For Universities

Leadership is a popular academic offering, yet many programs blend leadership with management and teach the two as interchangeable. The NLA helps universities deliver programs that teach the discipline itself.

Leadership and Management Are Different Disciplines

Management covers coordination, structure, operations, and resource control. Leadership covers vision, behavior, strategy, influence, organizational architecture, culture, and human development, and it draws on behavior modification, motivation, forecasting, cognition, and social dynamics. Those topics belong to the social sciences. Programs built from repackaged management courses leave students with operational knowledge and no scientific foundation in leadership theory, history, decision science, culture, or followership.

What the NLA Offers

Universities that work with the NLA receive research, standards, and curriculum guidance for courses such as:

• leadership theory and historical foundations;
• culture, systems, and followership;
• decision-making and behavior modification;
• communication and influence;
• strategic forecasting and organizational architecture;
• adaptive, ethical, and cross-cultural leadership;
• organizational cognition and cognitive bias.

Through advisory support and curriculum audits, the NLA helps institutions find management coursework presented as leadership, strengthen core leadership content, add behavioral and social science research, and build applied learning: internships, practicums, applied research, mentorship with leadership-educated practitioners, and development intensives.

Partnership and Endorsement

Partner institutions gain standards and curriculum guidelines, research from leadership-educated scholars, a faculty pipeline of degree-holding leadership professionals, and peer review of their programs. When a program meets the standards and passes review, the NLA endorses it publicly and promotes it to students seeking credible education.