At this year’s UNICON European Meet-Up taking place 5-6 September, Executive Education Leaders in the region gathered to explore the pressing issues shaping the future of leadership and executive development. Over the course of the event, we identified 60 critical questions that continue to challenge how we evolve our programs and impact the world through executive education.
Join the Conversation
We encourage you to select the question or questions below that are most interesting to you and share your thoughts
We’re eager to hear perspectives from schools and ExecEd professionals from across the globe.
Leadership Development In General
- How to develop leadership within the schools?
- What if our most valuable learning experiences take place outside of the classroom in unusual contexts?
- How can we ensure our ExecEd operations are workplaces in which our team members flourish?
- How do we teach leadership?
- How to change leadership behaviours?
- What are the most important aspects of leadership with the lowest levels of proficiency and how can we address those?
- How will executive leadership styles stay relevant to Gen Z and Gen Alpha as they enter the business world?
- How do I lead each day? (Self-management and role modelling)
- How to integrate our school’s values in all programs? Should we? Do we need to?
- Why have we split ‘Leadership Education’ from ‘Futures Thinking & Education’? Leadership education by definition is about preparing to shape and create a future world.
- What is our responsibility when it comes to developing responsible leaders?
- In what ways can executive education programs incorporate emotional intelligence and resilience training to better prepare leaders for high-pressure decision-making?
Impact & Measurement
- How can we measure the impact of what we do?
- How to measure long-term competence acquisition?
- Daring to move beyond high evaluation/satisfaction scores and challenging participants!
- Is EE too quickly diluted in the context of the everyday working environment to make a lasting difference?
- How do we make best use of such a limited amount of time with our students to maximize impact—however we define it?
- How to prove the value of increased ability to think independently, as opposed to buying ready-made solutions?
- How to get companies to realize that difficult sessions that may not be popular are beneficial?
AI & Technology Integration
- How will AI affect the development of individual learning journeys for executive education participants?
- How to use AI effectively, and how can we best leverage AI?
- How do we integrate AI into everyday business language and landscape?
- How to integrate AI into our portfolio?
- Use of AI in program design in executive education
- Are we moving fast enough in adapting to new ways of delivery aligned to AI/technological advances?
- How do we ensure that online learning remains of value to individuals and organizations?
- Corporate learning platforms — what is the opportunity and challenges?
Lifelong Learning & Continuous Development
- How can we monetize lifelong learning?
- How to plant a lifelong learning mindset?
- How will individualization of training change our way of offering courses?
- What does democratization of learning look like?
- Are credit-bearing micro-credentials the future for open programs?
Sustainability & Responsibility
- Let us talk about sustainability. What are the key perspectives that you guys here resonate with?
- How can business-school-based executive education help reduce the increasing divisiveness in the world?
- Are we contributing to building a fairer world?
- How can we play a leading role in tackling society’s ethical challenges?
- How to be sustainable yet bring people from across the world together?
- How should we develop rounded professionals?
- How do we balance the need for strong and ethical leaders of people with the demand for immediate results?
- How do we re-establish facts and truth in our decision-making as well as be guided by our emotional dimensions?
- Is the experiential gap bridgeable between those teaching and creating executive leadership programs and upcoming young talents?
Market Relevance & Innovation
- Do we have the right innovation speed to follow the dynamics of the market & society?
- How can we all stay relevant in a landscape that’s becoming ever more crowded?
- How to convince companies to agree to more innovative/experimental education practices?
- What unique and effective learning experiences can we create that clients will pay for?
- Knowing your business too well, how would you disrupt your own business before competitors do?
- How far are you willing to go to put your own business at risk?
- How will executive education programs stay relevant in a rapidly evolving global landscape?
- How to multiply our efforts, reaching more people across the globe, having a real positive impact?
- How do we finding time in stressed organizations?
- What if the future isn’t about teaching at all, but rather about unlearning outdated practices and mindsets that no longer serve leaders in a disruptive world?
Collaboration & Partnerships
- How do we best collaborate with other schools to create great value for the world?
- How to create strong and lasting partnerships?
- How to encourage research faculty to engage with executive education?
- What can we as universities uniquely provide and capitalize on to our clients that the private sector cannot?
Stay tuned for more live updates
Keep an eye out for more updates from the event and further explorations of these pressing topics.
About the Host: Stockholm School of Economics
- 💼 55 Executive Education staff + network
- 🎓 140 ExecEd Programs per Year
- 🌍 Goal: 50% of students are international
- 💡 Values and Mission: “FREE,” consisting of:
- Fact/science-based mindset
- Reflective and self-aware
- Empathetic and culturally literate
- Entrepreneurial & responsible
- 👨🎓 👩🎓 3,200 participants annually
- 🤝 💻 ExecEd program format mix: 50% live, 30% blended, 20% online
4 Comments
So much food-for-thought for Day 1 of the UNICON European Meet Up! I’m curious to see if other regions have similar challenges and focus areas, and looking forward to hearing more about AI during our upcoming Team Development Conference in Lisbon. Hope you can all join us 🙂
I think about this often: what is our responsibility to, and how might university-based executive education, positively impact progress on society’s most pressing challenges (challenges like universal access to education, eliminating poverty, reducing divisiveness, sustaining the environment). HUGE question, I realize, but those are the ones that are the most compelling and require many smart minds–like yours!–to effectively address. And if we could impact even one of these dimensions…wow, how wonderful that would be, right?!
These questions really resonate here in Australia too! I am eager to learn more about potential answers to these questions that this group have considered
I agree with Melanie: how can university-based executive education positively impact progress on society’s most pressing challenges. It starts with the question, what is the purposed of ExecEd. At some schools, it is to increase free reserves of the business school dean. At others, it’s to socialize research faculty to the pressing applied challenges and opportunities of business executives. At others, it goes beyond these to include creating a two-way window between the business school and the community so each can benefit from the other’s needs and capabilities. Finally, it includes seeking to have a direct positive impact on society. Fundacao Dom Cabral (FDC) where I teach is one of the few schools that incorporates this idea in its mission statement. Mission To contribute to the sustainable development of society by educating, developing and building the skills of executives, entrepreneurs and public managers. Examples of implementing the mission are: creating an FDC business school within the Favelas; teaching annually 20k entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid; building the mission into ExecEd courses through “Imagine Brazil.” As we state in our new book, NOBLE LEAERSHIP IN THE EMERGENT REALITY: UPLIFTING PEOPLE, PLANET AND PROSPERTY, it requires focus on the four quantum powers of NOBLE LEADERSHIP for the individual and the institution: (1) Higher Purpose; (2) Living Values; (3) Human Spirit; and (4) Oneness Consciousness. Ultimately, it means having a worthy purpose/vision, mission, and then “walking the talk.”