Rotman Enabling Impact Through Inclusive Leadership
Online program
Investigate how taking responsibility for your personal and interpersonal leadership style influences your organization’s culture.
6 weeks, excluding 1 week orientation.
4–6 hours of self-paced learning per week, entirely online.
Email: rotman.utoronto@getsmarter.com
Call: +1 647-496-0623
About this program
Real change doesn’t come from an updated vocabulary – it comes from tangible action. To do better, leaders need to move beyond declarations of solidarity and take steps toward furthering equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in their organizations.
The Rotman Enabling Impact Through Inclusive Leadership online program from the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management equips you with the skills needed to drive meaningful change. By learning how to use behavioural empathy, allyship, and Cultural Fluency, this six-week program sets you on the right path to building more inclusive environments at work. While exploring how your own identity and privilege impact your leadership approach, you’ll formulate effective diversity and inclusion strategies and gain a sound understanding of how to practice inclusive leadership for your specific context. Through a combination of case studies and practical tools developed by Professor Ashraf, you will begin crafting your legacy as an inclusive and just leader.
This Rotman program is eligible for financial support
The Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) funding initiative is designed to help learners access sought-after skills and development opportunities through government-funded loans and grants. Financial assistance is available to Canadian citizens and applies to this Rotman Executive program. To find out if you qualify, visit the financial assistance homepage.
What this program covers
Over six weeks, you’ll explore why EDI work is crucial for effective leadership and learn how to leverage your skills to achieve organizational equity. You’ll investigate how your own identity and privileges impact your approach to leadership and learn to broaden your mindset by practicing behavioural empathy. These insights will allow you to better address roadblocks to meaningful engagement such as stereotypes and microaggressions while emphasizing the benefits of cultural diversity in your organization. Guided by experts, you’ll examine the combination of personal, interpersonal, and organizational leadership, and productive engagement impact culture. Finally, you’ll learn to deepen your impact through the practice of Cultural Fluency: the process of developing and practicing awareness and understanding of the power and validity of each individual’s unique culture.
A powerful collaboration
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is collaborating with online education provider GetSmarter to create a new class of learning experience – one that is high-touch, intimate, and personalized for the working professional.
About Rotman
Embedded within the highest-rated university in Canada, the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management strives to create value for business and society through invention and innovation. Rotman is committed to fostering new ways of thinking to address today’s business challenges and opportunities through superior-quality learning experiences. With a focus on diversity, excellence, integrity, and respect, Rotman is determined to become a catalyst for positive change.
About GetSmarter
GetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, partners with the world's leading universities and institutions to select, design, and deliver premium online short courses with a data-driven focus on learning gain.
Technology meets academic rigour in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are certified by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.
As a program participant, you will also gain unlimited access to 2U’s Career Engagement Network at no extra cost. This platform will provide you with valuable career resources and events to support your professional journey. You can look forward to benefits including rich content, career templates, webinars, workshops, career fairs, networking events, panel discussions, and exclusive recruitment opportunities to connect you with potential employers.*
*Some of these events may be virtual due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
What you’ll learn
You’ll be welcomed to the program and begin connecting with fellow participants, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning path, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed.
You’ll be required to complete your participant profile and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.
Please note that module titles and their contents are subject to change during program development.
Engage in a process of deep discovery that connects your understanding of self to your approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) as a leader.
- Recognize the crisis of credibility in leadership and its relevance for EDI work
- Identify your leadership strengths and how these can be used in service of EDI
- Discuss your role in fostering EDI as a leader
- Use the Emancipatory Leadership Development Model to determine how your personal identity impacts your approach to leadership
Explore the intersecting vectors of identity and understand how they impact experience to develop your behavioural empathy and promote inclusive organizational outcomes.
- Recognize different vectors of identity using the identity matrix
- Describe the vectors that contribute to your identity
- Articulate how shifting your leadership lens can help you to better serve the needs of others
- Determine how leveraging behavioural empathy can deepen your impact as a leader
- Analyze situations where behavioural empathy is needed to resolve workplace conflicts
Learn how leadership occurs in the personal, interpersonal, and organizational dimensions and how an awareness of these dimensions can contribute to addressing roadblocks to engagement.
- Explain how personal experiences and interpersonal choices affect organizational culture and climate
- Use the 3D model to promote positive outcomes in your engagements with others
- Determine how choices at the organizational level impact the potential for organizational members to experience stereotype threats
- Articulate strategies for addressing roadblocks to meaningful engagement in the workplace
Explore how to embrace impactful allyship and leverage your privilege in service of others within an organizational context.
- Describe how you can practice meaningful allyship within your organizational context
- Explain how privilege can be used to benefit others
- Describe microaggressions and their impact on members of equity-deserving groups
- Articulate how privilege can be leveraged through micro acts of courage to counter microaggressions
Learn how to focus organizational attention on engagement using the Attitude Spectrum tool.
- Determine where your organization's culture is located within the Attitude Spectrum
- Distinguish between cultural fit and cultural contribution as they pertain to day-to-day engagement
- Analyze the impact of operationalizing cultural contribution from recruitment to retention
- Reflect on how the organizational aspiration for engagement can be met by making every story matter
Deepen your impact through the practice of Cultural Fluency in three dimensions.
- Practice using the Cultural Fluency model and apply it to organizational life
- Investigate how to build the conditions for the day-to-day application of tools and frameworks such as Cultural Fluency
- Reflect on critical leadership moments with a learning mindset
- Design future leadership moments to leave a just legacy that aligns intent with outcomes
Who should take this program
This program is suited to managers, supervisors, and leaders who are looking to drive organizational change through equity, diversity, and inclusion. Team leaders who want to develop diverse teams will learn how increasing their cultural competencies, diversity awareness, and communication about EDI improves employee engagement and retention. Professionals like HR specialists, talent managers, and recruiters who want to create an inclusive, supportive and unbiased workplace will also benefit from the program content.
This program is for you if you want to:
Deepen your knowledge of your identity
Explore how your personal identity and interactions with others impact organizational culture.
Drive organizational change
Discover the role cultural fluency plays in your leadership approach to various situations and how it can benefit your organizational culture.
Leave a just legacy
Use practical tools to redesign future leadership moments that create inclusive environments.
Refine your interpersonal skills
Develop an empathetic leadership style to foster an equitable, diverse and inclusive culture.
About the certificate
Validate your inclusive leadership knowledge with a digital certificate of professional achievement from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the leading university in Canada.
Assessment is continuous and based on a series of practical assignments completed online. In order to be issued with a digital certificate, you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the program handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the program.
Your certificate will be issued in your legal name and sent to you digitally upon successful completion of the program, as per the stipulated requirements.
Who you’ll learn from
This subject matter expert from Rotman guides the program design and appears in a number of program videos, along with a variety of industry professionals.
Your Program Director
Nouman Ashraf
Associate Professor, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources; Inaugural Director, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Nouman Ashraf possesses a broad range of professional, academic, and research interests, with a specialized focus on enabling inclusive and innovative practices within teams, organizations, and boards. For the last decade and a half, he has held progressively senior roles at the University of Toronto, including most recently as the director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Rotman School of Management. Nouman serves as a teaching fellow at the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE), as an associate at Trinity College within the University of Toronto, and as an affiliated faculty member at the University of Toronto School of Cities.
He is a recognized thought leader in governance and has taught thousands of directors in the national Rotman program on Not for Profit Governance in partnership with the Institute for Corporate Directors since its inception in 2007.
How you’ll learn
Every program is broken down into manageable, weekly modules designed to accelerate your learning process through diverse activities:
- Work through your downloadable and online instructional material
- Interact with your peers and learning facilitators through weekly class-wide forums and reviewed small group discussions
- Enjoy a wide range of interactive content, including video lectures, infographics, guided reading activity, an enrichment activity, and more
- Investigate rich, real-world case studies and anecdotes
- Apply what you learn each week to a journal submission and ongoing graded and ungraded assignment submissions, culminating in a set of practical tools and resources that can be used to lead diversity and inclusion in your organization
Your success team
GetSmarter, with whom Rotman is collaborating to deliver this online program, provides a personalized approach to online education that ensures you’re supported throughout your learning journey.
Head Learning Facilitator
A subject expert who’ll guide you through content-related challenges.
Success Adviser
Your one-on-one support available during University hours (8am–5pm ET) to resolve technical and administrative challenges.
Global Success Team
Available 24/7 to solve your tech-related and administrative queries and concerns.
Technical Requirements
Basic Requirements
In order to complete this program, you’ll need a current email account and access to a computer and the internet, as well as a PDF Reader. You may need to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, and read and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel.
Browser Requirements
We recommend that you use Google Chrome as your internet browser when accessing the Online Campus. Although this is not a requirement, we have found that this browser performs best for ease of access to program material. This browser can be downloaded here.
Additional Requirements
Certain programs may require additional software and resources. These additional software and resource requirements will be communicated to you upon registration and/or at the beginning of the program. Please note that Google, Vimeo, and YouTube may be used in our program delivery, and if these services are blocked in your jurisdiction, you may have difficulty in accessing program content. Please check with an Enrolment Adviser before registering for this program if you have any concerns about this affecting your experience with the Online Campus.
