4 Month Journey
Certificate in Organizational Leadership LIVE
Exclusively for Animal Welfare Professionals
Four Sessions in 2027: 1/28, 2/25, 3/25, 4/22
(All sessions run 9am-12pm Pacific time)
Seats available as low as $249.50.
You are a people leader in animal welfare. It's your responsibility to equip your employees with the tools and support they need to successfully achieve your organization's mission. But your resources are limited, you have a long list of competing priorities, and stress levels are high. So, how do you do it?
Welcome to the Certificate in Organizational Leadership LIVE (exclusively for Animal Welfare Professionals). Brought to you by Integris Performance Advisors and The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement.
Since 2025 we've had over 500 participants from shelters across North America. This year's program will be even better, as we've made design improvements based on participant feedback!
By participating in this program, you will:
-
Learn how to more frequently exhibit the leadership behaviors that are proven to drive higher levels of productivity and team engagement
-
Increase your emotional intelligence and learn how to communicate more effectively with everyone around you, including those who think and act very differently
-
Gain skills that will help you establish higher levels of trust and build a more cohesive team
-
Engage and network with fellow animal welfare leaders
-
Become a better version of yourself
This program is a 4-month journey, designed to not only build awareness and understanding, but to influence you to experiment with new ideas and build powerful new leadership habits. In other words, this isn’t “just a training program” but rather an experience that will challenge your thinking and push you to become a better version of you.
NOTE: This is the LIVE VERSION of the Certificate in Organizational Leadership. If you previously completed the online program, we welcome you to take this live-interaction journey to refresh and strengthen your skills. For more information about the self-directed program, visit https://learning.theaawa.org/p/certificate-org-leadership
Program Topics
As a leader in your organization, your behaviors have tremendous influence on those around you. Peers, colleagues, and direct reports look to you for guidance. They watch what you do and learn from your example.
During this program, you will learn how to (and why you should) more frequently exhibit the five leadership practices proven to drive higher levels of organizational performance and positive workplace attitudes:
- Model the Way
- Inspire a Shared Vision
- Challenge the Process
- Enable Others to Act
- Encourage the Heart
Central to any organization’s culture is how people communicate and interact. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) refers to the ability to understand, recognize and manage the emotions that underlie communication and interpersonal interaction, both in yourself and in others. By completing this program, you will:
- Become more self-aware of your own mindset and behavioral tendencies, gaining a deeper recognition of why you do what you do
- Be able to more easily recognize the behavioral tendencies of others, giving you the ability to adjust your communication style as the situation demands
- Understand a powerful framework called DiSC, that will enable you to help your peers, colleagues and direct reports become more emotionally intelligent too
Research shows that highly cohesive teams consistently outperform other groups of people. Why? Because cohesive teams:
- Make better, faster decisions
- Tap into the skills and opinions of all members
- Avoid wasting time and energy on politics, confusion, and destructive conflict
- Have more fun while being more productive
Through this program you will learn how to influence your team to embrace the five behaviors that are central to creating the highest levels of cohesion and engagement:
- Building vulnerability-based trust
- Engaging in productive conflict
- Committing to team decisions
- Holding one another accountable
- Focusing on collective results
Everything that happens inside an organization is a process; a series of steps, actions, and/or decisions that ultimately result in getting something done. But all processes are not created equal. Many processes are fraught with waste and non-value adding activities, such as:
- Mistakes and rework
- Waiting and back-and-forth handoffs between people and/or departments
- Extra movement and transportation
These inefficient processes lead to employee frustration and customer dissatisfaction. Through this program you will learn the basics of a proven methodology called Lean Six Sigma, giving you the tools and skills, you need to:
- Identify where problems exist
- Analyze and improve how work gets done
- Put in place new procedures that will control process efficiency and drive change forward in your organization
Your Program Facilitation Team
Brett Cooper
Amy Dunn
Sabine Rentschar
Alex Zalewski
Tyler Goff
Gwen Voelpel
Upon completion of the program and after passing the online exam, participants will receive the Certificate in Organizational Leadership from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement. The program is approved for 16 CAWA Continuing Education credits.
Hundreds of animal welfare professionals have already completed the Certificate in Organizational Leadership program. Here is what some had to say:
> Sarah Javier, President & CEO, APA Adoption Center:
"Our entire leadership team has taken the Certificate in Organizational Leadership program. We made the decision to include it as regular training requirement for all new leaders."
> Kim Staton, Former Director, Osceola County Animal Services:
"Listening, talking, and brainstorming have all been enhanced. This course helped create a deeper understanding and apprecaition for the work we do."
Select Your Registration Option Below
Bring your team and save - volume discounts when colleagues attend together:
1 participant: $499
2 participants: $449.10 each (save 10%)
3: participants: $399.20 each (save 20%)
4 participants: $349.30 each (save 30%)
5 participants: $299.40 each (save 40%)
6 or more participants: $249.50 each (save 50%)
Are you a previous participant in the Certificate in Organizational Leadership? We invite you to join us for this year's live program at this special "returning participants" rate. Why? Because regularly revisiting the concepts of leadership is a valuable thing. Over time, you change, the people you lead change, and the needs of your organization chance. By joining this year's program, you will undoubtedly build new skills - along with new industry connections - as we interactively engage with the ideas.
Everything DiSC®, The Leadership Challenge®, and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.