Leadership programme

Until January, you'll follow inspiring theory sessions from various guest lectures. You’ll be introduced to adaptive leadership, learning about trust, recognizing biases, and decision-making. Crucially, you'll also investigate the role of morality in leadership. 

To apply your theoretical knowledge, you'll be presented with different scenarios. Based on this information, you'll make hypothetical decisions as a leader.

From January till March, you get the unique opportunity to speak with leaders from sectors such as business, culture, sports, higher education, and politics during the interactive College Tours. Together with your fellow students, you'll organise, moderate, and document these Q and A sessions. The highlights will be recorded in our annual student-made magazine.

From March to June, you will work in groups and collaborate with a leader in their workplace. Together with your team, you will read reports, interview stakeholders, and identify challenges within the organization, such as retaining female employees or adjusting the work culture. Applying your insights, you will then propose actionable solutions to the organization.

• Knowledge from leaders across various domains of society and different corners of the university
• The opportunity to discover and develop your own leadership capacity and style
• The ability to apply theoretical knowledge of leadership to real-life leadership cases
• The skills to recognize, diagnose, and intervene in situations that require leadership

You can participate in the Leadership programme in the first or second year of your Master’s programme. During the sessions and preparations for them, we expect an active, interested, and engaged attitude.

You will be doing this programme alongside your Master's: in the evenings and on location (hybrid is not possible). Therefore it is helpful to think about the following:

• Am I motivated?
• What can I contribute to the group?
• Can I manage the extra study load?
• Can I combine programme with my work/sports/social life?

Please collect the following documents before registering:

1. Motivation and assignment: Use this document to argue why you want to participate in the Leadership Programme, and complete the (small) assignment.
2. Study progress/course overview: We request the course overview of your Bachelor's and Master's, if applicable. We do not look at grades, but at which courses you have taken. This gives us a good impression of your academic background, which is important to make our honours programmes as diverse as possible.
3. CV (max. 2 A4): Add a short description of your educational career so far, extracurricular activities, or other valuable skills or life experiences. Also, indicate your level of English.

Save the above documents as a single PDF. Save this file under the name: Last Name-First Name-Leadership, for example: Johnson-Maria-Leadership. Next, add the file to the registration form available on this page.

After the deadline, we will select the students who will be invited for a group interview. Shortly after the group interview, you will be informed by email whether you have been selected or not. There are 80 available spots.

Signing up for the programme, I was very excited to learn some theoretical perspectives on leadership dilemmas together with the opportunity to develop some soft skills, including leadership skills. I was actually able to learn much more than I had imagined. The theoretical sessions were rich in terms of interdisciplinarity, and I was introduced to leadership from diverse perspectives, such as animal societies, arts, entrepreneurship, and public leadership.

Consequently, I got a broader mindset about different leadership styles that I did not even consider in the past. Personally, it was very useful to me to be introduced to this world, as I could develop my leadership skills in an interdisciplinary way. This experience was helpful in my academic, working, and personal life.