Ten nationalities in fifth International Leiden Leadership Programme
At the end of January, the fifth installment of the International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP) has started. This year twenty masters’ students from ten different countries were selected. In the coming months they will increase their knowledge on leadership and develop their own leadership skills during trainings and seminars.
The ILLP is an honours programme for (international) masters’ students. It focusses on leadership and is especially interesting for internationally orientated people. ‘This year for example we selected quite a few Dutch students’, says Lucille Brakefield (Education Coordinator ILLP) about the international aspect. ‘They knowlingly choose for the international programme instead of the Dutch one, because of their field of study and their interest in working with people from many different backgrounds.’
Coaches
All students are being coached by university faculty, who can help them identify and develop their own leadership skills and style. ‘This year we welcomed five new coaches, who will support the students in writing their self-evaluation amongst other things.’ Each coach has a group of three or four students, with whom they work individually. Brakefield: ‘The goal is that the students will find their own strengths and weaknesses.’
During the ILLP, students are introduced to as many different aspects of leadership as possible. They all take a number of assessment tests, attend several training days, but also follow seminars. ‘We are happy that Johan van ‘t Zet will talk about servant leadership and that the former Dutch minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst will share his personal experiences and views on leadership’, Brakefield accounts. In addition, researchers Sandra Groeneveld (Leiden University) and Dirk van Dierendonck (Erasmus University Rotterdam) will talk about their research on leadership.
Roadmap
The students will finish the programme at the end of May by writing a Personal Leadership Roadmap. ‘In only three months, the students get a lot of information about many different aspects of leadership. With this roadmap they get the chance to keep working on their own goals and to set goals which they want to achieve even after the programme has finished’, explains Brakefield. ‘I hope that the students will get to know themselves better during the ILLP, because that, in my opinion, is the most important element necessary for any leadership.’