Develop reflective and responsible leadership and sustainability skills during your MBA journey to positively impact your program experience and future career.
IMD MBA core themes
Develop reflective and responsible leadership and sustainability skills during your MBA journey to positively impact your program experience and future career.
During your MBA, you will master 3 critical themes. First, the leadership stream which is at the core of the program’s DNA, a crucial step towards becoming a good leader and effecting organizational change. Leadership Programs Develop key leadership capabilities, accelerate your impact as a leader, and maximize your career impact. Secondly, IMD has woven the sustainability stream into the program. This empowers you with the essential knowledge and skills to bring sustainability to your organization and career. Thirdly, the career stream supports you in defining and achieving your career goals.
The MBA is equivalent to 90 ECTS.
Professor Jennifer Jordan
A year-long, transformational journey developing your global leadership skills and entrepreneurial mindset, preparing you for a fast-paced, evolving world.
Team building
A 2-day, off-campus team building leadership lab with professional leadership coaches improves your understanding of how group dynamics impact performance.
Self-awareness
Individual sessions with your personally selected psychoanalyst will help you to develop your self-awareness and better understand your leadership style.
Professor George Kohlrieser
A 2-day session on leading self and others. How do cutting edge leaders take appropriate risks, inspire trust, drive change and create opportunities to foster success?
Professor Martin Fellenz
The session spans over two and a half days and focuses on hands-on learning to showcase the key components of successful negotiation. Participants get to explore various tactics in a safe and low-risk environment.
The MBA leadership stream runs throughout the year with the goal to equip you with the tools, skills, and self-awareness necessary to develop into reflective and responsible leaders of today and tomorrow. These are the tools needed to navigate group dynamics, manage one’s own power in an organization, achieve interpersonal influence, foster diversity, successfully negotiate with others, and be leaders who possess integrity and stimulate trust.
Experiential exercises, one-on-one coaching, peer learning, and classroom activities are just a few of the many methods we will use to deliver these tools and to equip you with the skills needed to address the challenges and ambiguities of business in a fast-paced, evolving world.
• In-depth self-analysis and individual sessions with a psychoanalyst will help develop your self-awareness and enable you to better understand your personal leadership style.
• On and off-campus team-building exercises with professional coaches improve your understanding of what makes effective leaders and how group dynamics impact performance.
• Structured peer evaluations highlight the situations in which your strengths are most effective and where you need to further develop.
• Projects and labs will combine your learnings with the necessary entrepreneurial, global and digital skills so that you can drive innovation and explore the impact you can have when faced with conflicting objectives across organizations and cultures.
Throughout the year, you will build on critical sustainability skills and debates that all leaders must possess for the future. This knowledge will ensure you develop critical thinking and enhance your ability to make difficult and informed decisions. Download the IMD MBA Program Sustainability Skills and Sustainability Skills & Core Courses Matrix.
The whole class spends 2.5 days in the Swiss alps at the start of the program, for an introduction of the sustainability agenda and key concepts and experiential activities.
Discover our 2 labs. The science behind sustainability is a two-day lab in March providing key scientific concepts related to sustainability. The COP28 simulation is a two-day simulation in June of the next COP28 meeting.
In keeping with the theme of Reflective and Responsible Leadership, the purpose of the Right vs. Right 4 half-day debates are to help you deal with ethical dilemmas and make difficult moral decisions as a leader.
Feb: Honesty vs. Kindness – Jennifer Jordan
This debate examines how to resolve one of the most fundamental right vs. right challenges for leaders: that of being candid in feedback or what is said versus being kind in what and how something is said. Of course, these values don’t always come in contrast. But sometimes they do.
May: Communication – Omar Toulan
“Stand up as a leader for what you believe in, so you can stand out in life and business” Innovation, new strategy, remote working, limited resources,…for many leaders across the world, the daily reality of the fast and rapidly changing world. We need to keep evolving to be able to answer the questions of tomorrow. The only thing is…does the rest of your organisation/team think in the same way? All this vision, strategy and change is very powerful when everybody agrees and plays along. If not, you will just be a professional in a meeting room with a good idea. So, time to stand up for what you believe in and communicate it in the right way so it becomes convincing and trustworthy and will inspire others to follow your lead.
Aug: Short-term profit vs. long-term gain – Jennifer Jordan
A leader is often pressured to deliver short-term wins – not to mention the fact that short-term wins can have huge positive impact for a team or organization. However, these short-term wins sometimes don’t bring benefits for the longer-time horizon, which is a critical horizon for sustaining organizational well-being. How do you balance this fundamental tension as a leader? We’ll explore this fundamental tension and how to resolve it. That is, we will examine how to resolve a fundamental right vs. right challenge for leaders: that of acting in a way that brings immediate rewards versus sets a leader or organization up for long-term success.
Sept: Standards vs. Tolerance – Jennifer Jordan
To lead an organization or group – especially at scale – standards for output or behavior are critical. At the same time, the more diverse an organization or group, and the larger the size, the more difficult it is to expect all people to adhere to the same standards. Sometimes, exceptions and tolerance are required. In this session, we’ll explore the right versus right dilemma between standards and tolerance.
Review & gear up
Work with the Career Development team and partner with subject matter experts to define your career vision and job search strategy
Sharpen & validate
Through a series of workshops and individual career advice, prepare yourself to network and interview with recruiters.
Career development center
Take advantage of networking opportunities and interview time to secure your future role through on and off-campus recruiting events with diverse, global companies.
The Career Development Stream runs throughout the year to help you define and achieve your career goals. To do this we work very closely with you, the entire IMD eco-system, and external consultants. You will also be assigned an individual career advisor who will guide and support you throughout the year.
The stream is as central to the program as functional core courses in which you need to demonstrate competence. Sessions and workshops cover a range of subjects from defining your value proposition to salary negotiations and career strategy
With your career strategy in mind, start preparing to meet recruiters and discover new opportunities:
- Effective Interviewing – workshops and industry-specific simulated interviews with consultants and experienced alumni.
- Mentoring Program – start building your own Board of Mentors who can advise you on the different aspects of your career journey.
- Career advice – continue to work with your career advisor on the process of your individual search.
- Company presentations – learn about different companies and their cultures; discover current sector and company challenges and the career opportunities those challenges create; and meet with company representatives to expand your network, explore new options, and fine-tune your career aspirations.
Our dedicated Career Development team assists recruiters in identifying the best talent for their immediate and future business needs. They will also work closely with you to prepare for interviews, either on-campus, virtually or anywhere in the world.
We partner with companies from key industries, with diverse opportunities for our MBA graduates, while also encouraging you to use your own networks, those of your classmates and those of the entire IMD eco-system.
Your individual career advisor will continue to ensure that your job search strategy is on track and address any further issues or specific questions related to your search. Workshops will focus on the final stages of your recruitment, with topics such as salary negotiations.