Frequently Asked Questions

Fees and attendance

The Organisational Fee is usually covered by your Organisation (unless you are paying for it yourself or have applied for funding). The Personal Fee is your own personal investment into the Program. This fee can be covered with a payment plan if required. A number of plans are available to assist you. Talk to us to find out more.

Some organisations may choose to cover both Organisational and Personal fees. 

The Program/Course fees covers all materials and catering during the sessions. The only element not covered is the cost of travel to and from experiences – we are not always at the same venue as we are often hosted by different organisations.

For the Signature Leadership Program, the Program Fee also covers all costs associated with the regional field trips including airfares, accommodation, transport to locations etc.

There are various different scholarships available, which are limited. We also offer payment plans. If you are in the position that you may require a scholarship, we would invite you to still apply and put in an application for a scholarship as well. To learn more about our scholarships, please call us on (08) 6381 6700.

Application process

The Signature Leadership Program is for executives that have been in a leadership position for a number of years, who have or have had experience managing a team and who can share their learnings with the cohort. As Signature addresses issues within WA, it’s anticipated the participants are in a position to be able to affect change. If you'd like to see a summary of the application form, click here.

The Rising Leadership Program gives you tools to develop yourself and others back in the workplace, particularly if you need to develop leadership skills because you have moved or are moving into a leadership position. This program is suitable for those who have had management or team leader responsibilities for a few years. If you'd like to see a summary of the application form, click here.

Our Program Managers are available to talk to you to help you determine which Program would be right for you.

We look for people of a similar level of experience and leadership standing in the workplace environment who will benefit from the Program as well as add value to it. Applicants apply online first and may then be asked to come in for an interview. The application processes for both the Signature and Rising Programs are competitive, as we carefully curate each Program to have diversity in gender, culture, and organisational (Government, not-for-profit, corporate, small business, sole traders etc) and to ensure participants are truly ‘right’ for each Program.

On completion of the online application form, you will receive instruction on booking in for an interview. After the interview, we will always let you know as soon as possible if you have been accepted into the Program so that you can plan your year ahead. However, as we seek to create diversity in each cohort, this might not happen quickly. It may take 1-3 months before we can confirm your place. We also receive more applications than positions available and so we seek your upfront commitment to stay for the whole program.

Our Signature and Rising Leadership Program cohorts are ‘curated’. By this we mean that we seek to bring together a cohort that is diverse, whether gender, cultural background, sector, industry or life experience. This approach ensures that each cohort year is unique and is designed to create the best possible mutual learning experience.

Given we tend to receive more applications than cohort spaces, we take into account what we see in your written application, your interview and your referees. We also consider whether the selected Program is right for you. We then deliberate on how you may fit into that particular cohort.

Sometimes, applicants are considered suitable for a Program, but we may have an over-representation from a certain sector, which means we may offer them a place in the following year.

Attending the Orientation and Closing Days for both Signature Leadership Program and Rising Leadership Program is mandatory as it creates the foundation and understanding of the whole program. It is obviously preferable to attend all Experiences, but we do understand that emergencies or work demands happen. We provide you a way to ‘make up’ for that missed Experience. You must attend a minimum of 80% of the Program/Course in order to graduate.

Because the Aspiring Leadership Course uses a different style of learning, it is important that you attend all four days. There is no opportunity to create make-up days.

Leadership WA has a strong social impact focus, and as such we usually attract applicants who are already invested in giving back to the community in various different ways. However, we also appreciate your vision and intent to make a greater contribution to the WA and we’d be happy to have a further chat.

We hold our experiences in different venues around the Perth metro area. We will always communicate to you well in advance where these will be, how to get to them and will supply you with maps and parking and travel information.

The Signature Program does have two 3-day field trips, typically to the Pilbara and the South-West. 

We would highly recommend that you wait until your current studies are completed, so that you can apply your full attention to the Program.

Program content

Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience and is more specifically defined as “learning through reflection on doing”. That’s different from rote learning, where you are more passive.

There is a small amount of pre-reading prior to each Experience and a survey/workbook following each Experience for you to understand your own learning. These will take however long you want to spend working on them. The more you put into the work, the more you will get out of the Program. There are no exams or essays!

The Rising Leadership Program also includes work on a Community Project that lasts the duration of the Program. You will have time to work on this during the Experiences, but some work outside of the Program days with your group will be required.

There are no exams or tests. Sometimes you may be asked to complete an online questionnaire but that will be to help you better understand yourself or others around you; there is usually pre-reading as well, but again this is to prepare yourself for the upcoming Experience and is usually used for group discussion. There will also be surveys post every experience where we ask you to reflect on your learnings / discoveries from the experience.

No. Each program is complete in itself and depends on building relationships with your cohort. We do not allow people to enter another program partway through as this disrupts both the learning and the relationships that are formed within each cohort. We also receive more applications than spaces available and so we seek your upfront commitment to stay for the whole program.