Course Review: Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme

My first years as a team manager had been filled with so much more experience than I ever thought possible. Also, I had been starting to wonder about my next steps. Being on child care leave gave me time to review both.

I had studied management and leadership in uni, taken several trainings as part of the trainee program when I first started work, in the context of an employee resource group focused on women and in preparation for my management assessment center. The more I learned the more interested I became.

When I saw the course advertisement I thought it would support all, to reflect, to learn more and to forge my career path when returning from child care leave. Especially the focus on women got me very curious about its contents.

The course didn’t satisfy my expectations. While I don’t regret taking it, I wish I had been able to make a more informed decision. Therefore, I am sharing my course review of it so that you can take an informed decision about whether to enroll in the course or not.

Structure of the Course

The course consists of six modules and an additional orientation module over the course of 7 weeks. You cannot access all modules at the same time. The modules are released on a weekly basis on the same day and time of each week.

Each module is introduced by a video from the Head Tutor who includes a summary of the previous module’s contents and discussions as well as an introduction to the current week’s module.

Each module then continues and later ends with a questionnaire asking how confident and knowledgeable you feel about the content of this week’s module. You have to indicate your answer on a Likert scale.

The contents of each module are taught in the form of articles, videos, articles and infographics.

Within each module participants have to successfully complete three activities as a requirement for the certification. The activities are a written assignment, a reflective journal and participation in a small group discussion. Further, each module contains a group discussion to which participation was not graded though.

Feedback to the activities are provided about a day5-6 days after submission. In other words, a day or two before you have to submit the next assignments.

The Certificate requirements in detail

When I started the course, the amount of work for it surprised me. It also came as a surprise to me that I had to hand in written assignments on a weekly basis with proper Harvard referencing. Moreover, the assignments were graded with the final certification depending on passing the activities with at least 50%.

several questions relating to the content discussed in the current week’s module prompt both the written assignment and reflective journal. The word count was surprisingly small, ranging usually from 250 to 500. The difficulty lay in providing meaningful succinct answer within the given word count.

The written assignment asks for proper Harvard referencing. Your submission receives a grade and 50% is the minimum requirement to pass.

The reflective journal and small group discussion are pass or fail only. There are no grades for them.

In a way, it felt good to be in the situation of doing homework and getting grades again. I just wished it had been advertised properly so that one walks into the course knowingly. Especially as a working momma it can be difficult to complete the course properly if you don’t know about the time and effort it takes. Given that you have to pay a fee for the course it would be a shame if you can’t complete it just because you weren’t able to plan for it appropriately due to lacking information beforehand.

Does the course deliver on its benefits promise?

The more courses I have taken at the workplace, the more I know that the outcome depends on what I bring to the course. How well I apply the methods and tools shared to my own situation and how much I am willing to reflect based on the cues given. Therefore, I am using the chance to tell you about the program promises as a chance for myself to review the outcomes of taking the course.

You can find the program promise or benefits on the program page here.

Benefits Promised	Benefits Delivered
Create a personal development plan so that you may move into the future with confidence as a female leader	Module 5 asked for a skills and strengths development plan and Module 6 asks you to write a personal development plan. The Module gives you the tools of how to write them and the tutor gives you feedback about how well you implemented these for yourself. The content of the plan, individual steps to take need to come from yourself however. There is no feedback in the sense of you shouldn’t do A but rather B. The feedback is more of the nature, activity A is not detailed enough with regards to stakeholders, deadline, or other (how well you implemented the given tool).
Understand how to respond to culture and gender assumptions	The 2nd week’s module deals with diagnostic skills as a leadership trait. Macro Context, Organizational Culture and Types of Problems are introduced as the arenas in which you have to use your diagnostic skills and which leadership approach to use to effectively solve them. Besides female leaders sharing how they dealt with complex problems, I didn’t see this module touching on gender in particular. It discusses an important leadership skill but for me a special connection to female was missing.
Take ownership of your career and learn to leverage your strengths and identify limiting behaviours	The course starts out with several reflection prompts and discussing how to use feedback effectively. It introduces the strength based model as a tool to reflect on your strengths and limitations. The reflection prompts continue and build on each other towards the last modules’ tasks.
Evaluate a range of methods and resources for developing as a woman in a leadership context	The program introduces different models of coaching and mentoring. It also gives tips with regards to pursuing new opportunities, be that within your organization, industry or level. It also discussed the importance of networking and the direct circle of people around you who can support your development. Some examples of people who have re-invented themselves in a second career are given and both a skills and strengths as well as a personal development plan template are introduced.
Join a global network of current and aspiring female leaders who are preparing to broaden their impact and influence	Within the online campus you can see a list of your classmates. I could see 14 pages of 20 profiles each. Some of the profiles were the tutors but it would still be way over 200 class mates. Little flags next to their pictures showed their country of current residence. It was a VERY international group indeed.
Benefit from guidance from leading industry experts and Oxford Saïd	The tutors are providing timely feedback regarding assignments and spurring the discussions with follow up questions, links to relevant articles, comments and inviting others to reply.
Access the official Oxford Executive Education Alumni group on LinkedIn	I am part of the group now as promised. Since I’ve been in the group the main activity has been by the same guy posting ‘inspirational quotes’, trying to promote his app, I assume. Besides that a few articles have been posted.

What I appreciate about the course

• It’s completely online. This is great for anyone working, especially working mommas so that you can take the course whenever you have time for it.
• Interesting resources, articles, etc. shared
• Putting myself into a different thought environment. I have been with the same company for 10 years. Even though I have changed jobs, had different teams and supervisors, it was all in the same environment. It was great to be in a new environment, that discussed leadership topics differently. It was great to be back in a more academic environment. I realized how much I have been in this bubble of my context and it was good to get out of it.
• I really appreciate the module about negotiation. The reminder that especially as a leader, you are facing negotiations on almost a daily basis. I often thought of negotiations only in the context of discussions with suppliers and customers. I will review the module more often and hopefully applying the knowledge will make me a better manager.
• Only female participants, if I am not wrong. The sharing in the discussion forums seemed very open and as if participants really felt safe to share.
• I really appreciated the voices of female leaders from varying industries and the sharing of their experiences. The course presents them in the form of videos.
• The feedback of the tutors on discussion comments and articles shared in the discussions were sometimes more meaningful to me than the original modules content.
• I like how their advertising includes a very diverse number of women, especially that they are also showing a pregnant woman.

Conclusion

The Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme is a good course for someone who is interested to become a manager or leader. For someone who has had a few first experiences in leading others, e.g. supervising an intern, project manager with different stakeholders, in my opinion.

Having studied management and leadership and being a manager for 4 years, none of the topics introduced were new to me. Some were good reminders (as mentioned above), in other cases it was interesting to see how academia has evolved (e.g. in the space of sources of influence and power). Moreover, I didn’t find the course to be specific enough for the development of female leaders. If I had to take a guess, to me 20% at most felt specific to the female experiences whereas the rest seems applicable to anyone who wants to become a leader.

If I had known the above before, I wouldn’t have taken the programme. I didn’t ace all the assignments and I have definitely learned something. However, looking at the costs (the fee and time and effort) vs. what I feel the benefits have been to me, it was not worth it.

I am still on child care leave as I am writing this. Taking a course doesn’t transform you over night by reading the materials – I know. It’s about applying the knowledge, tools and methods properly and consistently. I will review some contents as I go back to work and in case I will have any major successes or aha moments thanks to the programme, I will report back.

If you have taken the course, let me know how you liked it in the comments. Hopefully, the reviews can help someone make an informed decision. If you’re considering to take the course, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.