Berkeley lines up programme for emerging leaders
WITH ITS ambitious goal to turn Thailand into a centre for global leadership development in Asia, the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley, is launching a new executive development programme designe
Unlike other programmes that first appeared in the United States, this Leadership Academy programme will make its debut in Thailand in August, said Doy Charnsupharindr, chief executive officer of Berkeley ECI.
The programme comprises four modules: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading Change, and Leading Impact. Each module spans three days and pauses for about three months to allow participants to practise their principles in their real jobs and instructors to follow their progress.
Including hotel accommodation, the total fee is Bt500,000, though some participants can choose to trial the first module alone for Bt150,000.
Doy said he is targeting 40 Thai participants in the first year of the programme. “One important thing is that the participants will be able to form a network of people of similar ages to themselves who might have faced similar problems,” he said.
From an informal survey he conducted with potential participants, Doy has found that many emerging leaders have faced |similar problems in convincing their parents on their business objectives, or dealing with other senior people in their organisations.
The Leadership Academy programme joins three other courses that Berkeley ECI will offer in Thailand. These are its core Leadership and Coaching Certificate programme that will be conducted next month, the Leadership Communication programme that it has organised through a partnership with the Thailand Management Association, and the two-day Leader as a Coach programme that will be conducted in September.
Doy said Berkeley ECI established Bangkok as its first overseas branch three years ago because it wanted to increase access for executives who cannot go to the US to attend its courses.
“The Asian markets are giving
importance to the issue of developing leaders who are able to stand on the global stage,” he said.
Berkeley ECI chose Thailand over Singapore, which is a more common choice for other leadership institutions, because it had conducted a survey and found every executive it talked with preferred the Kingdom over the island state as a training venue.
Furthermore, Doy said, high-ranking Thai executives have been keener participants in executive training courses than those of many other nations, including the US, where it is usually hard to find any chief executive officer joining a training programme. About half of the participants of its core Leadership and Coaching Certificate programme are foreign executives and the other half are Thai.
The standard fee is the same US$18,500 (Bt656,500) as it charges in the US, though a 25-per-cent discount is on offer this year in Thailand. This is so even though the costs of organising courses here are higher than in the US since the institute has to fly in instructors from California, he said. The participants will receive a certificate from UC Berkeley, which is a top US business school.
Berkeley ECI held an open-house event recently, during which three of its participants in previous years’ classes – Krating Poonpol, founder of 500 Startups, Chananyarak Phetcharat, managing director of DHL Express Thailand, and Chantana Sukumanont, adviser of Boutique Consulting Group –shared their experiences on ways to develop world-class leaders in the digital age.
