Course VPP 601 – Leading Under Pressure
Course Description
People in high-pressure roles — crisis responders, senior operators, and program leads managing high-stakes deadlines — don't usually fail for lack of technical skill. They struggle when pressure erodes human skills: reading themselves and others accurately, keeping conflict from turning destructive, making sound calls with incomplete information, and getting other people to move with them rather than against them. This program builds those skills in sequence — self-awareness, conflict management and relationship-building, structured problem-solving and decision-making, negotiation, and group decision-making — so leaders have a reliable process for the moments when instinct alone isn't enough.
Course Objectives/Key Competencies
This program is built entirely from the organization's existing module catalog. It sequences seven modules — honoring every listed prerequisite — into a narrative arc:
- Know yourself
- Manage the friction of other people
- Sharpen your thinking under pressure
- Move others toward agreement
- Close by putting it all to work in a group decision
Key Competencies: Strategic readiness; Critical thinking: Critical technology advancement: Resource management; Bureaucratic agility