Randy White and Sandy Shullman feature the stories of three clients of the Executive Development Group in their article, “Build Leadership’s Tolerance for Ambiguity.” Read it all in this month’s CLO Magazine

We have a serious problem at the Food and Drug Administration and the President would like to know if you’d take over,” came the request in an after-hours phone call to cancer surgeon Andrew von Eschenbach in 2005.

Cathy Nash, had an enviable resume in banking when she was promoted by Citizens Republic Bank to CEO. A nice gig, but the only problem was the year: 2008. Citizens was under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and had acquired a less-than-stable real estate oriented thrift. Nash said yes to the promotion and TARP dropped in her lap.

Accepting ambiguity is tantamount to failure when your job is calculating the strength of vulcanized rubber at high speed on a freeway. But engineer Hervé Coyco had to accept the complexity, irrationality and emotionality of human organizations and, more so, consumers, when he advanced from leading a team of about 60 engineers to heading 60,000 for Michelin. Coyco took on—among other things—changing Michelin’s Car Tires business strategy worldwide.

What did they do? Read the full story, here.

For more information, contact the Executive Development Group..

Executive Development Group partners Lily Kelly-Radford and Sandra L. Shullman write in this month’s Chief Learning Officer Magazine about their teaching experience in Qatar’s first executive MBA program:

Late in 2010, The International Federation of Association Football announced that Qatar will host its World Cup tournament in 2022. Soccer fans were stunned. It’s not an understatement to say Qatar has not been a powerhouse in the sport. A few months later, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris), a business school ranked first in 2011 by the Financial Times, launched Qatar’s first executive MBA program, including a module on executive leadership. Learning executives were excited, but not surprised. Qatar is striving to become a leader in the region for global learning initiatives…

…How can learning executives help make corporate education an example for greater society? Consider:

Embracing diversity: Being mindful at all times of gender, ethnicity and culture isn’t about being politically correct; it’s related to the curriculum. It also can be a way to lead by example. It can help to be open and ask for feedback from a local resident to learn how to “show up” or participate respectfully in his or her culture.

Learning from students: Schedule time for students to share how their personal experiences relate to their goals in the learning process. This can be as important as course evaluations in any efforts to enhance or improve the program. It is also a way to improve teaching agility and examine or focus on a topic from multiple perspectives.

Being immersed in the local society: Become an active learner by making a point to master regional protocol and local news to be better informed and more sensitive to student experiences in the classroom.

Including topical issues in the coursework: Don’t hesitate to address world politics and current events as they relate to business leadership and strategies. Encourage ethics-based decisions and conscientious solutions.

Read the article here.

Our global business continues to keep us busy in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

I’ve been a surgeon for eight years. For the past couple of them, my performance in the operating room has reached a plateau. I’d like to think it’s a good thing—I’ve arrived at my professional peak. But mainly it seems as if I’ve just stopped getting better. —Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1Zvwelyd2

Dr. Randall P. White describes India as an emerging meritocracy in a side bar to the cover story, “How Indian Firms Beat the World,” this month in Talent Management.

Executive Development Group is currently providing executive education in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“…India is a fascinating crucible for what could become a true meritocracy.

Perhaps what the West can most effectively learn, in an immediately practical way, is:

• People who live in emerging economies see learning—and learning fast—as a primary competitive advantage.

• Knowledge-based reward and advancement may improve the work environment by diminishing the cult of personality.

• A corporation that believes in its learning initiatives can become a true meritocracy.

• The West needs to reevaluate and invest in education at every level long before graduates arrive at the corporation.

• For the near term, US corporations need to take on a retraining role, taking on people who come of age in an era of educational mediocrity. In the longer term, corporations will need to help any number of stakeholders revamp the US educational system.”

Read the entire article here.

Here’s an excellent interview with our friend and colleague Liz Mellon, speaking about her book Inside the Leader’s Mind.

Thinkers 50.

There is a great deal of leadership development work to be done in emerging markets, especially China. The work is demanding, reasonably lucrative, and fun. I find our time and counsel to be in demand with classrooms full of committed, motivated, and affable learners.

As a child of the Cold War, the concept of mutually assured destruction has lately become an almost quaint linguistic relic along the lines of duck and cover, made popular in civil defense films. The 1960s policy of allowing opposing sides to have enough weapons to annihilate each other to create a stalemate was intended to give us a nervously ambiguous peace between East and West.

Today’s chessboard pitting the former Soviet-bloc superpowers against the US and its allies is, for now, commerce. And the term I’ve coined to describe the engagement is Mutually Assured Success. It has an intriguing ring of counter-intuitive logic. If both sides are successful, where’s the competition? I’m not sure. But the stakes are different, and the work at hand is compelling.

China is so heavily invested in the U.S. economy that it’s in their interest for the U.S. to succeed and give them a pay-off. And, they’re determined to bring their economy to the next plateau, from low-end manufacturing and commodities to high-end durable goods, technology, and services. We want China to excel, even if it’s at our economic peril for the short term. And the end game is market domination. Despite what is sure to become ferocious competition, we need China as much as China needs us. In fact, right now, they own us.

This year, we’ve done business in the Middle East, South Africa, India, and China. What strikes me most about this up-tick in work is, as American leadership educators, we are in such demand. The leadership methods we’ve developed and exported are now considered a standard in business schools abroad.

How can Western leadership teachers and coaches engage in emerging markets, and what do they need to make the cut? When we take our executive education curricula to China, we find a few unexpected dynamics.

International executives are commonly advised to adapt to local customs, and in the case of U.S. business people, this usually means showing more respect, restraint and humility. But if you’re teaching leadership, you can check your acquiescence at the door.

My Chinese hosts and the European program staff expressed—in so many words—that they want undiluted Western leadership. They don’t want cultural sensitivity. It’s as if they’re saying, “We’re buying you, and that’s what we want. We expect you to be your best and to teach us the way you would teach Westerners.” Of course, I’m enough of a realist to think they’re looking for where we go wrong!

Bring plenty of stamina because the days are long. Any introverts in your ranks should be prepared to get out of their comfort zone because there are equal parts of relationship building outside the classroom.

Essentially, you get to be Western all day in class—with simultaneous translation at every step of the way—but in the evening, as you get scheduled for dinners that you didn’t know you were having, socializing is expected and you end up being “teacher” over meals and drinks. There’s a lot of pressure be “on” even when you’re off. We might assume that there’s some degree of pressure from higher ups for young executives to learn all they can in any and every way they can.

History shows that Asian nations are experienced at “adapt, adopt and improve” as they emulate successful business systems and improve them to define new levels of excellence and best practices. As China adopts Western leadership methodologies, they already benefit from jumping aboard after a great deal of evolution and advancement has occurred, from command-and-control to today’s participatory styles.

This, however, raises a challenge for the average Chinese executive who has grown up under the ultimate command-and-control, that of a once closed communist state.

Still, my students, the most promising in their organizations—admittedly, mostly upper middle class—are well educated and well traveled. So their Westernization makes a more democratic workplace a little more accessible than it might be to a less advantaged Chinese citizen or even older generations within the organization.

If you’re looking to expand your leadership practice to China, consider four points:
• They want Western. Don’t give them Western lite. European education is common among most people you will teach, and they’re eager to emulate how “we” do it.
• Feedback is the one area that might be challenging, because of language and cultural differences. Have a translator for every conversation. Some instruments, like FIRO-B, have been recently translated to Mandarin.
• Prepare for long days, but expect a lot of polite curiosity about your work outside of class. They do “want Western” but Eastern social customs still compel you to socialize as an extension of business.
• Remember “lead time” doesn’t translate well in China. The population of China is so much more vast than the US or European nations. This creates a sense of there’s always someone else who can do it now. So respond fast!

As a social scientist, I’m intrigued by what the Chinese version of Western leadership will become. Will they do to our human systems of organizations what Japan did to Henry Ford’s assembly line, making a new, more nimble and facile organization? Then, maybe we can learn from them.

Mutually Assured Success should appeal to any leadership professional as a means of improving global management and securing work for all of us. But can a focus on the principles of participatory leadership and learning organizations play a role in political and social dynamics? Is leadership development a democratizing process?
Whether your interest is international business or international leadership development, watch closely, because I expect the questions will be answered soon.

There’s a homecoming this week that’s bringing coaches, teachers, authors, psychologists, statisticians and curriculum specialists to Greensboro, North Carolina, USA…including some of our staff.

The Center for Creative Leadership is celebrating its 40^th year of existence and current and former associates will be reacquainting at the place that not only gave many of us our start in the business of developing leaders, but also helped define an internationally recognized focus on psychologically based executive education.

Lately, we’ve been writing about trends in emerging markets outside the US. Much of this is being carried out by the Center itself and its affiliates. But also, the concepts and principles that originated at CCL are the basis for uncountable independent consultancies and some of the most respected business schools in the world.

We recognize CCL for being the knowledge center that gave a platform to hundreds of people in the development of 360 feedback, personality assessments and executive coaching, who might otherwise have had to find other endeavors. The faculty and staff of the Center benefited as much as the participants. Over half of Executive Development Group came from The Center for Creative Leadership and it’s hard to read a book or a scholarly article on executive education that doesn’t have a CCL footnote.

After the formal ceremony and some more personal gatherings, we’ll be taking it back on the road to Houston with HEC and Abu Dhabi with Duke CE.

Thank you, Center for Creative Leadership.

It’s estimated that only 30% of the Fortune 100 conduct board evaluations. A board evaluation is exactly the kind of due diligence that Senator Sarbanes and Congressman Oxley had in mind when they affixed their names to one of the most important American legislation acts of this century. The downside comes when a seriously negative evaluation obligates the board to remove a member, since the evaluation process is essentially an audit.

We’re one of a few leadership consultancies that offer this specialized service and we’ve seen it have positive results by creating more effective board organizations. The process we use is similar to our executive coaching methodology.

Since Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t require board evaluations, but does hold firms accountable for action if they do conduct evaluations, it’s a tough sell.

But what if boards took a developmental approach to evaluations like most Executive Development Group clients? Why shouldn’t directors have the opportunity to improve their effectiveness with data through work with an executive coach to be better in their interpersonal and collaborative skills?

Marjorie Chan, writing in the Journal of Leadership, Accountability & Ethics (Nov. 2009)  surveyed 16 Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 firms…

“Neither the Sarbanes-Oxley Act nor the exchanges require the performance evaluation and removal of weak directors. It was reported that only 30% of the boards evaluate individual members (Hymowitz & Lublin, 2003). Participants were asked to express their views on this issue. All 17 interviewees agreed that board evaluations, either formal or informal, should be done. All participating organizations, except for two, conduct board evaluations on a regular basis. Three emphasized that the issue revolves around the decision with respect to what evaluation process to use rather than whether or not the boards are evaluated.”

In our experience, helping low-performing directors should be seen as a development opportunity and by developing the director toward improvement, the board demonstrates a high degree of commitment to the shareholders.

In this month’s CLO magazine:

It’s nice to be needed. There’s been an uptick recently in coaching and executive education engagements in South Africa, India, France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and, ever so gradually, the United States. Organizations are rethinking their business strategies after the financial collapse.

However, ambiguity abounds. There is an obvious tension — as if “nervous” is the new “strategic.” Management wants results quickly, with a heightened financial vigilance and intensified ROI expectations. We’ve watched participants text reviews of our performance during the sessions. One bad day in class and summary dismissal looms. Read full article here.

We’re seeing greater demands on executive education, but the good news is, businesses that are rebounding seem to acknowledge the role of learning.

Our coaching and classroom engagements during this quarter are taking us to England, Spain, France, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, India and South Africa. Given the United States’ role in the 2008 financial crisis, our role as AMERICAN executive development professionals gives us a little more baggage. Especially when our learners are bankers, as many of our clients are.

Dubai from space. Thanks, NASA!

It’s encouraging to note that many of the smaller banks outside of Europe and the US are finding themselves in fairly stable situations with promising opportunity, following the well-deserved dressing down (followed by an arguably undeserved bailing-out) of Western financiers. As executive coaches we’re also thrilled that financial clients around the world are investing in learning initiatives and leadership development.

Should I be surprised when the first eager question I get from an Indian executive is, “will we be covering ethics”?