Graduate degrees in organizational leadership are designed to build your management and leadership skills. Coursework typically focuses on areas like communication, organizational behavior, leadership styles, and human resources. These programs often include a capstone experience course, in which you apply the leadership skills you developed in your coursework to address a real-world workplace challenge.

Core courses

Master’s in organizational leadership programs require students to complete courses on topics including:

• Team building
• Human resources development
• Leadership development
• Effective communications
• Employee management
• Strategic personnel decisions

Some programs may allow you to customize your studies. This can include specializations in a specific type of organization, such as nonprofit management, or you can build on your skills in areas such as legal, ethical, or financial matters.

Advanced skills

Graduate degrees in organizational leadership can be extremely beneficial if you want to broaden your career opportunities and build on the skills that can help you manage teams, departments, or even entire organizations effectively. Here are some of the areas of study in which you may focus:

Team leadership

Team leadership coursework is key to showing you how to create and manage teams that can efficiently complete tasks. Here, you can learn:

• Elements of psychology and social psychology
• Strategic planning
• Motivational strategies
• Team maintenance

Human resources

Whether you work in general management or a human resources department, human resources is a vital area of study that can give you insights into how the human side of the business works. This coursework teaches you:

• Labor standards
• Benefits management
• Training and employee development strategies
• Employee rewards systems
• Negotiation practices
• Leadership styles

All leaders have their own unique styles. This coursework can teach you:

• Typical leadership styles among management
• How to develop your own leadership styles
• How ethics relates to leadership
• How to inspire and motivate

Communication

Communication is an important component of being a good leader. To be effective as a manager, you will need to develop communication strategies for your workplace setting. This coursework offers instruction on topics including:

• Communication as it relates to diversity
• Reflexive communications
• Group communications
• Group decision-making
• Conflict resolution
• Group development and socialization
• Concepts and theories of workplace culture

Employee management

Employee management skills are important for organizing and directing the workforce. This coursework can build on your skill set in the following areas:

• Hiring best practices
• Policy and procedural development
• Policy implementation
• Labor laws

Typical concentrations and electives

Graduate programs in organizational leadership may offer you a selection of elective courses. These are designed to help you focus your skill set in a specific area or to fill gaps in your current knowledge base. This is a helpful way to position yourself for certain career tracks.

Master’s in organizational leadership concentrations include:

• Nonprofit management
• Legal practices
• Ethics
• Finance
• Health care management
• Human resources
• Project management
• Organizational development
• Global leadership

Within these specializations, you can take courses that allow you to explore these topics at a deeper level. You can also use electives to complement your education and build on the core areas of study in the organizational leadership program.

Common electives include:

• Labor laws
• Employee benefits
• Payroll management
• Ethical theory and practice
• Business law
• Finance and accounting
• Nonprofit regulations
• Leadership coaching
• Negotiation
• Organizational communication
• Advanced team building

Choose your coursework wisely — it should map to your career goal to help increase your starting salary and job opportunities.

There are two types of accreditation — regional and specialized. 

Regional accreditation

Regional accreditation is the most prestigious type of accreditation that an online or traditional college or university can receive. Regional accreditation confirms that the provider has met and maintained adherence to a minimum set of academic standards.

Most regionally accredited schools will only accept credits from other regionally accredited institutions of higher learning.

Specialized accreditation

Schools often apply to gain specialized accreditation for specific areas of study, departments, or degree programs. The leading authority for business schools is the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. Enrolling in an accredited program makes you more marketable to employers and can affect your career growth over the long term.

Why accreditation matters

Accreditation is key if you want to:

• Transfer your credits, as most schools will only accept transfer credits from accredited institutions
• Apply for financial aid, as federal aid is only granted to students who are studying at recognized accredited institutions

Universities that offer a master’s in organizational leadership often hold accreditation through business-centric accrediting boards. These include:

• AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business)
• ACBSP (Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs)
• IACBE (International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education)

Check for both national and regional accreditation at your university of interest. You may also find that your degree program or academic department of interest has additional and specialized accreditations.