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Program Experience
Highlights and Key Outcomes
In Leading Organizational Change, you will:
- Learn a proven, repeatable method for increasing your success in leading change initiatives
- Discover and begin applying actionable steps for driving behavioral change throughout your organization
- Move beyond a survival mindset to envisioning and establishing positive change
- See how to develop greater resilience in yourself and others
- Acquire strategies and tactics for overcoming resistance
Experience & Impact
Academic Director Gregory P. Shea on some of the program’s key takeaways
Leading Organizational Change Change uses an active-learning approach that blends lectures, small group work, and simulations to show you how to identify and develop essential felt need and determine a course to drive behavioral change.
The curriculum is based on a proven, comprehensive change model detailed in the newly revised Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change Work. The authors work with participants to develop a deep understanding of the factors and conditions needed to drive successful change initiatives, including tactics for building and leveraging stakeholder coalitions, inspiring others, and dealing with resistance.
You will return to your organization with:
- Useful guidance on how to approach any change initiative
- Enhanced clarity about your role in achieving successful change
- Strategies for recognizing and overcoming the common barriers to change
- New insights on when — and when not — to pursue a given change
- Follow-up access to the course faculty lead
Session topics for Leading Organizational Change include:
- Targeting Change
- Emotional Intelligence
- Change Processes
- Stakeholder Analysis
- Designing Successful Change
- Leading Change Simulation
- Sharing Participant Best Practices in Leading Change
Leading Change Simulation
Although the ability to lead and manage change is critical to organizational success and survival, most changes fall short of achieving their intended results. It is not surprising, then, that change continues to frustrate leaders. This exercise is organized around an experiential change-management simulation that has been used with Fortune 500 executives, U.S. military generals, and Wharton MBA students. The simulation provides the opportunity to test your intuitions, identify strengths, discover vulnerabilities, and master a framework for leading change more effectively. The session concludes with action planning about how to apply the lessons learned to a change that you will be leading or managing in the near future.
Convince Your Supervisor
Here’s a justification letter you can edit and send to your supervisor to help you make the case for attending this Wharton program.
Due to our application review period, applications submitted after 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday for programs beginning the following Monday may not be processed in time to grant admission. Applicants will be contacted by a member of our Client Relations Team to discuss options for future programs and dates.
Who Should Attend
Leading Organizational Change is targeted to upper-middle to senior managers who are preparing for — or already engaged in — change initiatives.
Participants must be fluent in English. Specifically, they should be comfortable with metaphoric speech.
Participant Profile
Participants by Industry
Participants by Job Function
Participants by Region
Group Enrollment
To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.
Faculty

Gregory Shea, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Academic Director
Adjunct Professor of Management; Senior Fellow, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management; Adjunct Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Leadership, leadership of change, organizational innovation

Mary-Hunter McDonnell, JD, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Bantwal Family Goldman Sachs Presidential Associate Professor; Associate Professor of Management, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Organizational theory (political sociology, institutional theory); nonmarket strategy; corporate governance; corporate misconduct and punishment

Nancy Rothbard, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Deputy Dean; David Pottruck Professor; Professor of Management, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Emotion and identity, work motivation and engagement, work-life and career development