Competent management is crucial to any well-run company or organization. If you’re ready for the next step in your career and to take on a new level of leadership, a master’s degree may be the right path for you. But how does an M.A. in Organizational Leadership equip you to become a better leader and more marketable in any team environment?
All companies, industries, or business ventures require a competent leader at the wheel who can navigate the waters of decision-making. Consequently, a demand for people with organizational leadership knowledge has surged.
What is Organizational Leadership?
Organizational leadership is the strategy in leading a team of people to work to accomplish a collective purpose or mission, appealing to and encouraging an organization's members to fulfill common goals while building a positive working environment.
A successful organizational leader executes choices in the best interest of their fellow employees, while also guaranteeing the scalability and revenue of the organization.
Point Loma Nazarene University offers an M.A. in Organizational Leadership to professionals seeking to improve their administrative, organizational, and leadership skills within their industries. As a graduate of organizational leadership, you'll uncover the value of education, ethics, policy-making, research, and more.
PLNU's M.A. in Organizational Leadership is designed to change the way you think about leadership and management. Through creative and innovative learning, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of who you are; analyze and reflect on how you think, interact with others, and lead in the workplace; and obtain leadership skills that apply both in your personal and professional life.
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It’s not too late to start your journey.
Pursue your purpose at PLNU.
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11 Career Options With a Organizational Leadership Degree
An organizational leadership program helps you manage policy and government bodies more effectively, develop decisive human resources methods, administration, and corporate projects as a manager and a leader. Organizational Leadership graduates can elevate their career paths in environments such as healthcare organizations, municipal divisions, educational administrations, institutional analysis and research groups, and higher education.
Here are some career options you can qualify for:
1. Project Coordinator
2025 Median annual salary: $62k
Project coordinators manage the timeline of projects and keep the team on pace to accomplish tasks and other goals. As a project coordinator or project manager, you’ll work jointly with members of one, or a variety of, team(s) to build a friendly and fruitful work atmosphere excellently situated to reach team goals. With a bit of support and the appropriate operating conditions, all employees can put forth their best effort. Therefore, the project coordinator mediates with company management to ensure these conditions for optimal outcomes.
The project coordinator additionally guarantees that crew members satisfy all the outline requirements and complete each of the priorly stated objectives on time. You can obtain the position of project coordinator within technology, construction, and other industries.
2. Human Resources Director
2025 Median annual salary: $123k
HR directors oversee employee satisfaction, hiring and termination, wages, and additional circumstances to assure that a company operates efficiently and effectively.
The human resources manager needs to possess a superior understanding of management and organizational leadership. As a manager, you’ll also need to be an exceptional communicator, as you’ll frequently engage with a variety of customers, clients, and employees.
3. Management Analyst
2025 Median annual salary: $99k
Management analysts, aka business advisers, assist the owner of the company to improve the way it functions. The external viewpoint serves to fulfill plans and innovations designed to increase profitability and efficiency in the company.
4. Sales Manager
2025 Median annual salary: $75k
Pursuing a sales manager career is quite common for graduates with organizational leadership degrees, so you'll be in good company! Company owners, particularly those who market assets and services, require a competent sales manager to supervise all of the sales for the company and document the revenue in detail.
Additionally, as a sales manager, you’ll oversee employees’ projects and offer overall business enhancements.
5. Training and Development Manager
2025 Median annual salary: $84k
Suppose you like the idea of coordinating an organization’s personnel and striving to advance informative or training applications to develop those around you. In that case, this role might be for you. Training and development managers often operate in companies and industries to drive skills and acquire talent to improve effectiveness. This is a crucial position in companies that also organizes training to develop or study appropriate soft skills for marketing and business.
6. Human Resources Specialist
2025 Median annual salary: $59k
If you want to work in the personal capital sector, then a human resources career might be the perfect fit. HR specialists scout, interview, and acquire talent. HR specialists regularly serve as leaders for staff; they’re the ones to handle inquiries on protocols/procedures, payroll, benefits (including healthcare benefits), and any local, state, or federal laws and regulations pertaining to employment.
7. Training and Development Specialist
2025 Median annual salary: $65k
These professionals are in charge of preparing, designing, and conducting plans designed to enhance worker abilities and methods. Being a training and development specialist is an outstanding job if you appreciate the nurturing and mentoring features of administration — your job is dedicated to building up employees in their careers. These specialists help companies’ staff recognize parts of their job that might require more training, evaluate possible materials, and improve plans for securing their success.
8. Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialist
2025 Median annual salary: $77k
The compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialist role is another significant space for human resources and organizational leadership professionals. These experts are in charge of studying insurance policies for employees, wellness programs, retirement benefits and accounts (such as IRAs or 401(k)s), and additional plans and procedures.
In addition, benefits and compensation specialists are often tasked with assessing and analyzing job descriptions, planning likely benefit packages allowed per position within the company.
9. Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
2025 Median annual salary: $82k
A chief executive officer, or CEO, is a familiar organizational leadership profession track; CEOs create systems and maneuvers to guarantee that a company reaches its goals. Suppose you start your own company and become a CEO. In that case, you’ll negotiate agreements, designate other executive leadership such as department heads, and recognize steps to reduce expenses and balance productivity and sustainability.
10. Nonprofit Executive Director
2025 Median annual salary: $112k
Nonprofit executive directors are comparable to CEOs except, as you can see, they manage nonprofit organizations. They oversee all the same duties as a CEO and make many of the same decisions. Still, the distinction is that they assess risk-reward, monetary goals, and business expansion in the circumstances of the nonprofit’s interests and mission. Information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that positions as uppermost directors, including nonprofit executive directors, will increase by 8% in the next five years, and this is approximately as quick as the average company.
11. Community Service Manager
2025 Median annual salary: $78k
Community service managers organize and oversee community service-based companies. For example, a community service manager at a neighborhood or public healthcare clinic will often control the variety of assistance offered by the clinic, including services like dental care, vision care, or pediatric healthcare. In addition, community service managers gather data regarding the benefits to ascertain the expanse and intensity of the influence the programs hold on their target market. Information obtained from the BLS predicts the community service manager position will increase by 18% over the next five years. The average annual salary range for a community service manager, according to salary.com, was $50,281 to $62,818 in 2019.
How to Advance Your Career in Organizational Leadership
While there’s no one-size-fits-all method for advancing your career in one of the discussed industries or positions, obtaining your master’s degree in organizational leadership will provide you with elevated training, knowledge, and talent in the areas of organizational growth, performance critique, management and teams, current administration difficulties, and additional subjects related to the profession. It will also help you match the qualifications needed to advance to more influential and higher paying positions.
Skills you’ll earn in PLNU’s organizational leadership program include:
- Management and leadership in corporate environments.
- Understanding of the multifaceted world of supervisory oversight.
- Knowledge about social, contextual, and personal forces in companies.
- A meticulous knowledge of the methods and intercommunications of a business.
- The capability to efficiently de-escalate and resolve workplace disagreements.
- An understanding of organizational behaviors, motivation, and psychology in the workplace.
- Experience to adequately manage elevated teams, departments, and staff.
- The knowledge of how to inspire a feeling of energy and leadership amongst the staff.
- A familiarity with the interconnectedness of demands and concerns of staff, administration, the public, and unions.
We also have optional concentrations to fit your goals:
PLNU's M.A. in Organizational Leadership program is designed to change the way you think about leadership and management. Through creative and innovative learning, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of who you are; analyze and reflect on how you think, interact with others, and lead in the workplace; and obtain leadership skills that apply both in your personal and professional life.