Executive Leadership Institute: Where Business Leaders Connect, Learn & Grow

Managing the complexity of a globally connected society requires competent business leaders with the agility necessary to navigate today’s trends and emerging business challenges. Since its formation, one way the McColl School of Business at Queens University of Charlotte has helped organizations stay ahead of the curve has been through its Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) where the school delivers top-tier leadership development services to organizations in the Charlotte Metro area and across the Carolinas.

“In today’s ever-changing world, effective leadership matters,” said Rick Mathieu, dean of the McColl School of Business. ” The McColl School’s faculty and staff, and the impact of its programs, are well known in our community. ELI helps us leverage that notoriety by providing leadership development and organizational development solutions our clients look for beyond the bounds of their own organization.”

In the spirit of the Queens University motto, ‘not to be served, but to serve,’ ELI was established to serve local and regional executive populations in the manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, retail and consumer, professional services, education, construction, and hospitality sectors. With clients that include Atrium Health, Brighthouse Financial, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Lowe’s Home Improvement, JELD-WEN, and Global Endowment Management, ELI continues to grow.

“When companies invite you to come alongside them to design and deliver leadership development for their high potential talent, it is a very privileged, almost sacred space you enter and responsibility you take on,” said Paul Joyce MS ’12, executive director of the Executive Leadership Institute. “Not many third-party entities are invited into a place where business strategy, culture formation, and organizational challenges, among others, are openly discussed. ELI earns that privilege and adds value to clients by creating and executing programs that uniquely address their needs.”

Focused on three dimensions of leadership development including leading self, leading teams, and leading organizations, each ELI program is custom-tailored to the specific needs of each client based on cohort size, timetables, budget, and the learning outcomes the client seeks.

“No two ELI programs are alike, says Joyce. “Each is client-specific and incorporates adult learning experiences that use McColl School faculty as instructors on a host of topics, assessment instrumentation, simulations, action learning, case studies, and executive coaching. This is the way mid- to senior-level high potential talent learn and develop.”

ELI is frequently contracted to provide consulting services in the areas of strategy and strategic transformation; change and journey management; organization design and competency modeling; employee engagement and team dynamics; talent and succession planning; and meeting design and facilitation.

“Our client retention rate is very high,” Joyce said. “One client in the healthcare space is investing in its 16th cohort; a manufacturer – a sixth cohort, and a financial services company – a fourth cohort. The participants often write to say their experience has been transformative.”

McColl’s long-standing focus on leadership development, the MBA concentration in Leadership and Change, and other programs such as the Masters of Science in Talent and Organization Development and the Certificate in Organizational Leadership, have kept the school highly ranked in several areas. College Factual, a source of data-driven insights on college outcomes, ranked Queens No. 1 out of 10 schools for Best Organizational Leadership Programs in North Carolina.

CEO Magazine, another publication that showcases the top business schools from around the globe, ranked Queens’ MBA as a Tier-One MBA Program in North America and eighth in North America in their Global Online MBA rankings, behind schools like Virginia Tech, the University of Denver, and Pepperdine University.

For its undergraduate programs, where two-thirds of its undergraduates have job offers before they graduate, the McColl School recently made a significant jump to 6th place among regional universities in the south in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best College rankings – up from 22nd last year.

“Through ELI, we have leveraged our evolving reputation by capitalizing on organizations eager to develop their pipeline of emerging executives,” Mathieu said. “Our tailor-made programs, which are based on needs analysis and company culture, have proven to bring organizational behavior, strategy, leadership, and business acumen topics to life for our clients. I couldn’t be prouder of the work we’re doing because it helps fuel our growth alongside the growth of the City of Charlotte.

Learn more about ELI.