Lola Banjo

LSE Executive Education wanted to hear from Lola what she learned after attending five-day intensive Achieving Leadership Excellence programme.

How do you feel right now, after having just completed the programme?

I feel great, I've learned a lot over the week. The programme is an intensive learning experience, but it really challenges you to think about your leadership skills and what are the things that you're missing in terms of becoming a better leader, how can you lead a team but how can you also lead upwards.

That's why I really like it because it's a comprehensive view of leadership. People usually think of leadership as just leading the team but there's a lot in terms of becoming a leader, representing yourself to upper management as well as representing yourself to the larger stakeholder community.

It really forces you to think about how do you position yourself as a leader across all different kinds of stakeholders.

Why did you choose LSE?

LSE is such a phenomenal institution, so when I was thinking about doing a leadership programme, I actually thought about LSE first.

I thoughts were — "let me see if LSE has something that can provide some of the leadership curriculum that I'm looking for" — and so I was delighted to find LSE did.

The reputation of the programme — I don't need to say much about the reputation of LSE — it's a well-reputed school globally. Of course we have Harvard and Stanford in the United States, but people do recognise LSE as a global leader in economics and also in business and multiple facets of the social sciences as well, so I was quite delighted to be here.

Why did you choose this particular programme?

The reason why I chose this particular programme is because as I was looking at my trajectory as a leader — I'm in a position where I'm rising in my career and thinking about my own leadership abilities.

It was the right time in terms of my career, where I am, and where I'm trying to go in my career, to be able to take a reflective programme like this — that really forces you to reflect on your successes so far and also your challenges, your developmental areas and how you can you start to address these — to become more efficient as a leader.

What were the programme highlights for you?

There's been so many highlights from this week so far. I really love the professors, I love the fact that they're women as well which is great but they're also very well-read.

I love the fact that Connson she worked at BCG (Boston Consulting Group) for instance so that really resonated with me. Emma as well was able to pull in practical applications from leadership in terms of the real world, and merge that with the academic view of leadership.

There's people from all different industries and all different parts of the world and it's great to be able to meet people and get to hear their viewpoints, what they're struggling with, the cultural differences that we recognise but also unites us. It's been great and networking has been really phenomenal across the programme.

How do you think this programme will help with your personal career progression?

Well the potential is absolutely amazing. Just being able to say that I took this programme, Achieving Leadership Excellence from LSE, that already gives you a stamp of approval but I think it really does actually make me think about my own leadership abilities in a different way.

It's really helping me step outside of my comfort zone and challenging myself to be able to confront my own developmental challenges head on and see what are the things I can improve on — really holding yourself accountable going back because one thing I don't want to do is to leave LSE after this week and forget everything that I've learned without developing an action plan.

Would you recommend the programme?

Absolutely, I will absolutely recommend the programme. One, just being able to step outside and take a week to just reflect in yourself, it's really important and I think a lot of people don't take the time to do that well enough — but then having people like Dr. Locke be able to guide us through that path and guide us through that journey is really important and we have such great materials.

It's really just a great experience, I think it's an important that anyone that wants to become a better leader in the future should take a programme like this and particularly the LSE because it's a great institution — and in the part of London that it's in it's really central so you can get to do a lot of different things. I will absolutely recommend the programme to my colleagues and beyond.

Fantastic, and has it lived up to your expectations?

I will say so, yes. I was telling my friends yesterday that I had a lot more coursework than I anticipated, which is great because it's challenging me a lot more and we're joking back and forth, they were like "what did you expect coming here?" and "just have a free week to hang out and network" and in some ways maybe some people do think like that, but no, it's absolutely lived up to my expectations.

It's both academic, it's practical, we have these practical exercises that we have to do but then we also read articles and educational journals and things like that where it really brings together multiple facets of the learning experience together in a short period of time. It's intense, definitely, it's a lot packed into a week but it's all really great stuff.

Yes, it has lived up to my expectations so far.