Teaching experienced executives is one of the fastest, most direct ways to put research efforts to real use and influence organisational practices. It also represents a major growth opportunity for business schools, particularly as universities diversify revenue streams and expand lifelong learning.
Yet many academics, highly skilled at teaching undergraduates or MBA students, find themselves unprepared when stepping into executive education for the first time. Senior participants arrive in the classroom with decades of leadership experience, strong opinions and expectations for immediate relevance. Standard teaching methods often fall flat.
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Here are seven ways educators can prepare for, and universities can support faculty to thrive in, this environment, drawing on insights from Teaching Executive Education.
1. Understand the types of executive education
Executive education comes in two programme forms: customised and open enrolment.
Customised executive programmes are developed in partnership with a specific organisation to address a concrete challenge, such as supporting a change initiative, reshaping culture or preparing leaders for turbulent conditions. These are usually co-designed by a programme director (often acting as a “mini CEO” of the programme) with an academic director and client representatives. Programme teams look for faculty whose research or teaching expertise speaks directly to the organisation’s needs.
Open-enrolment programmes, by contrast, address broader managerial topics, such as leadership, change management or finance for executives, that apply across industries. Here, the academic director builds a coherent learning journey and invites faculty whose sessions complement one another and fit the programme’s overall narrative.
2. Find an entrance point to executive education
New instructors need to find their legitimacy to teach executives. For many, the most natural starting point is their research. The “practical implications” sections of published papers can spark ideas for compelling executive sessions.
Professors who have written and tested case studies can use them as the backbone of an initial session. The same applies to robust exercises, such as analysing complex financial data or evaluating marketing campaigns, which translate well to an executive audience. Instructors who have successfully taught other scholars’ cases or simulations can also build strong sessions based on that experience.
Another entry point is facilitation. Rather than relying solely on content, the instructor can draw out the group’s collective knowledge and help participants learn from both the insights generated in the room and the process of creating them.
For anyone new to executive education, conversations with experienced colleagues and programme directors are invaluable to understanding the needs of corporate customers and typical participants in open-enrolment programmes. Programme directors constantly scout for teaching ideas, so bringing forward a session concept that isn’t yet on their radar can open the door to opportunities.
3. Choose a topic for the first session
The first teaching session may shape one’s longer-term executive education identity. Instructors can choose among three types of topics:
- hype, which creates easy entry because demand is high and executive knowledge is low (such as AI)
- evergreen, which includes areas – such as operations and leadership – that are competitive and in constant demand
- latent demand, a category that covers rebuilding morale after workforce reduction, for example, which may be harder to sell but when offered to visionary leaders can have a powerful impact on participants and their organisations.
Because the first session requires significant preparation, institutions should acknowledge that investment. Senior administrators can provide crucial support by recognising the workload, offering guidance and pairing new instructors with an experienced executive educator who can serve as a mentor.
4. Use the right pedagogy
Executive education is less about delivering content and more about enabling reflection. Faculty used to lecturing must shift to a dialogue-driven approach, where learning starts with participants’ own experiences. Executives don’t expect “answers”; they expect frameworks that help them make sense of complex realities.
Too often, new instructors are expected to teach executives without proper guidance, assuming their academic background will be enough. To help them find an effective pedagogical approach, universities should provide structured onboarding that includes:
- shadowing experienced educators to observe classroom dynamics
- mentoring from senior faculty or programme directors
- pilot teaching opportunities with constructive feedback
- co-teaching assignments that allow gradual independence.
These practices help new faculty translate academic expertise into engaging, practice-oriented sessions and build institutional consistency.
5. Work the classroom
Executive audiences expect instructors to connect their research to real organisational challenges and help executives connect the dots across experiences and levels of analysis. Effective educators:
- shift from being the “sage on the stage” to facilitating dialogue
- draw on participants’ experience to drive discussions
- stay humble and acknowledge executives’ experience and concerns
- offer practical takeaways rather than abstract theory
- translate theories and models into tools and actionable insights.
6. Help instructors make sense of feedback
Faculty who have successfully taught in degree programmes are often surprised and feel vulnerable when they get their first executive-education feedback. Programme directors, therefore, should not leave it up to the instructors to interpret numerical “smiley sheets” on their own. They and, when relevant, client representatives should help interpret the feedback as well as supporting self-reflection and observations from the session.
Imperfect evaluations are not uncommon in executive education and often reflect contextual factors rather than teaching quality. Executives may note, for example, that a case study was not closely aligned with their industry, that a topic felt too theoretical, or that they had encountered similar content elsewhere. Feedback can also relate to representation issues, such as the balance of perspectives or protagonists shown in examples, or to organisational constraints beyond the instructor’s control, such as limited support from senior management that makes it difficult to apply new ideas in practice. When negative feedback occurs, programme directors should interpret it carefully, distinguishing between actionable teaching improvements and structural or contextual issues, rather than allowing isolated scores to automatically affect future teaching opportunities or academic evaluations.
7. Learn from the audience and find new questions for research
Working with executives helps educators step out of the ivory tower of management research and familiarise themselves with the questions faced by real people in real organisations. Executive teaching can offer opportunities to initiate case-writing projects, facilitate access to data and find new items for the faculty’s research agendas.
Instructors can use conversations with executives during breaks or extracurricular activities, such as programme dinners, for early reality checks and to test ideas.
Teaching as professional renewal
Ultimately, teaching executives is a form of mutual learning. Faculty often described it as an opportunity to stay grounded in the specific challenges faced by executives.
With the right preparation, mentoring and institutional support, universities can help their educators move confidently from theory to practice, and from classroom authority to learning partner. Teaching executives is not only about helping others grow; it also offers educators an opportunity for their own renewal and development.
By investing in training and a culture of reflection, universities can ensure that their executive classrooms become spaces of transformation for participants and professors alike.
Konstantin Korotov is a professor of organisational behaviour at ESMT Berlin. He is co-author, with IESE Business School professor Evgeny Kaganer, of Teaching Executive Education (Edward Elgar, 2025).
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