About the Transformative Leadership Master's Program
Students in the Transformative Leadership online MA program at CIIS develop capacities to envision, initiate, and engage in transformative change processes.
Learners approach leadership from the following four interrelated dimensions:
- Creating their own personal style of leadership, their own leadership philosophy, and the skills to embody it;
- Engaging in an ongoing process of personal transformation, by exploring their own personal growth, their values and beliefs, their ethical and spiritual commitment, and mobilizing their creative capacities to be leaders;
- Through the interaction with an international community of learners who learn together and learn how to support each other;
- By grounding their work in the imperative for action, so that they can apply their learning on a continuing basis, culminating in a Capstone: Action Project.
The program is designed for people who recognize that effective leadership requires specific practical skills in areas ranging from conflict resolution to group dynamics to creative thinking, and also the ability to mobilize their own and others' passion to make a difference in the world.
The TLD program invites students to engage in a profound questioning of the assumptions about these key issues, along with their implications and applications to practice. Reflection and theory are united with practice by focusing on the development of capacities to envision, initiate, and engage in transformative change processes.
Learning outcomes include the following:
- Explore processes and principles of ongoing personal transformation in order to become the persons and leaders they want to be.
- Develop their philosophy of leadership based on their values, in dialogue with the readings and experience in the program.
- Develop their creative thinking abilities and learn to apply systems and complexity to their leadership initiatives.
- Initiate and follow through on innovative projects, including the skills to plan, manage, and work collaboratively on projects.
- Master contemporary research on leadership as well as personal and social transformation.
- Engage in collaborative creativity and participatory leadership and a range of approaches to cultivating generative collaborative skills.
- Creatively engage dynamics of power, diversity, and change.
Student Spotlight
I work in the music business and after just one year in the Transformative Leadership program, I'm finding myself relating to my clients on a deeper level and re-evaluating my company's processes, systems, and the outcomes they produce, intended or not. The true gift of this program is a shift in perspective, paradigm, and center-of-power from an individualistic I orientation to an inclusive We outlook. We means that there is no one person or group that has all the answers, it takes all of us to bring about the changes so desperately needed in this day and age. We means a reverence and responsibility for the natural world We all inhabit, a return to our role as stewards of the Earth instead of subjugators. We is bigger than music, business, society, and "the way things are," We is the essence of evolution. And as We evolve with the help of this incredible program, We can transform all of our industries and societal structures, including popular music.
