Strategic Communication for Leaders: Protect Your Brand, Lead Your People

Great Leaders Need to Be Agile and Adaptable.

The Good News Is You Can Train for It.

From boardroom debates to public media interviews, leadership is full of unscripted moments. This course combines applied improvisation from Chicago’s famed The Second City with strategic communication training to help you speak clearly, lead confidently, and respond purposefully and effectively when the unexpected happens.

We’re teaching you to think and communicate quickly and authoritatively with methods that help you better protect your company when there is no checklist to follow.

You will partake in the intellectual rigor and strategic thinking for which UChicago is famous, and learn to use your newfound skills in the field with speed and agility when the situation demands it. This unique course provides an online orientation that sets the stage for in-person learning while a post-course capstone consultation helps you apply your training directly to your professional context.

Course Schedule

A Strategic Communications Training Course from Chicago Booth Executive Education

Leadership isn't just about decisions; it's about how you communicate them in moments of uncertainty or disruption. To do your job well, you need to be able to think on your feet and improvise under pressure. This leadership communication course teaches you to craft messages that move people and ensure your organization is protected, especially in high-stakes moments.

With the rigor and authority of UChicago's Booth School of Business and the real-life crisis communication experts leading this course, you will strengthen the core skills necessary to be a standout and effective leader in a world of constant change and disruption.

In this Chicago Booth Executive Education course, you will learn to:

• Show up as a credible, commanding presence during uncertainty.

  You are taught techniques drawn from public speaking, media training, and Second City improv to communicate with agility and composure, even when pressed by challenging questions from internal or external audiences, such as employees, boards, and reporters.
• Craft memorable, values-aligned messages that stick. 
  You design and manage campaigns, craft messaging, and tell concise, values-aligned stories that resonate with your audience.
• Respond to change quickly with clarity and discipline. 

  You discover how to codify and lead with your values, even when, without warning, a crisis confronts you and your organization.
• Navigate organizational change with as little drama as possible. 

  You gain proficiency in tools such as EOS, the Vision-Traction Organizer, and cascading communication to help keep your teams informed and aligned during transitions.
• Leverage lessons from trusted advisors of senators, CEOs, and major corporations to develop your own crisis communications plan. 

  You extract lessons from real-world examples of leading through crisis and disruption, so you can emulate effective practices and avoid pitfalls in your organization. After you complete the in-person experience, you’ll be able to create your own crisis communications plan, review it with your instructor, and revise it in response to their feedback.

The key skills you acquire in this course to protect your company’s reputation, revenue, and people are:

No Reruns, No Stale Playbooks: A Course Designed for the Now

This isn’t a history lesson. This Booth School of Business Executive Education course is grounded in the realities organizations are navigating right now, so you can lead with certainty and precision when it counts.

The cases, exercises, and conversations are drawn from current headlines and emerging challenges.

They’ve Built Brands, Led Newsrooms, Won Awards, 
and Now They’re Teaching You

Our instructional team has served as trusted advisors to senators, CEOs, and major corporations, and they’ve trained some of the top communicators in the world. With this kind of expertise at your fingertips, you gain insights proven effective in some of the most high-pressure environments imaginable.

Special group rates

To enroll a group, please contact our admissions team.

Organizations are eligible for a 10% tuition reduction for groups of three or more.

^{*Special tuition rates are not stackable. Qualified course registrants will receive the greater reduction between early bird and group rates.}

How Do I Register for this Course?

• Log into UChicago's course registration portal by creating an account using your username and password.
• Navigate to the Strategic Communication for Leaders course page and click on "Add to Cart" to include it in your course selection.
• Review your course selection and click on "Proceed to Checkout" to complete the registration process.