Digging through piles of job opportunities on Indeed, Monster, or Glassdoor? Sifting through countless titles and job descriptions, and trying to quantify the qualifications? Well, if you’re looking for the keyword “Executive,” there is definitely one thing that they all have in common under their most desired qualities. It’s leadership skills.

Maybe you’re making a horizontal move in your career, and you have 10-20 years of leadership experience already under your belt. But for those in earlier life stages, the key to getting your foot in the door could be an executive leadership degree. Gaining both a Master’s degree, and practical education that you can apply right to an executive position, is a choice that the HR department in organizations and businesses are sure to recognize.

Goodwin College’s MSOL degree, or Master’s in Organizational Leadership, can increase your value as a leader in an organization. There are a few areas covered in the program’s thorough curriculum, that translate directly from this executive leadership degree, to benefits in the workplace. Earn an MSOL, and here are your interview talking points, laid right out below:

Talent and Performance Management

The employees at a company or organization are its biggest asset. Or rather, they should be. This only works, though, if leadership invests in them through talent and performance management. As one Forbes article states, “When you strategically invest in employees, you attract and keep the all the best candidates, and you also build a strong work culture unafraid of innovation, change, failure, and success.” That’s a pretty powerful sentiment. Training employees to think like leaders empowers them to not just slog through the workday, but rather, to enjoy it! Motivated employees not only improve overall company performance, but boost its reputation. Additionally, improved employee retention promotes upward mobility and better performance, allowing employees to grow with the company. Learning mentorship and productivity strategies through this course at Goodwin College gives you the tools to help make this happen at your next gig.

Data-Driven Decision-Making for Executives

If you’re an executive at an organization, strategy should be your middle name. However, you can’t have strategy if you don’t have a goal. Goals and benchmarks are built on data. Data is the bread and butter of the c-suite. Make sense? Learning how to apply metrics to each function of the business or organization is how departments request budget updates. This also allows executives and managers to decide on how to allot resources. Without a margin, there is no mission. Learning how to quantify that margin is going to be a big part of your job. This MSOL, executive leadership course on data-driven decision-making gives you a real leg-up in the workplace.

Negotiation and Conflict Response

As an executive, the biggest problems come to you. No matter whether internal issues, or externally facing— depending on your role, you’ll definitely encounter challenging scenarios. Internally, these conflicts are the ones that your teams can’t solve: maybe politically sensitive, or founded on misaligned interests between departments. Finance is focused on the most budget-friendly strategy, but Creative needs to scale-up on talent to meet Marketing’s demands for higher output. These are complicated situations involving multiple people. A Monster writer touts the importance of collecting all the information available, in order to make a quick decision, and then staying in touch to survey the results. Lastly, executive leaders should not be afraid to reverse decisions if effects have not played out as anticipated. This requires a little bit of humor, and an un-inflated ego. With executive leadership degree training in Goodwin’s MSOL program, you’ll be equipped to tackle the problems that nobody else wants to! That’s why executives get paid the big bucks.

New data from Investopedia outlines the degree pathways for a handful of America’s top CEOs, providing a snapshot of success. One thing that they all have in common? A formal education. You might be surprised – and excited – to hear that no one major or graduate degree links all of these leaders together! Your journey through an executive leadership degree could get you there.

Goodwin College’s MSOL is offered fully online, or you can mix and match online with on-campus courses. Apply at any point in the year, and kick-start your program in either the Spring or the Fall. Additionally, you can attend this program part-time, and still complete your Master’s in Organizational Leadership in as few as 20 months. Based on a cohort-model, the people that you begin your program with will be with you through the whole time. You can’t beat the strong, professional relationships that you’ll be able to create and keep, after developing your skills together over the course of 20 months.

Understand what organizations and businesses are looking for in their newest exec? Time to get your education, and get yourself out there! Call Goodwin today at 800-889-3282 for more information on how to apply to our flexible MSOL program.