SPP Launches Skills For Impact Curriculum

MPA students experienced the first module of SPP’s signature SFI curriculum on September 9 and 10.

Leadership experts, Tobias Leipprand and Oliver Triebel presented the two-day module which provided the 26 students of SPP’s inaugural class with an overall framework for critically thinking about concepts of leadership, followership, influence, power and authority. It also presented students with tools that can be applied to three interrelated focal areas of the SFI curriculum: leading self, managing and mobilizing groups and shaping systems. Students learned to classify different personality types according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in terms of extraversion/introversion, thinking/feeling, sensing/intuition and judging /perceiving. Participants also familiarized themselves with ways to analyze group dynamics, and they reflected on their own values and belief structures.

A key component of SPP’s flagship two-year Master of Public Administration (MPA) program, the SFI curriculum aims to equip SPP´s students with the necessary practical skills to make a difference toward improving public policy worldwide. To this end, the SFI curriculum offers a variety of intense courses on areas such as leadership, negotiation, public speaking and communication, budgeting and fundraising, and project management. It is taught by professionals with extensive experience in their respective fields and will occupy a total of 26 days during the two-year MPA. The SFI curriculum is mandatory for all SPP students. In the overall design and delivery of the SFI curriculum, SPP partners with LEAD, the Mercator Capacity Building Center for Leadership & Advocacy, the independent, non-profit organization based in Berlin that strives to support professionals, especially from the non-profit sector, in assuming leadership responsibilities for the public good.