Executive Education Program
The McMaster University Master of Communications Management program offers executive education programs that draw on the best in class content that has been created for communications professionals in the MCM program. Our executive education programming is tailored to the needs of corporate clients and is focused on leadership development and increasing the value that communications professionals bring to the table.
We serve clients including government organizations, communications and public relations agencies, and for profit and non profit corporations.
Below is a list of our core executive education offerings. We would be happy to discuss customizing a curriculum for your organization based on these offerings, or to discuss your unique needs to develop a bespoke learning opportunity. If you would like to learn more about our executive education offerings, please contact mcmdir@mcmaster.ca.
Click here to view a quick summary of the McMaster University MCM program and it’s executive education offerings.
Active Courses
Negotiation & Persuasion
Negotiation & Persuasion
Master the art of influence in our two-day Negotiation & Persuasion workshop, designed to enhance your negotiating prowess and persuasive abilities. This intensive course, led by Dr. Haniyeh Yousofpour and Sanjay Dhebar, includes role-play scenarios, decision-making assessments, and a negotiation simulation.
The workshop covers practical techniques for conflict resolution and effective communication, with coffee and lunch provided on both days. Participants will leave with a co-branded certificate, equipped to negotiate successfully and influence outcomes in any professional setting.
AI for Communications Managers and Leaders
AI for Communications Managers and Leaders
Join international experts Dr. Alex Sévigny, APR and Martin Waxman, MCM, APR for a hands-on skills training workshop that will help you identify the strategic opportunity AI holds for your practice. You will be amazed at how these tools can revolutionize your productivity and creativity.
Topics covered:
-History and definitions of AI
Hands-on advanced prompt engineering to quickly develop text, image, voice, and video.
Hands-on with goal-setting, project management, data analytics, process/workflow development -- all sped-up and enhanced by AI!
You'll also gain skills that will help you become a leader in the implementation of AI including how to manage issues and challenges, adopt an ethical decision-making framework, and build trust and strengthen relationships at scale.
Open Enrollment Courses
Strategic Management
Strategic Management
Strategic leaders are able to consider a wide range of internal and external factors to develop and execute strong plans in the face of a changing world. The MCM’s strategic management course is developed with communication professionals in mind and spans non profit, for profit, and public sector perspectives. It offers an integrative curriculum that considers related concepts from across the spectrum of management such as finance, human resources, marketing, operations, and leadership. This offering is highly interactive and includes simulations, case studies, guest speakers, and presentations. It highlights the unique and valuable role that communications professionals can play in strategic management, and incorporates equity, diversity, and inclusion as a core theme.
Data and Analytics
Data and Analytics
This course instructs participants on the use of data science methods, analytics and practical coding basics through working with ready-made data science and analytics tools. The course offers a “learn-by-doing” approach and focuses on communications and marketing applications, such as quantifying media narratives with NLP or spotting emerging consumer trends with time series analysis. A consideration of the growing importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning is included, as well the ethical procurement and reporting of data, analytics and metrics. This hands-on course assumes no prior knowledge of programming or data science.
Crisis Communications
Crisis Communications
Crises are a fact of organizational life. From small not-for-profit organizations to global, multi-national corporations, crises can suddenly disrupt an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively achieve its mission. Organizational crises rapidly consume unbudgeted financial and human resources and diminish an organization’s reputation and goodwill. The economic, social, and political fallout from organizational crises have been significant and warrant a renewed focus on research and scholarship.
Reputation Management
Reputation Management
This course explores the challenges organizations face in developing, managing and safeguarding its reputation. How an organization succeeds or fails in influencing the perceptions of its stakeholders is dependent on its values, actions, governance and communications. Participants examine the foundational principles of reputation theory and risk management, its linkage with the overall strategic direction of the enterprise, and how leaders can identify, prioritize and address potential risks that threaten the organization's reputation. A key theme of this offering is aligning communications strategies, organizational directives, and mitigation of reputational risks.
Leadership and Coaching
Leadership and Coaching
Communications leaders often advance to senior levels within the organization because of their expertise and experience in managing and directing internal and external communications efforts. The future leader requires excellent communications skills, strong persuasive abilities to influence organizational behaviour, and the confidence and self-assurance that they are the right communicator for top position leadership roles. This course builds on core leadership and coaching principles and is designed to understand how to build on your skills and abilities to become a successful C-Suite executive.
Crossing the AI Bridge – Four Trends Transforming Marketing and PR
Crossing the AI Bridge – Four Trends Transforming Marketing and PR
If you’re in marketing and PR, your role is about to change dramatically as you welcome a new member to the team: artificial intelligence. AI will help you become more creative and remove some of the repetitive drudge work you hate to do. But it will also alter your workflow and the skills you need for your job. If you work for an agency, you will need to determine how AI affects your billing structure and where it fits in your team. How will you adapt to the new landscape? What are the opportunities, risks, and ethical challenges you need to consider? How will AI affect your company’s culture and customer trust? In an interactive presentation, Martin Waxman explores four trends—human-sounding voice AI, deepfake videos and images, natural language generation, and relational chatbots—to demonstrate how AI tools are about to transform the nature of marketing and PR and what you can do to keep up. Participants will have an opportunity to test and evaluate several tools.
Testimonials
Argyle
When Argyle set out to raise the bar in communications consulting and develop its next generation of leaders, we turned to McMaster’s MCM Executive Education team as our partner. Together, we created a customized strategic management course for high-potential managers and emerging executives. McMaster did an excellent job of curating and aligning the course curriculum to our industry, our company, and our goals – creating an engaging experience that enhanced the capabilities of our future leaders.
Daniel Tisch, APR, FCPRS
President & CEO at Argyle
