Recognizing the importance of strong leadership skills in business, the Charles F. Dolan School of Business continues to partner with BetterManager, a leadership development platform that offers one-on-one coaching. Designed to equip present and future managers with the tools they need to navigate workplace issues in the most effective manner, Dolan MBA students can apply to participate in the program at no additional cost.

The program begins with an assessment of the student’s personality and management style, says Andrew Conlan, MBA’22, MSBA’23, who enrolled in the spring of 2021. Working with that assessment, “my coach then helped me to develop my own, personal style of leadership, tailoring his coaching to address important improvement areas,” Conlan recalled.

Conlan recognized he needed to develop a strategy to pursue opportunities for promotion in his career. “We worked on my professional communication to management and my coach also helped me create a vision of where I wanted to go in my career.”

Shortly after completing the program, Conlan took on two new roles at Gartner where he was employed. He has since secured a position as a product manager at Mastercard.

“Taking the course ignited a lot of professional and personal growth; it was one of my favorite experiences at Fairfield,” he said.

BetterManager President and COO John Topping ’89 is a graduate of the Dolan School, and although he initially considered a career in business, “I ended up in the Bay area, went into tech, and never looked back,” he said. While working at Google during a time of enormous change and growth, he was the beneficiary of a lot of solid coaching. “Google was trying to identify factors that made teams successful. They recognized how important managers were to the success of others and to their job advancement. When I left I wanted to take what I experienced and make better managers.”

Without a doubt, coaches are a big part of the company’s success, added Topping. Each BetterManager coach has had a minimum of five years of coaching experience in business environments and has managed others for at least ten years. 

“[My coach] introduced me to a number of topics that will help me build my personal brand and improve my emotional intelligence,” said Adam Russell ’22, MBA ’23. “I would recommend this program to anyone who is looking to learn more about the business landscape and advance in their respective career.”

The value-add of programs like BetterManager is one of the reasons Fairfield Dolan has risen to the top tier of business schools in the nation.

Learn more about the Fairfield Dolan MBA, available 100-percent online or in a hybrid format, and discover how professionals can design their own programs to create their paths to leadership.