Which electives can I choose from at the MBA?

AVT offers four elective courses in management. Three of these subjects take place at the school in Copenhagen and the fourth subject is in the format of a one-week study trip to South Africa

There are four elective courses on AVT's MBA programme. 'Leadership in a Digital Age', Building Leadership Teams', 'The Language of Leadership'. These three elective subjects function largely the same as the other MBA subjects consisting of three main elements:

Preparatory material, which you will receive approx. four weeks before the workshop
2 day workshop with an international teacher at the school in Copenhagen
Written assignment written based on your own leadership role
The subjects run over 2 months from when you receive the preparation material until you have handed in the written assignment. In addition, there is a completely unique elective in the form of a one-week study trip to South Africa under the theme 'Wilderness Personal Leadership Journey'. After the trip, you write a small written assignment. This study tour and this subject can be selected and purchased at a price of approx. DKK 30,000 (ex VAT) + flight (subject to change). If you register for the entire MBA from the start, you get this trip free of charge*.

All four subjects give 3.00 ECTS points.
Read more about the individual subjects below.
*Prices and electives offered on the MBA may change over time.

The Elective: Leadership in a Digital Age
Professor: Jennifer Jordan from IMD

In this course you will develop your digital leadership skills and you will explore topics such as mindset-shifting, hyperawareness of the external environment, and comfort with ambiguity.

You also tackle such dilemmas as leading and motivating virtual teams, challenges and opportunities around diversity in the digital age, and how to lead in an era of extreme uncertainty and speed-of-change.
The course provides you with tools to develop the skills and capabilities you’ll need to be an effective leader in an era of perpetual change and disruption. The course offers 
a practical, personalized learning approach, backed up by theory and research. 

Learning Objectives:

- Recognize your capabilities and strengths to become an effective leader in the digital age 

- Identify your weaknesses in the digital leadership space and how to improve them

- Understand how to collaborate, as well as motivate, influence, and strengthen teams

The Elective: Building Leadership Teams
Professor: Ruth Wageman from Harvard University

For an organization to truly thrive in a world where innovation can make the difference between success and failure, it is not enough to hire smart, motivated people. Knowledgeable, skilled, well-meaning people cannot always contribute what they know at that critical moment on the job when it is needed. Sometimes this is because they fail to recognize the need of their knowledge. More often, it's because they're reluctant to stand out, be wrong, or offend the boss.
For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share 
their knowledge! The course helps you develop a culture of psychological safety that provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The course also helps you create a more engaged and vital workforce. We'll see that creating psychological safety takes effort and skills, but the effort pays off when expertise or collaboration matter to the quality of the work. We will also see that the leader's work is never done. It's not a matter of checking the psychological safety box and moving on. Building and reinforcing the work environment where people can learn, innovate, and grow is a never-ending job, but a deeply meaningful one.

Learning Objectives:

- Understand the link between psychological safety and high performance
- Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
- Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization purpose: Where does ‘team’ make sense

Hear professor Wageman put a few words on the elective in the video below.

The Elective: The Language of Leadership
Instructor: Top speechwriter, Author and TEDx speaker, Simon Lancaster

Shh….. Did you know that there is a secret Language of Leadership: a secret language which has determined who has reached the top in politics, business and society since the dawn of time?
In this two day course, top speechwriter Simon Lancaster sets out top tips from the Language of Leadership so you can make your communication instantly more engaging, inspiring and 
influential.

The course teaches 6 techniques from ancient rhetoric together with the latest insights from neuroscience as we analyse current trends in modern commercial and political discourse and look at how we can put these techniques into practice. 

Leading effectively requires being able to communicate across different audiences and to persuade by understanding what matters most to the particular group you are dealing with. Active listening and a respect for other points of view, though easy to agree with intellectually, are often difficult to put into practice. By working on real-life examples, we will explore how messages can be conveyed persuasively and crises averted. And at the end of this course you will have explored different approaches to creating an effective and persuasive presentation and will be more aware of your own strengths and challenges as a communicator, som you can lead with a strong sense of clarity and purpose.

Learning objectives:

- Analyzing your audience and tailoring communications to different audiences
- Synthesizing information, versus summarizing
- Communicating effectively in a crisis

Meet the lecturer, Simon Lancaster, in one of his TEDx Talks 'Speak like a Leader' in this video.

The Elective: Study Tour to South Africa
Wilderness Personal Leadership Journey