Joshua Margolis is the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and head of the Organizational Behavior Unit. As the Faculty Chair for HBS Executive Education's Program for Leadership Development, Margolis has a unique perspective on the evolution of the program and how it impacts its participants.
How would you describe the purpose of the Program for Leadership Development (PLD)?
Our purpose in PLD is to equip the rising generation of leaders to take on challenges and opportunities the likes of which they, and their organizations, have never encountered before. PLD aims to fit the busy lives and evolving careers of participants by providing a foundation of core functional knowledge, a method for diagnosing situations and designing action in response, and coaching for personal leadership development, as well as an environment for building lifelong relationships with fellow participants.
What makes PLD unique?
PLD has many unique attributes, but three work together to truly distinguish the program.
First, PLD is designed to meet participants where they are—in their career and life, their company and function, and even geographically. The program is delivered in four modules. Modules 1 and 3 are completed remotely, and Modules 2 and 4 are done on campus in two-week sprints. Think of it as interval training. Alternating between modes of learning—always with the guidance of a personal coach—enables each participant to connect the lessons of PLD to their current role and challenges.
Second, PLD participants comprise a high-caliber, remarkably diverse, global group with a range and depth of experience that make each group meeting, class discussion, and one-on-one conversation pop in ways that expand their imagination and their learning. Each participant comes ready to learn, work collaboratively, and become a better leader and teammate. The supportive environment that the cohort fosters is incomparable.
The third feature is what we call scaffolding. PLD focuses on academic, social, and personal growth, introducing new conceptual frameworks and tools, expanding networks of relationships, and guiding participants to identify and grow into their next level of leadership development. Our educational approach is carefully crafted to ramp up the learning, stretch, and challenge on each of these paths gradually, so that participants can internalize and integrate the pieces.
Who would be an ideal candidate for PLD?
Ideal candidates include executives who have successfully moved from point A to point B to point C in their careers, and are now being asked to take on new challenges that seem daunting or to step up to significant leadership roles. Other ideal candidates include those who want to reorient their perspectives on leadership, recharge their careers, or revisit core management disciplines to increase the slope of their learning. In all of these instances, they realize that their current personal operating system will be insufficient and may even get in the way of moving from point C to point D.
How has the program evolved during your time as faculty chair?
Most notably, the pandemic was the proverbial "necessity being the mother of all invention." It pushed us to revisit our fundamental principles for PLD—meeting participants where they are, scaffolding the entire experience, using case method learning online and in person, and personalizing the learning to each participant—to ensure we are delivering in all facets of PLD. So all of those signature features of PLD happen earlier and more intensively throughout the program.
Over the past few years, the faculty, coaches, and program team have built more points of contact between the course curriculum driven by the faculty and the personal development work guided by the coaches. By the end of PLD, participants experience leadership at an altitude they could not foresee at the beginning, and the path there has been an integrated program of leadership development.
How do you help participants apply learnings from the program to their current business challenges?
Each and every day on campus, we ask participants to keep a diary of the three lessons they personally take away, which serves as a reference manual when participants are in the thicket of their work lives. More formally, the exercise we call "My HBS Leadership Case" is the spine of PLD and invites participants to identify a challenge that is consequential for their organization and a stretch for them to take on. Over the course of PLD, with intensive work in Module 3, they delve into their challenge, unearth the root causes, bring together key parties to examine the issues, and craft a plan of action to implement. The work is laid out in stages with specified deliverables, providing a systematic methodology for practicing leadership.
We have two other mechanisms for connecting lessons from PLD to leadership development challenges. Participants will receive 360-degree feedback through the HBS Learning Path Tool, and will engage in a workshop on deep personal change. Both of these mechanisms provide input for the ongoing coaching participants receive during the program, which is focused on enhancing their capacity to take on the challenges and responsibilities of leadership.
What are the benefits of having both virtual, self-paced and in-person modules during the program?
Our blended learning approach is integral to our scaffolding philosophy. As the program progresses, we gradually increase the slope of learning, which in turn helps participants ramp up their learning. The blend brings together intense immersion and personal application. It can feel like interval training.
With a self-paced virtual module to start, we build a common foundation of knowledge, providing an introduction for novices and a review for experts. We also familiarize participants with the case method through the HBS Live Online Classroom. Module 2 is an in-person sprint, diving deep into the core functions of business, which sets up the application exercise and self-development work they do back at home.
As the pieces come together, we reconvene on campus to take that learning and intensify the pace, depth, and breadth, so participants are equipped to take action using what they’ve learned. The magic of PLD is that when participants reach the summit at the end of Module 4, they realize the ascent was gradual.
What is the most important takeaway from the program?
If I were to point to one overarching lesson, it would be that leadership is not a mystical set of qualities but a form of work. Participants leave PLD equipped with the skills, mindset, and learning capacity to take on that work at ever-higher altitudes and degrees of complexity.
What advice do you have for past participants of PLD?
Sustain your active involvement in learning. Nothing helps you grow more as a leader. Think about something new you have learned to do (outside of work) in the past six months, where you were anxious at the beginning but pushed yourself to learn and are now headed up the learning curve. Now look ahead: what is something new you will learn to do in the next six months?
Second, in these times, the world needs leaders who can enact the HBS mission. So ask yourself: How am I making a difference in the world—how am I contributing to the mission of HBS?
What might you say to someone considering this program?
PLD is for you if… you're hungry for a challenge, a team player ready to learn from others and help others learn, unafraid to discover more about yourself and your world, eager to embrace exciting and daunting possibilities for impact, and committed to making a difference in the world through your leadership.