Connected Leaders Academy (CLA) is an award-winning leadership development program offered at no-cost to organizations. CLA programs provide participants an opportunity to connect identity, authenticity, and leadership, allowing them to reflect on the elements that they find most resonant. CLA offers a portfolio of programs for organizations to leverage. We welcome any participant who our clients select to participate in the CLA programs.

We welcome any participant who our clients select to participate in the CLA programs.

CLA’s content focuses on early professionals, midcareer managers, and senior executives. Programs provide participants with an opportunity to connect identity, authenticity, and leadership, allowing them to reflect on the elements that they find most resonant.

The Executive Leadership Program is designed for professionals close to or in the C-suite. For example, in large organizations, this might include professionals three levels below the C-suite; in smaller organizations, this might include C-suite executives themselves.

The Management Accelerator program is designed for early-to mid-career professionals. This might include individuals with early management experience, individuals on a clear path to a management role, and functional experts seeking to gain understanding across their organization.

The Leadership Essentials program is designed for early careerists (<5 to 7 years of experience) and individual contributors who are looking to hone their business acumen and self-leadership skills in preparation for a future management role.

Your organization is best positioned to decide on your approach to selecting participants for particular CLA programs. McKinsey is not involved in the selection process for participants in the CLA program and cannot advise on the same.

CLA is typically included as a complement to an organization's existing leadership programs, with the end goal of providing effective and relevant content for participants. Your organization's own legal and HR advisors are best positioned to advise on the selection process, personnel-related decisions and compliance with applicable laws. Please be sure to consult with your own advisors as your organization is responsible for making such decisions.

Connected Leaders Academy offers a suite of programs to accelerate talent at critical inflection points. The Leadership Essentials (LE), Management Accelerator (MA), and Executive Leadership Program (ELP) programs focus on building core capabilities in the leadership toolkit​, reflecting on elements of identity and the ways they may shape how you lead at work – starting through the lens of a specific identity context​ and strengthening and expanding networks within own organization and with program peers.

The LE Pathways, MA Pathways, and ELP Pathways programs focus on building leadership capabilities to ‘meet the moment’ of complexity and disruption, reflecting on elements of identity and the ways they may shape how you lead at work, and strengthening and expanding networks within own organization and with program peers.

For a closer look at our programs, we invite you to review our program overviews found on the enrollment site and in our Program Champion Hub.

All live virtual sessions are held during North America business hours (e.g., 11am–5pm ET).

The cohort experience is designed to enhance the learning experience and provide rich peer networking and connectivity opportunities. Small group discussions are at the heart of much of the program and provide an opportunity to build peer relationships, accountability partners, and a network to reflect on the program both at the time and beyond. Cohorts will serve as a form of support across industries and functional groups for continuous engagement and learning.

Please see here for more information.

We ask that you appoint a day-to-day contact person or Program Champion (PC) to work closely with the CLA team. PCs are typically in Talent, Leadership Development, or HR roles. The PC will be both the main point of contact with the CLA team to finalize your participant enrollment and provide participant information, as well as lead your internal organizational processes for nomination and communication.

For the Executive Leadership Program and Executive Leadership Program Pathways, each organization will also need to assign an Executive Sponsor (typically C-suite leader) for each participant. Each sponsor is expected to commit to supporting their nominated executive through the program journey as well as investing in their career progression and in achieving their professional goals.

Further details on the sponsor role are below.

Executive Sponsors play an important role in supporting participants on their journey in the Executive Leadership Program by serving as a sounding board in helping participants apply what they’ve learned in our programs in their career.

Executive sponsors are:

• Invited to attend cohort wide sessions on sponsorship (approx. 1.5 hours total)
• Asked to do two 30-minute 1:1 discussions with participants, following a suggested agenda, during the program experience (1 hour total)

A sponsor can support more than one participant. Each additional participant will require an additional 1-2 hours of time commitment for 1:1 sessions.

The total time commitment for the Program Champion roles varies based on the level of support the Program Champion is providing and the number of participants in the program. On average, Program Champions estimate time commitment of approximately 2–4 hours per month, but this varies by organization and how they are managing the program. A higher time commitment can be expected during enrollment.

Email our team at Connected-Leaders-Academy@mckinsey.com  with the name and email address of the new Program Champion. Our team will update our records within 24–48 hours of your email.

If you visit Step 2, “View Cohort Availability” you will see how many seats are remaining. This is updated regularly.

You can enroll your leaders in all cohorts offered, pending availability. To enable a rich networking experience for all participants, we do ask that each organization limit the number of participants enrolled in a given cohort, pending availability:

• For the Executive Leadership Program and ELP Pathways: We ask each organization to send up to 3 participants per cohort
• For Leadership Essentials (LE), Management Accelerator (MA), LE Pathways and MA Pathways We ask each organization to send up to 40 participants per cohort.

Please reach out to us directly to confirm the number of participants you’d like to send to open cohorts.

For Executive Leadership Program participants, they and their Executive Sponsors receive onboarding information approximately 5–6 weeks before the program starts.

Management Accelerator and Leadership Essentials participants receive their onboarding material 3–4 weeks before the kickoff.

Yes – if you have names ready for cohorts where the enrollment window is not yet open, please email us at Connected-Leaders-Academy@mckinsey.com.