Executive Survival Skills
Resilience, presence and change, for leaders under real pressure.
What the course is
Executive Survival Skills is a three-day course for high-potential managers and executives, built to leave participants better equipped to lead change through a deeper understanding of leadership and team-building practice. It addresses both the theoretical and the practical side of leading in an environment that keeps changing: how a leader’s attitude, values and beliefs move organizational performance, how to analyze and improve your own critical thinking and decision making, and how to stay resilient, overcome setbacks and avoid career derailment in a high-pressure executive role.
Maps to Merit and Competence under the current framework, and specifically to Agility and Resilience and Problem Solving. It also carries Leading People: accountability and developing others.
Before the first day
To receive a certificate of completion, learners must attend all days of instruction and complete all course requirements. A self-paced version (EXEC9911SP, 18 hours) is also available if the three consecutive days will not fit.
What you will be able to do afterwards
Learning outcomes, in the order the course builds them.
- Understand your leadership role in the change process
- Strategically plan agency and organizational change initiatives, and develop strategies to implement them
- Balance competing demands from those above you and those you supervise
- Engage in self-analysis, and identify individual strengths and areas for development
- Identify priorities and opportunities for your own development as a leader of change
- Gain leadership skills that lift the performance of your office, not just your own
What it covers
- Leading in turbulent times, and what the leader's attitude, values and beliefs do to organizational performance
- Emotional intelligence and the leadership roles it supports
- Leadership presence, and situational leadership applied to a real team
- Change dynamics and the tools for running a change initiative
- Team development, trust, and appreciative inquiry
- Resilience: overcoming setbacks and avoiding career derailment under pressure
Who should attend
Individuals at GS 13-15, participants in agency Candidate Development Programs, and sitting SES members looking for additional or refresher training.
The stated audience is high-potential managers and executives. As with the programs, the grade is guidance rather than a gate.
How to buy it
On the GSA Schedule
Course EXEC9911 is priced on GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract 47QRAA24D004K at $1,164.05 per participant, so a contracting office can order it under FAR Subpart 8.4 without an open-market procurement.
Private classes are priced as a flat total for a class-size band rather than per seat, so a full cohort costs materially less than the per-participant figure suggests.
Next open-enrollment dates
2 upcoming sessions, $1,699 per seat, fundable with an SF-182.
- Sep 15 to 17, 2026Live online
- Nov 3 to 5, 2026Live online
Need different dates, or the whole team at once? It also runs as a private class on dates you choose, at your location or live online. Call (202) 314-3580.
Interested in Executive Survival Skills?
Tell us the headcount and roughly when you need it. We will come back with dates and a price against the GSA Schedule.