MBA Leadership Learning

Develop your personal leadership capacities within Wharton’s distinctive blend of leadership coursework, coaching, experiential learning, and wide range of student-run activities.

Our mission is to develop leaders who act with a deeper understanding of themselves, their organizations, and their communities, and contribute positively to the growth of each. The McNulty Leadership Program offers one of the largest set of options to develop your leadership style by analyzing and building on your strengths. Supporting leadership development, Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management brings new understanding to developing organizational leadership and stimulating practical applications of this knowledge.

Learning Teams

The Learning Team model, first developed by Wharton and now emulated by other schools, is central to Wharton’s MBA experience. The Learning Team model is based on the business world in which employees work together in teams that depend on persuasive rather than positional leadership. Your Learning Team serves as a living laboratory for cultivating these skills.

Teams, which consist of five or six people you’ll get to know really well, form in Pre-Term and continue working through the first semester. Since the team is not self-selected, each group includes a juxtaposition of diverse careers, interests, and international backgrounds. Interaction in small groups with a remarkable and diverse set of peers encourages trial and error, risk taking, and collaborative idea generation, and will fundamentally change your perspective and deepen your learning.

Highlights of the experience

  • The Big Idea: Learning Teams collaborate to develop a unique, innovative solution to a complex problem facing the world of business. While working together on the Big Idea, team members are asked to articulate their values and to begin creating a vision and operating principles for their team, which serve as the foundation for their working relationships in the fall.
  • Foundations of Teamwork and Leadership: The first core course in the MBA curriculum, MGMT 610 combines analytic and expe­riential learning. Utilizing an interactive pedagogy, Learning Teams play the role of a company’s senior management team, experiencing first hand the skills of teamwork and leadership. A highly interactive simulation allows students to experience the core concepts they learn in class.
  • A Team-Building Retreat: The retreat, which caps Pre-Term, allows you to meet your Learning Team members for the first time and explore the team dynamics that will shape your first year.
  • Coaching and Mentoring: Each learning team is assigned a Leadership Fellow, a second-year student who mentors, facilitates quarterly feedback sessions amongst team members, and helps solve team conflicts. Leadership Fellows also coach first-year students in their leadership development.

Cohorts and Clusters

During Pre-Term, you and your classmates will be divided into a Cohort of 70 students (which includes your Learning Team) and a Cluster of about 210. You’ll move through the first semester in your cohort, and take your fixed core courses together

Cohorts and Clusters are built from the ground up to ensure a distribution of gender, nationality, and work experience. They remain constant, so you can easily forge close bonds within the community.

Coaching and Feedback Program

A one-on-one executive coaching program open to all first year students, the Executive Coaching and Feedback Program (ECFP) links together the many aspects of students’ Wharton experiences throughout their two years. Using an online platform, students incorporate feedback and detailed 360-degree self-assessments from their peers and former coworkers. Based on your individual assessment, your executive coach helps you build your skills through self-directed, individualized leadership development with regularly scheduled coaching support.

Co-curricular and Extracurricular Leadership Opportunities

Leadership Ventures

Wharton Leadership Ventures, outdoor, experiential leadership development opportunities, are highly immersive, hands-on experiences for exploring and mastering the capabilities for effective individual and team leadership in business and beyond. Using an expeditionary format, these world-class ventures place students under authentic levels of stress and uncertainty to facilitate self-discovery, leadership, and character development. You’ll be able to step out of your comfort zone, exceed previously-set personal limitations, and experience leadership firsthand.

Leadership Development Workshop Series

A set of active, one to three day learning opportunities, these action-based Leadership Development Workshops allow students to explore and develop their leadership skills and competencies. Highlighting alternative leadership education methodologies with a minimal time commitment, they are an ideal way to enhance your Wharton leadership portfolio.

Leadership Fellowships

Fellows participate in service roles and experience intensive, year-long development through action and reflection. Leadership Fellows act as coaches and mentors for the incoming class. Venture Fellows are second-year MBA students who create an environment for individual and team leadership development on a specific Leadership Venture. Lipman Fellows help with analysis and review of global organizations for the Lipman Prize.

Nonprofit Board Leadership Program

The Nonprofit Board Leadership Program (NBLP) matches second-year MBA students with boards of local nonprofit organizations. Fellows serve as “Visiting Board Members,” gaining valuable board experience while supporting the mission of the partner organization. Through the NBLP students learn to be leaders with a life-long commitment to community involvement and board service, creating value for nonprofit organizations and communities.

Wharton Leadership Lectures and Authors@Wharton Speaker Series

Planned by a student committee, through the Wharton Leadership Lecture Series, invites top-level executives to address students on a variety of business issues, particularly transferable leadership skills. The speakers’ remarks followed by an informal Q&A, provide insight into the personality, goals, and career decisions that helped shape the executives’ paths. After each lecture, the speaker usually has dinner with a small group of students.

Through the Authors@Wharton Speaker Series, world-renowned authors come to campus and share their ideas on topics ranging from management to the social sciences to gender in the workplace.

Conferences, Clubs and More

Wharton supports students’ active involvement through the Wharton Graduate Association (WGA), which manages more than 70 clubs. Running one of the 15+ industry-level conferences organized by students each year, managing the high-octane production of Follies, or leading career treks in countries around the world are a few of the many ways students extend their leadership capabilities.