Where does power come from? What role does humor play in leadership? Is it better to be adversarial or collaborative at the negotiating table?

High-Potential Women Leaders Program has developed a highly-specialized curriculum to help you explore how to use your power, strengthen your influence, and transform your leadership skills and career trajectory. All optimized for a virtual environment. Sessions focus on the issues of power and relationships, negotiation, team effectiveness, social networks, and influence. Because these are the most critical and complicated issues facing women in the workplace.

In our live online classroom you will:

• Engage directly with world-renowned faculty through real-time lectures, Q&A, and office hours
• Participate in hands-on negotiation simulations
• Collaborate and connect with other women leaders through discussions and group-based exercises

Program Highlights

Below are just a few of the sessions you’ll attend as part of the program.

Acting with Power

In this session, Professor Deborah Gruenfeld and author of the new book Acting with Power: Why We Are More Powerful Than We Believe, addresses how what we need from our leaders is changing, and how women leaders, in particular, can rise to the occasion, by learning to wield power without fear.

A New Type of Leader — Anchored on Purpose, Fueled by Humor

You, oh fearless leader of the future (and maybe present), are very important. You will make critical and far-reaching economic, political, and social decisions in your quest beyond Stanford to change lives, change organizations, and change the world. That’s serious stuff. So why humor? The late journalist Eric Sevareid said, “Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.” Our goal is to pin you down and not let you walk away from this session without a healthy dose of humanity, humility, and intellectual perspective that only humor can bring. Drawing upon the behavioral science of humor and laughter, this class is about the power (and importance) of humor to help leaders be more authentic and influential, cultivate more meaningful and productive relationships, produce more innovative ideas, and build more nimble and resilient teams and organizations.

Engaging Your Audience: The Art and Science of Storytelling

Research shows that we don’t make decisions based solely on what we know. We make decisions based on what we know and what we feel. In the age of data overwhelm, whoever can craft their message as a story, and capture the emotions of their listener, has an unfair advantage.

Stories don’t just convey information. They enthrall. They captivate, transform, and inspire. Bringing innovative ideas to life demands a compelling story. Participants will have the opportunity, structure, and guidance to craft those compelling stories. We will focus on several areas of storytelling: Mining: How do you find your stories and extract the richest details? Crafting: How do you structure the content and shape the language? Performing: How do you share your stories with presence, authenticity, and connection? This hands-on, experiential approach will offer participants the opportunity, structure, and guidance to craft and share compelling stories.