LEAP
LEAP
Learn. Enrich. Achieve. Perform.
The purpose of the LEAP Leadership Development Program is to capitalize on the opportunity for personal growth that implicitly accompanies the study abroad experience. The philosophy foundational to the LEAP Program is that personal and intentional change is the process through which individuals become leaders. This program, then, is designed to help you improve and develop your competencies as a leader. Through executive coaching and a series of unique developmental seminars and experiences, you will learn not only the requisite skills, but the behaviors necessary to be effective across a wide range of social environments demanding your leadership. Ultimately, LEAP aims to improve students' quality of life through personal and professional development while holding them accountable for their personal best; the result is a process through which you can become more assured, more self-reliant, and more marketable for your career.
OBJECTIVES. Students will explore and acquire skill sets, competencies, and behaviors that will allow them to mindfully drive their own change, both on an individual and collective level. This includes the comprehension of:
- self-awareness in terms of personal values, skills, strengths, and behaviors;
- strategy development and goal-setting;
- neuroscience-based mindfulness practices;
- communication and teamwork skills and behaviors;
- Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Making processes;
- the Neuroscience of Leadership principles; and,
- intentional personal change with the assistance of your coach through the analysis of the study abroad experience.
THE LIFE SEMINAR. You will begin your LEAP experience by attending the LIFE (Leadership Initiative for Excellence) seminar, a two-and-a-half day intensive, experiential training program that will give you the opportunity to turn your attention to your personal development, your self-awareness, and the enhancement of your own key leadership competencies.
With the Neuroscience of Leadership as its foundation, the LIFE Seminar takes you through a series of six sessions, each comprised of exercises, informational training, and time for reflection; the intention with each session is to develop a series of leadership skill sets, including effective communication, decision-making, reappraisal strategy, teamwork and interpersonal skills, personal focus, and personal vision and strategy. These LIFE modules have you evaluate your basic beliefs, which form the fundamental basis upon which you make your day-to-day decisions.
LIFE guides you in understanding what has been holding you back from achieving your full potential, ultimately refreshing and refocusing your thinking in order to guide to in working to achieve your personal and leadership goals. Successful completion of LIFE will be followed by individual coaching to assist you in advancing the inspiring goals you have set for yourself in the seminar. LIFE will challenge you, will teach you how to manage future challenges, and will also be an intensive bonding experience for you and your new classmates during your CIMBA experience.
INDIVIDUAL COACHING SESSIONS. You will have a minimum of three one-on-one coaching sessions that will last approximately forty-five minutes each. The times, dates, and locations of these sessions will be arranged by you and your coach.
COACHING, DEFINED. Individual coaching will assist you in achieving sustainable, long-term changes through the creation of your own personalized goals and actions. Together with your coach, you will learn to think about your thinking and to ask effective questions to drive the changes you want. You will also work on those skills and attributes in need of improvement to further your leadership and create a personal development plan for your immediate needs and visions. You will learn the skills to repeat the coaching process on your own; the goal, in fact, of the CIMBA coaching system is to gear its students toward the process of self-coaching.
Individual coaching is not about career advice or job leads. While every business school has career counselors to assist you with your resume, internship offers, and so on, this is not the intent or purpose of your coaching sessions. Coaches are here to support you in looking at yourself from a 360 degree view; the intention here is that you become better able to understand who ou are and what you really want to become, and then to set an action plan for how to achieve sustainable results in that direction. Coaching is not therapy or counseling. Instead of being problem-focused, coaching leads to insights through a constant notion of positive solutions.
GROUP COACHING SESSIONS. You will work together with a small group of your self-selected peers while in the LEAP Program, both during activities in Leadership Competency Workshops and in two group coaching sessions. During these group coaching sessions, you will learn the structure and technique for giving and receiving feedback, a process that results in valuable preparation for taking on workplace leadership roles throughout your career. You will also make your leadership goals visible to others, and will receive feedback on your progress from your coach and peers. Individual and group coaching sessions assist you in experimenting, practicing, and exploring new leadership behaviors in an environment where you do not have to be fearful of being fired or suffering other on-the-job repercussions.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY WORKSHOPS. Over the course of your LEAP experience, you and your group members will participate in three Leadership Competency Workshops. These workshops are designed to develop specific competencies (e.g., collaboration and conflict management, the effect of status in a team environment, cultural intelligence, ethics, and communication and problem solving) by exploring and learning both the requisite behavior and skill necessary to be effective. While traditional learning focuses solely on the skill component, these workshops explore different scenarios and experiential methods in order to generate learning around students' behavioral patterns.
KEPNER-TERGOE CERTIFICATION. Once you are practicing the soft skills required to be an effective leader, KT will help to provide you with the process of rational thinking required for your leadership career. The workshop that you will participate in for this certification will be Kepner-Tregoe's renowned Problem Solving and Decision Making processes. Through this workshop, you will learn (1) the importance of asking the right questions and what types of questions to ask in what scenarios, (2) making your thinking visible to others, and (3) how to engage all brains in your group in decision-making and problem solving situations. The Kepner-Tregoe approach provides an efficient framework for gathering, organizing, and evaluating relevant information, while allowing groups and organizations to develop and understand the importance of a common language, common guidelines, and the process of taking effective group action.
THE LEAP RESUME BOOK. As a LEAP student, you are required to enter your resume information into a standardized LEAP Resume format. You will hand this formatted resume in initially as a hard copy, which will be looked over and returned to you; you will then send in your resume electronically to the LEAP Coordinator. This resume will be included in the LEAP Resume Book and sent to all CIMBA and Kepner-Tregoe partner companies, a list of more than 200 global companies from a wide variety of industries.
ONLINE REFLECTIONS. Before each of your individual coaching sessions, you will need to complete an Online Reflection. The intention of these reflections is two-fold: (1) to jump-start your progress and heighten the effectiveness of your coaching sessions and (2) to assist you in learning the process of self-coaching. The reflections will lead you through a series of quesetions that detemine how you feel about your goals, your progress with your actions, the learing you have attained between sessions, and the methodologies that you have employed in the pursuit of self-coaching.
You may access these Online Reflections via the CIMBA Student Website (http://www.cimba.it/cimba_student/). Further information on how to complete these reflections is available in your LEAP Workbook.
STUDENT LEADERSHIP PRACTICES INVENTORY. The effective development of leadership behavior skills requires you to receive consistent feedback from multiple sources to allow a basis for meaningful reflection, experimentation, and change. Through the use of the Kouzes and Posner Leadership Practices Inventory, you will evaluate yourself and your peers according to a last of leadership criteria. You will then receive individualized reports that will make your self-perception visible and compare it to your peers' assessments of your behaviors, illuminating your strengths and weaknesses so that, with your coach, you may work to improve them.
You may access these Self and Peer Assessments via the CIMBA Student Website (http://www.cimba.it/cimba_student/). Further information on how to complete these assessments is available in your LEAP Workbook.
FINAL REFLECTION. Before your group coaching session, you are required to complete a final reflection (or "LEAP Journey") assignment. Through this assignment, you will describe the goals you have created, the actions you have set, which of these you have completed, what more you have to achieve, and what range of insights you gathered from LEAP and your time abroad. You will share and receive feedback for your "LEAP Journey" from your group members, as well as what they have seen and heard from you during your semester in terms of your current and future goals. In addition to this, they will give you written feedback, which you will receive in your LEAP Book after your leave CIMBA.
YOUR LEAP BOOK. Each student who goes through the LEAP Program receives a personalized book that acts as a representation of his or her journey through LEAP. A variety of information is included in these books, including student reflections and journaling, your LIFE materials, assessment results, materials intended to push forward and perpetuate the learning generated throughout their semester at CIMBA, and personalized messages from group members and coaches. LEAP participants receive these books via air mail after their completion of the CIMBA program and once they arrive back in their country of residence.
Please note: the LEAP Program is only offered during the Fall and Spring semester programs.
Feel free to contact Jayme Ringleb with any additional questions at
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