Three reasons why the Executive Diploma surpassed my expectations

Clare Bocking, Executive Diploma in Organisational Change alumna, shares why her experience surpassed her expectations. 

Throughout my career, I have always been passionate about personal growth and creating company cultures that embrace and inspire talent development. I have experienced fantastic examples of both individuals and teams who have surpassed all expectations with brilliant coaching, engaging training and powerful learning interventions. Great people are a company’s most valuable assets!  

I had wanted to continue my formal development for several years, refreshing and developing my skills and by default, visibly demonstrating my commitment to lifetime learning. It was the relevance and quality of the WBS Executive Diploma in Organisational Change content that inspired me to take the plunge and enrol! Having just submitted our final papers, my WBS experience over the last 12 months surpassed all my expectations, and as I reflect, it is for the following three reasons:  

1. Exceptional lecturers. As mature students and career professionals, all our course lecturers and presenters had an outstanding blend of academic excellence and practical experience. This gave us the ability to both learn the theory and meaningfully apply it through reflective practice in our situations
2. Innovative and pioneering course content. The structure of the course gave us a comprehensive foundation into an extremely broad range of topics juxtaposing traditional thinking with ongoing current research. Building theories and contributing to conversations researching post-COVID trends and possible implications for societal change was fascinatingly relevant for us all.
3. The brilliant calibre of fellow mature learners. My cohort of students benefited from the quality, diversity and breadth of experience we shared as a group. We continued to learn significantly from each other over every break and from our evening social interactions. My cohort included international executives, and as a testament to the quality of our shared learning experience, we visited one of them in Romania the weekend after we submitted our final papers! We continue to correspond regularly.

I am leaving the course with more benefits than I had anticipated too. I had expected an academic learning experience that gave me a robust understanding of the many theories, facets and models associated with organisational change – which was delivered. I had not expected such a deeply reflective experience that allowed me to challenge and refresh my priorities, choices and ambitions. As a senior executive, this reflective process is so important and is a precious gift in our time-challenged society. I move on with conscious choices to build my next new career chapter. As an advocate of lifetime learning, I cannot recommend the Executive Diplomas highly enough. Just be prepared for the potential scale and scope of post-course change you could enjoy!