Psychology has permeated the business world in the past few years and has transformed our understanding of behavior and improved the ability to make management decisions.
At business school, executives are learning how to better understand how and why people behave, which is seen as key to tackling most issues in society. Whether they need to boost employee engagement, encourage changes in how consumers, co-workers or clients behave, participants come with varied aims to executive courses centered on psychology.
Some of these executive education programs focus on behavioral science and how to understand the very different motivational factors that are driving consumers, with the digital world changing how buyers think, feel and behave. Participants learn how to understand consumer wants and needs and enhance the clarity of their marketing communications.
Other executive programs in psychology are aimed at specific sectors, such as financial services, where technology, regulation and competition have disrupted financial planning and client relationships. Despite advances in fintech, human interactions are still critical.
Others still cover human behavior in the context of leadership in today’s turbulent times, with the pace of change in business and society accelerating exponentially.
Here are the Top 10 Executive Courses in Psychology.
The UCL Executive Program in Behavioral Science focuses on the processes happening in the consumer’s mind. The seven-day executive education course goes beyond buying choices and equips participants who come to London with the tools and models needed to understand the unconscious thoughts that drive consumer choice. This means they can improve business strategy and enhance the consumer experience.
View School ProfileThe Client Psychology executive program at Wharton aims to help financial advisors become more customer-centric by drawing on psychological, behavioral finance and the human sciences to help participants understand the biases and perceptions that shape client decision-making and financial wellbeing. The course runs for about a month, taught in the evenings and online.
View School ProfileChicago Booth Executive Education offers a program called The Psychology of Management that’s grounded in social psychology. Participants are introduced to frameworks and thinking that challenge their assumptions about others, as they better understand why people do the things they do, and learn how to more effectively manage teams. The course is delivered in person in Chicago for five days.
View School ProfileBehavioral Economics: Understanding and Shaping Customer and Employee Behavior is put on by Harvard Business School in Boston. Participants in this executive course gain fundamental insights into how people think and make choices. They learn how to design and test a “choice architecture” that improves management decision making and creates greater value for customers while improving outcomes for their company.
View School ProfileLeading with Psychological Intelligence is an executive education course that helps leaders to understand what really drives people’s actions. These insights help leaders to build productive relationships and identify the most effective ways of working with a diverse range of people. The program is run by ESMT Berlin for four days in the German capital.
View School ProfileBehavioral Science in Practice is an immersive, three-day executive course run by Warwick Business School and the Behavioral Insights Team. It introduces executives to key principles from behavioral science and teaches them how to apply them to real-world problems. In this hands-on program, participants design a behavioral science intervention to tackle a live case study.
View School ProfileIMD Business School in Switzerland offers the Changing Employee Behavior online course. Participants are exposed to cutting-edge research in behavioral economics, cognitive and behavioral psychology as they understand what really motivates their staff. They also uncover how behavioral change — especially embedding a culture of motivation and positivity — boosts individual performance and can transform every level of the organization.
View School ProfileCanada’s UBC Sauder School of Business has the Behavioral Insights course, an advanced professional certificate program, which uses principles from psychology and economics to help executives encourage decisions that promote health, wellness and happiness. It runs for nine months part-time and is delivered online
View School ProfileBehavioral Science in Business: Understanding People to Drive Results is a course run by New York’s Columbia Business School, that’s delivered for six days over the course of two weeks part-time, all online. The course equips executives with a deep understanding of behavioral science and the tools to implement and measure its impact.
View School ProfileLondon Business School offers Crisis Leadership and Human Behavior, a course run for three weeks and delivered exclusively online. It’s for executives operating in a volatile and uncertain world, who will learn how to leverage the psychology of crises to their advance and better manage others and communicate effectively in high-pressure situations.
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