This powerful foundational module will lay the groundwork for all subsequent modules, as you become more mindful in your life and as a leader. You’ll get access to the most cutting-edge practices in topics such as Immunity to Change, setting impactful goals, and building a leadership culture. You’ll also learn how your perception informs your reality, and how you can shift that perception to create more impact in both your personal and organizational achievements.

We spend a lot of time in business learning how to manage other people. But what about managing ourselves? Self-management skills can be learned by anyone who puts in the time. They help you stay composed, centered, and on purpose, while reducing conflict and misdirected energy. We’ll explore this topic from a mindfulness perspective, as well as the latest findings in neuroscience and how the brain reacts to stress.

For many cutting-edge companies, EQ is becoming more important than IQ. This challenges the decades-old belief system that tells us to leave our emotions at home. Instead, we’re invited to explore emotions effectively in a work context. The many benefits of emotional intelligence at work include faster conflict resolution and more inclusive and empathetic discussions where everybody feels heard. This naturally leads to more cooperative, creative, and productive teams. Here, we will start to employ strategies and tools to amplify our capacity for emotional intelligence.

In order to stay authentically connected with people at work, we need to develop the skill of engaging in difficult conversations. While uncomfortable, having difficult conversations in a skillful way to release pent-up energy in teams and create clarity, ease, flow, and genuine connection at work. Learning how to prepare for and deliver difficult information with skill and grace is one of the hallmarks of a conscious leader.

The power of Module 5 is that here we create intentional environments where there is an energized flow in the work, environments in which people feel valued and seen, and distinct leadership styles that support the outcomes we seek for our teams. Here, we discover our own collaborative style in pursuit of building cultures of collaboration and kindness. This module truly holds the keys to the impact of the Inner MBA program.

Empowering conversation and action to activate inclusion and invite diversity, building teams that reflect the values of our organizations, and acknowledging differences in perspective, history, culture, and socioeconomics requires awareness of the complexities of bias, racism, resistance to change, and the importance of self-awareness and care as we engage with others across what sometimes seems a great divide. The lessons here invite discourse and pursue a human approach to healing what separates us.

How do we manifest the changes we are experiencing, the knowledge we are gaining as leaders, in order that the members of our organizations can benefit from our learning, thereby becoming transformative leaders themselves? Here, we explore the value of and impact on the workplace of authenticity, realness, groundedness, being, and above all, courage in revealing ourselves to those with whom we engage.

In our lifetimes, we have not had such a time of disruption as we are now experiencing. Leaders must engage as humans with their colleagues, and with the communities their organizations serve, with curiosity, courage, and flexibility. Leaders must garner awareness of their own capacity for resilience and response to change, and build the strategies that will carry their organizations through these most challenging times.

The core faculty members of the Inner MBA program gather in this final module of the program to provide scaffolding, support, and confidence to take the deep learning of this program into the world and make change. There is great power in recounting all that has been gained, as well as excitement in discovering the strategies for making it all happen. There is celebration and acknowledgment of how far we have come together.