New Leadership Course By Ronald Heifetz
Coming Summer 2025
Break through barriers and drive progress on the challenges that matter most to you.
Course Overview
Led by Harvard Kennedy School’s Ronald Heifetz, this course builds on the popular edX course, Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles, and empowers you with a practical leadership framework to tackle your most complex challenges. You’ll learn to diagnose problems effectively, generate actionable solutions, manage pressure, and engage key stakeholders to make meaningful progress within teams and organizations—all designed to help you break free from feeling stuck and lead with clarity and confidence.
You'll hear from leaders across industries and around the world who are applying this framework to solve real-world problems. From closing skill gaps in education and building cross-industry connections to coordinating global relief efforts and leading teams through unprecedented change, these stories will show you the power of adaptive leadership in action and inspire you to apply these principles in your own situations.
When you enroll, you’ll receive:
- One-year access to course content
- Live events with faculty
- Regularly updated material from faculty and industry leaders to continue your learning journey beyond the course modules
This course is made for individuals and organizations who are:
Stuck and Seeking Direction
For those facing complex challenges and unsure about the next steps, this course helps uncover new insights and actionable paths forward.
Navigating Crisis or Change
Designed for leaders dealing with significant transitions or high-pressure situations, offering strategies to adapt and lead effectively through uncertainty.
Overwhelmed by Competing Priorities
Perfect for those managing numerous challenges, providing tools to prioritize, stay focused, and build resilience to tackle what matters most.
Your Instructor
Ronald Heifetz is among the world’s foremost authorities on the practice and teaching of leadership. He speaks extensively and advises heads of governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations across the globe. In 2016, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia highlighted Heifetz’s advice in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture.
Heifetz founded the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School where he has taught for nearly four decades. He is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership. Heifetz played a pioneering role in establishing leadership as an area of study and education in the United States and at Harvard. His research addresses two challenges: developing a conceptual foundation for the analysis and practice of leadership; and developing transformative methods for leadership education, training, and consultation.
Heifetz co-developed the adaptive leadership framework with Riley Sinder and Marty Linsky to provide a basis for leadership research and practice. His first book, Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994), is a classic in the field and one of the ten most assigned course books at Harvard and Duke Universities. Heifetz co-authored the best-selling Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Change with Marty Linsky, which serves as one of the primary go-to books for practitioners across sectors (2002, revised 2017).
Empower Your Team with the Adaptive Leadership Framework
The principles and concepts taught in this course are most effective when applied across teams, communities, and organizations.
Harvard Online offers discounted pricing options designed for teams and organizations of all types and sizes.