Leadership

Earning a master’s degree can be an important step in your career path. When you want to move into a role where your responsibilities include guiding organizational strategy and managing people, you have two main options for the focus of that degree: leadership or administration.

Common master’s degrees with a leadership focus include:

• MAL (master of arts in leadership)
• MS in Leadership (master of science in leadership)

Common master’s degrees with an administration focus include:

• MBA (master of business administration)
• MHA (master of healthcare administration)

In short, an MBA focuses on processes and systems, while a master’s in leadership focuses on people. In an MBA program, you will learn how to improve efficiency within an organization. In a master’s in leadership program, you will learn how to bring out the best in people and guide them in living out the organization’s mission.

Administration degrees like an MBA are often called management degrees, and an easy way to think of the difference between that kind of degree and one in leadership is this:

We manage processes, but we lead people.

Leadership involves knowing oneself. In other words, to lead others effectively, you need a strong foundation of self-awareness. So, that’s where master’s in leadership programs begin.

Many students find that it’s possible to pick up the “hard skills” related to business administration a bit at a time throughout their careers. That is not the case when it comes to developing the deep self-awareness that it takes to adapt how they guide others in an ever-changing world. That kind of growth requires a more concentrated and intentional experience like participating as a student in a graduate studies program.

You’re perfectly suited for a master’s in leadership program if you aren’t content just to ask, “What skills do I need to acquire in order to move up in my organization?” but rather, “How do I become the kind of person who can truly lead other people?”

Dr. Mary Jo Lewis, one of the professors in University of Jamestown’s Master of Arts in Leadership program, noted that a leadership degree is suited for professionals who want to lead in a way that keeps people front and center.

A master’s in leadership program cultivates true self-awareness, which is critical in developing your emotional intelligence and your skills of decision-making and discernment.

The kind of skills involved in leadership can be difficult to list on a resume, Dr. Lewis says, but they’re the kind of skills that all of us—especially employers—“know it when we see it,” and we see the effects when they’re missing. Employers look for and value those skills and abilities in candidates for administrative and executive roles.

Administration-focused master’s degrees are more narrowly focused than leadership-focused master’s degrees, since they emphasize a set of “hard” skills related to defined systems, processes, and roles within a business corporation or large organization. Course topics in an MBA program often include finance, accounting, marketing, data science, information technology (IT), and supply chain management.

Leadership-focused master’s degrees are broadly focused, since they emphasize the human side of serving as a manager, administrator, or executive within an organization. A leadership degree gives extra attention to cultivating skills that are acted out rather than just “known.” It’s one thing to know how to read a balance sheet; it’s another to identify a point of conflict within an organization and be able to confidently create a win-win solution.

Many times the kind of decision-making required of a leader involves showing empathy and considering the ethics of choosing different courses of action. A graduate degree in leadership gives you experience and a base of knowledge in those areas.

What’s more, the backgrounds of your fellow students tend to be more diverse within a master’s in leadership program. While MBA programs tend to attract students from business corporations and MHA programs tend to attract students from healthcare corporations, master’s in leadership programs draw students from a variety of backgrounds. Students improve their creative problem-solving abilities by learning to look at situations from other viewpoints—for example, a professional working in healthcare can look at a problem from the perspective of how it might be handled in a manufacturing environment. A business leader can consider how a nonprofit executive would address a situation. In this way, a master’s in leadership serves as preparation for success in any industry, whereas an MBA is more narrowly focused on specific career goals.

Like an MBA, a master’s in leadership is an advanced degree that demonstrates to employers that you’ve met expectations in an accredited graduate school environment and integrated graduate-level material into your own base of knowledge and sense of identity as a professional. You’ve truly engaged with the material and with your professors and classmates, and you have a degree at the end to prove it.

Many corporations and large organizations require a master’s degree to be eligible to move into managerial and executive positions. That requirement is satisfied equally by either an administration-focused degree like an MBA or a leadership-focused degree like an MAL.

One difference, though, is that in practice an MBA is often a terminal degree, the highest degree that a person attains. It’s not uncommon for students who earn a master’s in leadership, on the other hand, to continue their studies and go on to earn either a second master’s degree in complementary subject area or to earn a doctorate. It’s also not uncommon for a professional who already has a terminal degree in a more specialized area to earn a master’s in leadership in order to acquire the skills to move into an administrative role. This is a common path, for example, for doctors who move from practicing medicine into healthcare administration.

When you participate in either graduate program—whether it’s for an MBA or a leadership degree—you’ll practice and hone your critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills.