Executive Leadership Program

This two-week program equips executives with the leadership skills required to effectively transition into a c-level role. Participants develop enhanced reflective and strategic thinking skills, sharpen self-awareness, improve team leadership and build an exclusive support network with peers – while exploring challenges faced by organisations now and in the future.

Executive Leadership Program

This two-week program equips executives with the leadership skills required to effectively transition into a c-level role. Participants develop enhanced reflective and strategic thinking skills, sharpen self-awareness, improve team leadership and build an exclusive support network with peers – while exploring challenges faced by organisations now and in the future.

DESIGNED FOR SEASONED EXECUTIVES (CEO-1 and CEO-2)​ ​ ​ ​

This is an advanced leadership school designed for seasoned executives.

Our leaders are under enormous pressure to balance instinct with insight, fortitude with flexibility, and performance with recovery. The Executive Leadership Program (ELP) is a hands on leadership development program that develops self-aware leaders who have the capability and conviction to lead in the age of complexity and disruption.

Leadership cannot be taught like a language. It requires nurturing through inspiration, intervention, opportunity, and practice. This program accelerates the development of senior talent by increasing self-awareness, exploring topics with a diverse faculty of leaders and coaches, and personalising insights within groups of external peers.

“The McKinsey Executive Leadership Program was absolutely next level. The array of speakers and the topics they covered were really inspirational. The sessions where we focused on “the self” really helped me crystallise where I wanted to go as a leader and what I wanted to get out of a career”

– Wendy Villella, Past ELP Participant

Program format

This program is delivered as a 3-part blended learning journey:

Week 1 (Residential): Leaders develop new perspectives and interact with peers facing similar challenges in leading self and leading their teams.

Remote learning and coaching sessions with peer learning group, getting to depth with each leader’s aspiration and personal journey.

Week 2 (Residential): Leaders integrate tools and learnings from the journey to explore broader systems leadership topics.

What to expect

In-Person Events

Residential weeks are immersive experiences spent in multiple group settings from full cohort to peer learning groups, with exposure to new stimulus and opportunity to reflect and reset.

A group of more than 40 faculty members
—equal in gender and diverse in background—collectively work to create individual and actionable insight for our participants.

Personal Board of Directors

Each participant becomes a member of a small and diverse group of external peers. ‘Development Boards’ are essentially each leader’s own personal Board of Directors, established to challenge, support and collectively pursue leadership development together.

“ELP really inspired me to think about what I want to achieve and what impact I want to have in order to make a difference in the world. That’s what I found quite surprising. Have done leadership courses in the past, I’ve never had that kind of impact before and experiencing that with ELP was transformational”

– Dr. Theresa Smith-Ruig, Past ELP Participant

Participant profile

This program is designed for high potential, seasoned leaders who are seeking personal and professional growth.

A typical participant leads or is on track to lead an organisation, significant business unit, or function—typically CEO-2 for large organisations or CEO-1 for mid-size.

Each year we invite ~200 seasoned executives from 50+ organisations drawn from private, public, and social sectors.

Nominations

We ask that participants are nominated to attend this program by their CEO or the Executive Leadership Team.
We encourage your collective nominations to be diverse and gender equal.

To discuss your organisation's needs or to reserve seats, email: academyprograms@mckinsey.com, along with the sponsoring contact.

We also offer a number of scholarships for social sector leaders. See here​ for more information.

“Since completing the ELP, I feel incredibly different. The experience has really enabled me to go back to my job and search out what is my “why”?
What am I trying to do for myself and for my people? The way I lead and operate now is quite different”

– Matt Bolton, Past ELP Participant

“I came out of the first week [of ELP] really feeling like I had some deep thinking to do and realised I needed to become a lot clearer about what drives me and what fulfills me in my role and my personal life”

– Glenn Waterson, Past ELP Participant

Key dates for 2024

Request number of seats by:
March 2024

Register participant details:
April 2024

Week 1
26-30 August 2024

Week 2
25-29 November 2024

Find out more

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