Expanding the leadership capacity of executives
The Executive Leadership Network (ELN) convenes senior leaders, executives, and other seasoned cross-sector leaders for a collaborative, part-time leadership training intensive. Participants expand their leadership mindsets and strategies and cultivate a thriving professional peer network ready to address leadership challenges and opportunities together.
Participants benefit from an individualized 360 leadership assessment, one-on-one executive coaching, experienced leadership, mindfulness, and DEI facilitators, and structured peer coaching exercises.
Program Components
50 hours of executive leadership development programming from February to June meeting about twice per month for a combination of full- and half-day sessions. You can also expect about 10 hours spent outside of sessions on executive coaching sessions and individual assignments. The Programs are broken into four components:
Leadership Forums – Facilitated executive leadership development sessions that center the unique challenges and opportunities of executive and senior leadership and multi-stakeholder management. Sessions provide participants with frameworks to engage in deep professional and leadership reflection to develop strategies and relationships to navigate teams through uncertainty.
Individualized Executive Coaching & 360 Assessment – Participants will engage with an executive coach throughout the length of the program. This executive coaching will kick off with a comprehensive personal 360 assessment leveraging the Leadership Versatility Index™, which provides leaders actionable insights into their motivators, behaviors, and blind spots enabling a deeper understanding of interpersonal dynamics and promoting higher performance. Using the results of this assessment, the executive coach conducts one-on-one sessions with each participant to support their development of an action plan and address the opportunities identified in the assessment.
Peer Consultancies – An adaptive leadership peer coaching module to better diagnose professional challenges and determine possible steps to test solutions in an empowered environment with experienced professionals.
Leadership Journey Networking Dinners – Coro curated dinner after select sessions over the course of the program will further enable participants to build meaningful relationships with cohort colleagues. Coro will also invite other seasoned regional leaders and executives into this space to further enhance the ELN program networking opportunities.
Program Outcomes
Seeks to tackle the “lone wolf” challenge many senior leaders and executives find themselves in by bringing together a group of peers from across sectors and industries to problem-solve organizational and professional challenges, leveraging time-tested leadership frameworks to enhance personal professional capacity to manage and lead effectively.
Provides you with a space to more deeply explore your leadership strengths and growth opportunities, test leadership interventions with other senior leader peers, and problem-solve organizational and professional challenges in a collaborative environment.
Curricular Components
- Adaptive Leadership
- Building a Personal “Board of Directors”
- Creating a Culture of Trust
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging (DEIB) and Organizational Change
- Effective Communication & Feedback
- Effective Inquiry & Critical Thinking
- Interpersonal Leadership Styles™
- Leadership Versatility Index™ (360 leadership assessment)
- Managing Diverse Teams
- Mindfulness Practices
- Self-Awareness & Self-Management Tools
- Systems Thinking & Stakeholder Analysis
Coro values the representation of diverse perspectives, identities, experiences, and world views; as such, ELN cohorts reflect the make-up of the region, representing a wide array of backgrounds, beliefs, and identities.
Ideal ELN candidates are…
or have been an organizational executive or member of the senior leadership team of an organization
committed to deepening their professional leadership capacity and executive mindset alongside a cohort of peers
looking to expand their personal and professional community
Multi-Perspective
You should be ready to engage productively with different perspectives and willing to participate in personal reflection.
Vulnerability and Psychological Safety
As a necessary component of multi-perspective learning, Coro views vulnerability as a critical leadership attribute essential for unleashing learning, building authentic and meaningful connection, and for holding spaces that are psychologically safe as a precursor to adaptive, innovative collaboration. You should be ready to contribute to building a psychological safe cohort environment.
Intentional Ambiguity
A signature characteristic of Coro programming is generating intentional ambiguity, which works to highlight your defaults, ignite your learning, and support you to lead and manage through uncertainty.
Learn by Doing
Coro views leadership as a practice; you should be ready to learn by doing with sessions as opportunities to lay the foundation; you will gain the most by taking the skills, tools, and frameworks and practicing/adapting them in your professional roles.
As a leadership and professional development institute, Coro’s program goals, including ELN, aim to expand the leadership and professional capacity of our program participants in order for them to have the networks, skills, and knowledge to drive impact in their work and communities.
ELN is…
A place to experience and appreciate diversity of experiences and viewpoints and engage in productive conflict and discourse
A place to identify personal professional strengths and areas for growth and practice skills building
A space to build a collaborative network of peers eager to work together – both during the program and afterward – to better understand how to address organizational challenges and expand your toolkit to enhance your capacity to do so
Career Benefits
You will have opportunities to bring your professional work into the program and program learnings into your professional life.
Personal Leadership Commitments – You will name a specific area of growth you plan to practice over the course of the program.
Exploring Tough Interpretations & Peer Consultancy – Two adaptive leadership modules that enable you to understand your own resistance to change (providing a glimpse into opportunities for enhanced impact and effectiveness) and bring into the program real-world professional challenges you are seeking to address and to seek peer coaching from your cohort in an empowered environment.
360 Assessment & Executive Coaching – You’ll have the opportunity to engage in deep reflection on your professional and executive strengths and opportunities via the Leadership Versatility Index™, a 360 assessment, and individualized executive coaching based on the feedback.
Sharing Your Impact and Vision – Your leadership offers value to your work and we want to make that value visible. Through a concluding activity you will synthesize the program’s impact and set commitments to continue your capacity building beyond the conclusion of the program.
Expanding Your Network – Both through the cohort building journey and the Leadership Journey Networking dinners, you will have an opportunity to build meaningful relationships with other regional executives and senior leaders. Moreover, the program sessions will provide an opportunity to explore different office spaces and how that impacts the organization’s overall culture. Following completion of the program, you will join a Coro community totaling over 15,000 leaders and professionals.
Program Impact
Coro’s unique approach to leadership and professional development training delivers both immediate and long-lasting capacity-building benefits by expanding your skills, networks, and knowledge.
Based on 2023 cohort post-program survey examining programmatic impact across three core skills-building outcome areas, following their participation in ELN:
100% of participants rated themselves as highly skilled in effective inquiry
97% of participants rated themselves as highly skilled in critical thinking and effective problem-solving
90% of participants rated themselves as highly skilled in building strategic relationships
Explore the Program Benefits Guide
Program Cost
Tuition is $8,500 (subsidized from $14,500 thanks to the generous support of our donors). Participants may incur additional incidental expenses such as transportation and parking costs.
Participant Scholarships
Thanks to the generous support of our donors, Coro is able to provide partial, need-based, scholarships. Applicants seeking a scholarship must complete the relevant questions at the time of application. While Coro strives to provide financial support to all accepted candidates demonstrating need, scholarships are not guaranteed.
Organizational Assistance
Many participants secure financial support from their employers to cover the program fee. We encourage you to speak with your employer about potential support utilizing the Program Benefits Guide to guide your conversation.
Our 75-year history gives us one of the most diverse alumni networks in the country — 15,000 graduates and growing — spanning sectors, perspectives, and geography. At Coro, the learning doesn’t stop when your program ends. Coro alumni status gives you access to:
The Resources – Coro alumni have access to AlumniFire, Coro’s Job Board (Coro Classifieds), & Coro’s alumni-only LinkedIn page, where they can network, find job opportunities, fill roles at their organizations, and learn from one another.
The Exposure – Coro brings together decision makers across sectors to share perspectives and discuss the future of our region at a number of annual events, many of which are exclusive to Coro alumni. Joining the Coro network ensures that partners stay connected with forward-thinking leaders at all levels and across all sectors, and provides you exposure to key decision makers.
The Credentials – Coro has partnered with Credly by Pearson™ to issue and maintain digital badges. As authenticated, certified, and individually-awarded badges, you’ll be able to showcase your unique professional, management, and leadership development capacity-building in real-time with colleagues, current and future employers, and your network.
The Network – Alumni have powerful networks to ignite change and continuous support for tackling professional challenges through their Coro family. Program participants directly engage with numerous leaders over the duration of their experience. This, coupled with the over 15,000 Coro alumni, creates a unique opportunity for alumni to quickly expand their social capital.
Coro’s programs deliver deep impact (see more in the “Program Impact & Testimonials” tab above and in the Program Benefits Guide) at a highly subsidized professional development rate. The work environments senior leaders and executives operate within are highly complex, requiring constant honing of leadership skills. Investing in your senior leadership team by expanding their skills, network, and knowledge further builds your capacity to deliver on your organization’s mission.
Supporting team members – either financially and/or with the time and space to participate fully in ELN – yields strong organizational benefits by:
Increasing the skills of senior leaders in critical positions that can be incorporated departmentally and instilled in their direct reports.
Demonstrating your commitment to the senior leaders, increasing their feeling of engagement, which often leads to higher productivity, loyalty, and retention; and
Motivating all employees by signaling that leadership matters and a commitment to their work is rewarded by the organization.
Connect with Coro to discuss an organizational partnership and nominate a member of your team for ELN.
ELN Graduates’ Organizations
- Abode Communities
- Caruso
- Cause Communications
- Center for Nonprofit Management
- Chrysalis
- Community Partners
- Downtown Women’s Center
- Elevate Public Affairs
- Guidehouse
- Heidi Duckler Dance
- Hollywood 4WR
- LA’s BEST
- Legal Education Access Pipeline
- Long Beach Police Department
- Miguel Contreras Foundation
- Para Los Niños
- Port of Long Beach
- Southern California Edison
- Southern California Grantmakers
- The California Wellness Foundation
- Upstage Theatre Schools, Inc.
- The 2024 application cycle has closed - submit an Interest Form to receive recruitment updates
- Nominate a Candidate
- Meet the Cohort
- Program Benefits
- Questions? Contact
Carson Bruno
Vice President of Growth
carson@corola.org - Connect with Carson