Aspiring Leader Program
Start the leadership journey before anyone hands you a team.
About the ALP
The Aspiring Leader Program is a six-week program that prepares employees for leadership and professional growth. It is built on the premise that planning early in a career matters: participants leave with a strategy for personal leadership and career development rather than a certificate. The target audience is GS professionals up to grade 6, or the equivalent in a Wage Grade series or the private sector.
The published curriculum is built on OPM’s six Fundamental Competencies: interpersonal skills, written communication, oral communication, integrity and honesty, continual learning, and public service motivation. OPM retired the Fundamental Competencies on October 1, 2025, but what the ALP teaches has not become less useful, and it now maps onto Merit and Competence and Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding — the latter being where public service motivation and civic-mindedness now sit.
What the program sets out to do
- Assess and identify current skills and competencies to improve performance
- Develop a plan outlining individual career development goals
- Identify barriers, and strategies for overcoming them
- Create a personal framework for practicing leadership
- Build the foundational leadership skills the later programs assume
Cohorts and dates
Six weeks end to end, of which 2 weeks are in session. The rest is the assignment work below, done inside your own agency.
Runs Oct 19, 2026 to Nov 20, 2026. Ask us for the training weeks, which are confirmed a few months before the start.
Dates are as published for the current intakes and can move. Ask us to confirm the next one, or ask about running the program as a private cohort for a single agency.
Who it is for
Employees at Up to GS 7 or equivalent. The grade range is guidance rather than a gate, and readiness for the next level of responsibility matters more than the number. The program is for you if:
- You are eager to learn the foundational skills that lift your professional capability
- You want to grow in your career but need guidance on the steps that get you there
- You want to develop the skills behind personal success, not just technical ones
- You need help creating a personal brand inside your organization
What participants actually do
These are completion requirements, not suggestions. Most of them happen between the training weeks, which is why a supervisor has to be on board before an application goes in.
Attendance
Attend both weeks of training in full. The program is short enough that a missed week cannot be made up.
Bridge assignments
Complete the assignments set between the first and second weeks. They are what turn two separate weeks into one program.
How the program is built
Individual development
Participants are taught how to manage a career deliberately, and build a career development plan they present to the class.
Assessments
Participants complete a self-awareness assessment, then use what it shows about themselves and others to shape a career strategy.
Experiential learning
Activities that push participants to ask questions, look outward, and practice the skill rather than read about it.
What comes out of it
For the participant
- Learn the fundamental competencies of leadership, and why a leadership mindset comes before a leadership title
- Work with people from other disciplines and other agencies
- Develop career-development strategies that cover the professional and the personal
- Gain insight into what actually motivates public service, including your own
- Build a peer network that outlasts the six weeks
For the organization
- Demonstrate a real commitment to professional development at the grades that rarely get it
- Reinforce continual learning as an expectation rather than a slogan
- Get back employees equipped with the skills and tools to advance
How to apply
Tuition is $2,995 and covers all materials. Most participants are funded by their agency on an SF-182.
Check the requirements
Read the program requirements above and confirm the grade range fits. The grade is guidance, but the requirements are not.
Get your agency’s approval
Your supervisor, and your training coordinator if you have one. Check whether your agency runs its own internal competitive process for these seats, because many do.
Register for the session
Choose the cohort you want and start the application. You will be asked for an email address first, then the application itself.
Complete the application
As thoroughly as you can. It is read by a person.
Attach the funding document
A completed SF-182 or equivalent. If your agency is paying by government purchase card, give the name, email and phone number of the person responsible for payment instead. The application cannot be submitted without one or the other.
Confirmation, then approval
You get a confirmation on submission. Once we approve the application you are asked to accept the approval, and our finance team invoices your agency against the funding document you supplied.
Before you commit someone: withdrawals and substitutions more than 14 days before the start are free, a cancellation inside 14 days carries a $1,000 processing fee, and once orientation begins the tuition is non-refundable. Full enrollment and refund policy.
Stuck on any of it, call (202) 314-3580 or send us a note. Graduate School USA holds GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract 47QRAA24D004K, so a contracting office can order under FAR Subpart 8.4 without an open-market procurement.
Interested in the Aspiring Leader Program?
Tell us who you are putting forward and roughly when. We will come back with the next intake, what the application needs, and whether a private cohort makes more sense.