and personal responsibilities while earning your advanced degree.
Explore AU’s online MBA Leadership Concentration program to see for yourself how it can help you strive toward your professional goals.
About Aurora University’s Online MBA Leadership Concentration
Aurora University’s online MBA Leadership Concentration doesn’t require GRE or GMAT scores for admission, and there’s no application fee, removing two common obstacles for working professionals ready to start the process. The program totals 36 credit hours, delivered in accelerated eight-week terms, and students who’ve already earned qualifying graduate-level credit at a regionally accredited institution may be able to transfer it toward their degree.
Courses are taught by faculty with real-world business experience, bringing practical, industry-informed perspective to lessons on leadership and organizational change. For professionals interested in pairing leadership training with marketing expertise, AU also offers a combined MBA Leadership and Marketing concentration.
