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Part III: Teaching Leadership: Approaches that Emphasize Doing

Chapter 6: Leadership Effectiveness and Development: Building Self-Awareness and Insight Skills

Jeffrey Anderson and Stacey R. Kole (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)*

1. Introduction

At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, our focus in the required leadership curriculum is

to enhance self-awareness and to teach students how to learn the “right” lessons from experience. This

approach is based on experience in laboratory classes that reveals the importance of, and difficulty with,

translating knowledge into the appropriate leadership actions as well as a substantial body of literature in

psychology on self-assessment and its systematic biases. Students’ self-interest (manifest in the desire for

personal and professional success) ensures a high level of engagement in skill development that helps

establish a routine for learning from experience.

Now in its third decade as the only mandatory course in the MBA curriculum, the Leadership

Effectiveness and Development (LEAD) course deploys second-year MBA students to “teach” in a

unique facilitator role combining course design and delivery through instruction, experiential learning,

and one-on-one coaching. Positioned at the start of the MBA experience, first-year MBA students are

guided through a series of modules and events that culminate in customized development plans that

highlight opportunities for skill development during the two-year MBA experience and beyond. A

successful LEAD experience is encapsulated by the student who has developed an accurate view of her

strengths and development needs and who has learned how to gain actionable insight from experience in

an unbiased and replicable way.

* We thank Selwyn Becker, Chris Collins, Harry Davis, Linda Ginzel and Alice Obermiller for their feedback: their

insights sharpened our thinking and this piece.

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2. Foundations of LEAD

2.1 Research on Self -Awareness

Decades of psychological research documents that self-assessments can be flawed, and that

misperceptions of self adversely affect decision making and individual effectiveness. Dunning, Heath,

and Taylor (2004) summarize the evidence of the literature in the fields of health, education and the

workplace and find that “[p]eople’s self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship to their actual

behavior and performance.” In fact, the potential impact of these misperceptions is so significant that

organizations have created extensive processes to correct for the expected distortions. Dunning et al.

highlight the fact that at senior levels of organizations, where key decisions on strategic direction are

being made by individuals for whom candid, independent feedback is rare, the risk of missteps due to

distorted perceptions of one’s abilities is particularly severe. These findings underscore the importance of

developing an accurate self view early in one’s career and maintaining it over time by engraining learning

habits that are not dependent on the formal processes of an organization.

2.2 Underpinning of Experiential Learning at Chicago

Recognizing that business schools can play a role in shaping self-awareness, faculty members Harry

Davis and Robin Hogarth posed two questions of business educators in their 1992 working paper entitled

“Rethinking Management Education: A View from Chicago.” First, Davis and Hogarth asked, “how can

we enable students to achieve exceptionally high levels of performance on a consistent basis?” and

second, “how can we add value to students in a way that endures throughout their careers?” To answer

these questions, Davis and Hogarth describe a means of systematically developing students’ ability to

learn and grow from experience in a way that allows for insights that enable action.

Figure 6.1 reproduces a schematic that Davis and Hogarth used to illustrate their “Chicago approach” to

leadership development. The hashed box encompasses an individual’s conceptual expertise and domain

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knowledge on which decisions are made. Collectively, these areas of expertise connote the content

knowledge and organizational understanding embodied in a decision-maker. These resources are critical

to sound decision making but without the ability to articulate the connection between actions and

outcomes through goal setting, persuasion and collaborative skills, an individual’s ability to successfully

drive results to achieve a stated outcome are lessened. In this way, though necessary, conceptual and

domain knowledge alone are not sufficient for effective leadership.

FIGURE 6.1: Translating knowledge and action to desired outcomes.

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In graduate business education, students bring domain knowledge from their work experience and from

the research on industries and companies. Conceptual knowledge is developed through the MBA

curriculum: at Chicago, a discipline-based approach to management education teaches a deep

understanding of economics, psychology, sociology, statistics and accounting enables students to see the

fundamental elements of, and develop solutions for, complex business problems. Davis and Hogarth

stressed the importance of creating opportunities in MBA education to learn about the process of

translating these two components of knowledge into action. These translational skills involve both the

ability to perform in different settings (action skills) and the awareness to select the appropriate behaviors

and strategies in a given setting (insight skills.) From a curricular perspective, this requires that students

are open to feedback and willing to participate in an engaged way, and it requires of the learning

environment frequent, specific, and actionable feedback as well as a rehearsal and performance space

where students can do, receive constructive feedback, and do again.

Just as seeing the right solution is not the same as implementing that solution, the acquisition of insight is

far from automatic. It depends on our ability to learn generalizable lessons from experience. In an

employer-employee relationship, for a host of reasons (see Dunning et al., 2004, p.91) much of the

feedback offered can convey the wrong lessons or reinforce inaccurate beliefs of personal effectiveness.

For this reason, Davis and Hogarth suggested that business schools go beyond their traditional role in

teaching conceptual knowledge to help students develop this critical, career-long skill.

Their notion of business schools as a laboratory “in which students experiment and practice action and

insight skills without downside risks to their careers” spurred curricular innovation across areas.1 At the

1This model spurred the creation of a variety of laboratory courses at Chicago Booth. In the mid-1990s, Selwyn

Becker, Professor of Psychology and Quality at Chicago Booth, wrote about his efforts to create one such course on

Total Quality. His thinking was influenced by the transition he had made in a course on Small Group Dynamics –

from a traditional lecture format to one that was almost entirely experiential. In designing the new course, Selwyn

said “if we talked about and discussed culture change we would teach students how to talk about culture and culture

change, but not how to do anything about it.”

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core of the laboratory experience was the requirement that “fellow students, faculty, and staff provide

frequent feedback, untainted by the personal or political factors within an organization.”

3. Leadership Effectiveness and Development (LEAD) Program

The LEAD Program was created in 1989 as an outgrowth of Davis’s and Hogarth’s thinking. Today, the

LEAD Program bridges the knowing and doing dimensions of the leadership framework outlined in

Chapter 1 by engaging students in a variety of hands-on exercises designed to provide them with an

accurate view of their strengths and developmental needs, and guiding them to accurately process

feedback from various sources. The program raises a figurative mirror for students (using tools including

360 appraisals, videotaped interactions, and standardized assessment instruments) to enable them to see

and hear what others observe; this mirror reveals clues regarding their impact on, and effectiveness with,

those with whom they interact. LEAD also challenges each student to reflect on what they are learning

and to set a personalized plan for continued professional development. While at Booth, these plans may

guide the choices students make about course selection, co-curricular involvement, and other optional

activities. Ultimately, however, the responsibility to become more insightful and to develop in critical

areas rests with each student.

The next section details the current components of LEAD. It is important to note that the structure and

governance of LEAD intentionally embeds experimentation, tinkering and fresh looks at the course’s

content and delivery. Elements of today’s LEAD are rooted in earlier ideas and executions and it is this

institutionalized fluidity that guarantees that the course will change form while holding fast to the

underpinning Davis and Hogarth set for LEAD.

3.1 Program Components

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The LEAD program is the only required class in the Chicago Booth curriculum and the only cohort-based

course in the full-time MBA program2. Unlike the typical course at Chicago Booth which fits within the

University’s quarter system of 11-week sessions, LEAD begins with summer assignments and runs

through the first half of students’ first quarter on campus.

3.1.1 Summer Pre-work

In preparation for the course, students complete a series of assignments (detailed below) that carry

forward prior experiences and insights from professional settings into LEAD. These assignments are

designed to initiate a process of reflection wherein students explore their leadership style, motivations,

and actions. Assignments are completed roughly three weeks prior to the start of Orientation (a two

week-long period held before the academic year begins) thus enabling the LEAD coaches and student

instructors to familiarize themselves with the students and provide a more customized learning

experience.

The following three areas are covered in summer pre-work for LEAD:

A 360 degree evaluation that collects confidential feedback from an average of 10 -15 people

who know the student well, and who the student feels will provide candid input. The evaluators

offer feedback on critical leadership competencies – relationship building, communication,

personal integrity, teamwork, problem solving, interpersonal style and strategic thinking. Students

are encouraged to select raters who have had the opportunity to observe the student over time,

preferably in multiple roles or on different types of projects. In addition, the assignment directs

students to build a diverse pool of evaluators consisting of subordinates, superiors, peers and

external constituents (such as customers or suppliers.)

2 For an overview of the structure and philosophy of the curriculum and MBA experience at Chicago Booth, see S.

Datar and D. Garvin, “University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, HBS Case N9-308-059, 2008.

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A survey designed to collect the students’ thoughts about leadership – e.g., the attributes that they

admire in a leader. The results are aggregated for the entire class and, during the introductory

session of LEAD, common themes in student responses are discussed as well as how the results

vary based on industry experience, gender and cultural background. The central tendencies of the

MBA student responses are also compared to research results for non-MBA populations. This

discussion begins a process in which students are asked to “step outside” themselves (and their

beliefs and biases) to see leadership through the eyes of those they wish to lead.

Personality characteristics are measured using standardized instruments including the Myers-

Briggs Type Indicator and the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Style Indicator. Information from these

metrics is used as a benchmark for beginning conversations with students about their personal

style and how they interact with others.

3.1.2 Immersion Retreat

The class begins with a three day-two night retreat called the Leadership Outdoor Experience, or LOE, at

a resort about 100 miles from Chicago. From the perspective of students, this outing is seen as part of

Orientation. The event intentionally removes students from the familiar and places them all in a new

setting with minimal outside distraction. The change of scenery signals a new beginning in a setting

surrounded by colleagues and second-year MBA students who act as leaders of the multi-day event. Over

time, we have found that the setting has a meaningful impact on the ability of students to get to know

their new colleagues and begin their guided self-discovery process in a fun and interactive manner.

While at LOE, the students participate in relationship-building activities, improvisation exercises

designed to get students comfortable with a highly-participatory learning environment, ropes courses

intended to offer personal challenge and an opportunity for group cohesion, and social events that

encourage learning about one another. To facilitate the administration of the program and to build trust

and familiarity that is critical for giving and receiving feedback, the student body is divided into ten

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cohorts of 55-60 students and, within each cohort, into squads of 7-8 students. Students first meet their

cohort-mates at LOE and for the majority of their “work” time in LEAD, students are either with their

squad or cohort exclusively.

3.1.3 LEAD Coursework

In the six weeks following LOE, students participate in seven three-hour class sessions. LEAD

coursework is complete by the end of the fourth week of Autumn Quarter.

Foundations of Leadership – This session is an introductory discussion about leadership, first

impressions and career derailment risks. During the module, students receive a synthesis of their

360 evaluations as well as an initial impression description completed by their squad mates at the

conclusion of the Immersion Retreat. To draw out the most important lessons from these sources

of feedback, students work within their squads and discuss the following types of questions:

o What was the biggest surprise in your feedback? Where is your self-evaluation most out

of sync with the feedback from your raters?

o How does the feedback from people who have worked with you for an extended period of

time differ from those who just met you?

o Are you projecting the type of initial image you desire?

o What derailment risks does the feedback identify for you (i.e., what skills/behaviors are

likely to hold you back or cause your career to plateau)?

o What were your five highest and five lowest average scores? What does this profile say

about you?

Personality and Work Style – Using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, this module helps

students understand how they gather information, make decisions and interact with others. The

focus is on how to use the information contained in this indicator in a business setting to enhance

communications and deliver improved outcomes. For example, each squad is asked to construct

and deliver a short sales presentation to persons with differing personalities. The module also

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explores how personality preferences affect the type of behaviors students’ value in others and

underscores the importance of developing a variety of interpersonal approaches.

Group Process – During this activity, teams of students are given a challenging task and are

videotaped as they work on the assignment. The group then reviews the recording and students

are asked to tally the number of times they speak and the nature of their contributions (initiating,

challenging, supporting, and facilitating). This data allow each student to “see,” in an objective

manner, the role that they play in group settings. By aggregating the data for the entire group, the

concept of the group’s dynamics – for example, did a few people dominate the discussion? how

did the group make decisions? who emerged as the leader and why?—unfolds. At the conclusion

of the module, each student has a one-on-one session with a facilitator who offers his assessment

of the student’s effectiveness in the group setting and strategies for enhancing individual

effectiveness where appropriate.

Interpersonal Communications – This session allows students to assess their communications

skills and “executive presence” – posture, eye contact, vocal quality and variety, gestures,

listening, etc. Through a variety of exercises, students have a chance to practice each element and

receive feedback from the facilitators and their classmates. During this module, students are also

asked to deliver feedback to one of their squad mates (based on their observations in the

preceding classroom sessions). The use of “real” input allows students to hone their ability to

offer actionable feedback (and to receive feedback on their effectiveness at offering feedback.).

Conflict Management – This module examines conflict through the lens of the Thomas-Kilmann

Instrument (TKI) with the goals of enabling students to understand their preference in dealing

with conflict and its impact, as well as how to recognize and work with other styles to resolve

conflict more effectively. Specifically, students record how they perceive that they would react to

a series of professional conflict scenarios, and then discuss their approaches in small groups. The

facilitators use the following types of questions to help students better understand how their

default style manifests itself in real situations as well as the advantages and limitations:

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o What influences you to react in the way that you do?

o When have you tried other approaches? What happened?

o What would it take for you to approach the situation differently?

o Are you overusing a particular conflict resolution style? What are the implications?

Audience Captivation Training – This session applies the communication skills introduced in

Interpersonal Communications to more formal, public speaking settings. Each student is given

three opportunities to deliver a speech on a topic of her choice, to view the performance and to

receive feedback from facilitators and a group of their peers on perceived effectiveness. This

process (perform, review and critique, then try again) allows students to quickly incorporate

feedback, and evaluate its impact. Specifically, students are able to see how modifying their

behavior impacts their effectiveness as a speaker.3

Decisions & Integrity – Through surveys and discussion of cases, this module helps student gain

an understanding of how they think about sensitive and ethically complicated business issues (and

how others approach the same issue). The focus is on identifying potential biases and tendencies

in decision making.

At the conclusion of each classroom session, students are asked to answer 3-4 questions to draw out

lessons learned about themselves – their strengths and key developmental needs. Reflection of this type

has two purposes. First, it captures the students’ thoughts when they are fresh and it challenges them to

translate experience into specific and actionable insights. It also provides data for students who prefer to

process the experience in private. Different formats for reflection – small group discussions, class-wide

3Anecdotally, it is common to hear during mid-summer discussions with rising second-year MBA students that they

use this process in preparing for presentations for summer internships. Specifically, ad hoc groups form regionally

with classmates independent of industry or internship function. So it is fair to assume that for some participants, this

module establishes a routine for translating insight into action.

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recaps, and individual, written exercises—are used throughout the course and enables students to identify

which, if any, format they prefer.

At the end of the program, all of the written observations are consolidated and serve as a reference for

students as they prepare a draft Personal Development Plan. With help of facilitators and staff coaches,

these drafts are reviewed and refocused to prioritize areas of developmental opportunity for each student.

3.1.4. Cohort Events

LEAD concludes with two events that engage a subset of the first year class from each of the ten cohorts:

LEADership Challenge – One hundred students (ten from each cohort) are selected by their

peers to compete in a day-long case challenge judged by dozens of Chicago Booth alumni who

hold senior leadership positions in their firms. When making their selections, we ask students to

evaluate their classmates on:

o The leadership and interpersonal skills that they have displayed throughout the program.

o Their openness to an intense and challenging experience that involves candid feedback

from distinguished business leaders.

o Their ability to work within a team and with a partner in an unpredictable setting.

Each cohort team rotates through five different cases designed to test the leadership and

interpersonal skills discussed during the classroom sessions (e.g., dealing with an unhappy client,

bringing together a management team in conflict, bridging cultural differences to advance a

corporate priority, etc.) The event serves to underscore the routine of learning from experience

by simulating real-world leadership challenges and boss-like evaluators in a feedback-rich

environment.

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In 2010, the event was expanded to include a business crisis simulation. In this scenario, teams of

students work together over several hours to navigate issues that arise in an intense, fast moving

crisis (regulatory and legal issues, media relations, customer management, continuity of

operations, etc.). The goal of the business crisis simulation is to test students’ teamwork,

communication and decision making skills in an unfamiliar and dynamic setting.4

Golden Gargoyles – The capstone experience within LEAD, Golden Gargoyles is the awards

ceremony that recognizes the creative output of the cohorts. Early in the series of LEAD

modules, the cohorts are tasked with producing a short film highlighting some aspect of life at

Chicago Booth as well as 30-second commercial promoting a product for the sponsoring

organization. The films are shown at a school-wide awards ceremony and the winners are

recognized in categories such as Best Use of the Entire Cohort, Best Incorporation of Faculty and

Staff, and Best Overall Film. In addition to providing an enjoyable, high-energy end to the LEAD

experience, this event showcases the creativity and teamwork skills of each of the cohorts, and

helps to reinforce the unique culture and community at Chicago Booth.

3.2 Facilitating Feedback

When creating LEAD, the faculty at Chicago Booth decided to tap students first as co-creators, and then

as co-instructors, of a course that was intended to make the acquisition of insight skills both contemporary

and meaningful for students. Rather than rely exclusively on faculty as the experts who design and deliver

the course, the vision for LEAD was one that recognized that students could play a central role in the

development of learning routines that would more closely match how graduates develop post-MBA. In

4 The business crisis simulation is a perfect illustration of the fluidity of the content of LEAD discussed in Section 2.

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this way, LEAD is unique at Chicago Booth: second-year students, elders in the MBA setting, are tapped

as observers, content designers, presenters, facilitators of in-class discussions, and personal coaches.

Each year, the LEAD program is evaluated and redesigned anew, then delivered by 40 second year MBA

students (referred to formally as LEAD Facilitators, less formally as Facils.)5 Selected shortly after the

LEAD class ends, Facilitators enroll in a class during the Spring Quarter of their first year that prepares

them to step into their multi-faceted role. The course requires students to research the content in the

LEAD class to create rich and robust classroom experiences. Specifically, teams of Facilitators working

closely with staff coaches reexamine each module, revise the content and experiential learning activities

based upon student feedback and their own research and experiences, and customize the presentations

with personal stories and experiences. In this way, the content and discussions are grounded in ways that

make them immediately relevant to the students.

Since Facilitators are introduced to incoming MBA students at a time when, due to scheduling, there are

few student-elders available, Facilitators play a key role with the initial assimilation of first-year students

into the Booth community. Each Facilitator is assigned 14-16 students to “mentor” through the program.

They work closely with their assigned student-mentees during classroom activities and actively engage

them through private, one-on-one meetings. This structure ensures that all students have an elder vested

in their learning and development.

The intentional use of peers to deliver the program plays an important role in skill assessment and content

delivery. Facilitators enable the School to:

5The selection process for facilitators described in Section 3.3.3 is among the most competitive selection processes

for a leadership position within the full-time MBA program.

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Leverage the knowledge and experience of a small number of professional coaches to manage the

peak-load challenge of interacting with and coaching more than 560 students simultaneously.

More specifically, it engages the entire first year class at the very beginning of their MBA

experience – a critical inflection point in their professional lives—with specific and actionable

feedback.

Foster a feedback-rich environment. Facilitators help to create a safe environment that

encourages personal disclosure, experimentation and shared learning.

Take a fresh, critical look at all aspects of the course – schedule, content, activities, etc.—each

year. Their “ownership” of the course is consistent with Chicago Booth’s value to challenge

established wisdom and helps ensure that the topics and approach of LEAD remain relevant.

Observe each student in a variety of situations. These observations become the data on which

actionable feedback is based and on which insight skills are built. The most powerful insights

have been gained when students receive consistent feedback across settings about their behavior

and its impact.

3.3 The Student Experience

At Chicago Booth, we use a variety of approaches to gauge the effectiveness of the LEAD programming

and to better understand the experience of students. All students offer written feedback at the close of

each LEAD session; this feedback is shared with the Facilitators and staff coaches and is summarized for

the next generation of Facilitators. First-year students also complete the School’s standard course

evaluation form at the completion of the course. Completion rates for the class session and end-of-course

surveys are near 100 percent. These evaluations address the effectiveness of the instructors as well as the

perceived usefulness of the content delivered. Over the last three academic years, the course evaluations

of the LEAD class outperform the average Chicago Booth course.

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The School also gathers student input on a wide range of topics (including LEAD and other leadership

development programming) as a part of a comprehensive year-end surveys administered by the Deputy

Dean for the Full-time MBA Program at the end of students’ first and second year of study (80-85 percent

of students completing these surveys). Feedback in these surveys comes both in the form of quantitative

assessments of different aspects of student life and in the form of qualitative comments which students

offer in response to open-ended questions that elicit the best aspects of their year and the areas where the

School has the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Finally, to assess whether students incorporate their learning from LEAD when they return to the work

setting, roundtable conversations with rising second-year students (with approximately 40 percent of the

class participating) at the mid-point of their summer experience and conversations with dozens of

company representatives add texture to the School’s understanding of the value generated by LEAD and

other academic coursework. Although less systematic, this anecdotal evidence affirms that students draw

on their LEAD coursework during their summers and express appreciation for having had the opportunity

to practice their skills in a low-stakes environment.

3.3.1 The LEAD Facilitator Experience

Each year, more than 100 students enter the selection process to become a LEAD Facilitator. The

decision to apply is jointly a statement about the student’s desire to contribute to the evolution of LEAD

and to continue his development as a leader. All applicants go through an intense, multi-step screening

process designed to assess their skills including:

The ability to form effective working relationships.

Openness to challenging feedback.

Commitment in a fast paced and ambiguous environment.

The ability to model the types of skills discussed throughout LEAD.

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Effective facilitation skills.

At its core, the Facilitator program is a classic action learning model that spans two academic quarters

across the first and second year of the MBA. The 40 students selected are divided into squads of eight and

are given overall responsibility for managing the classroom experience for two cohorts (approximately

110-120 students). Each facilitator serves on 4-5 different teams, each responsible for designing and

delivering a classroom session or major event. While each team has a coach to serve as an observer and

advisor, the teams are given considerable autonomy. They elect a leader, set the agenda, decide how they

will operate, and are allowed to struggle – the experience of having to work with and influence peers with

widely varying personalities is one of the most powerful parts of the experience. It is intentionally

designed to mimic the matrix environment used by global business organizations.

The Facilitator experience contains a number of structural elements designed to drive and enrich the

learning experience:

Each Facilitator is assigned a coach to work with throughout the experience. The coach meets

regularly with their mentees to discuss their development objectives, to provide independent

feedback and real-time coaching on team and individual effectiveness issues.

Team members provide formal written feedback to each other twice during the two quarter

experience.

The entire group of 40 comes together twice per week in the Spring Quarter to handle

administrative matters and to receive training on topics like facilitation skills, classroom

management and team dynamics.

After the first quarter, each Facilitator submits an insight paper outlining what he learned about

himself, identifying areas for additional work in the second quarter.

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Facilitators play an active role in recruiting and evaluating the succeeding group of facilitators.

This helps with the transmission of informal knowledge.

The Facilitator experience ends with each facilitator submitting a legacy letter containing insights and

advice for the succeeding group.

3.3.2 First-year Students who participate in The LEADership Challenge

The annual LEADership Challenge competition enables selected first-year MBA students to showcase

their leadership and interpersonal skills in front of distinguished alumni judges. This is both a humbling

and energizing experience, and is quite different from the typical case challenge which involves analyzing

a business problem. In LEADership challenge cases, students analyze a situation and then enact their

preferred solution in a realistic role play.

Logistically, each participant operates within a team of ten. While each team member participates in only

one challenge, the team helps to prepare and support individual performers. Each participant works with

at least one partner during the actual role play. Invariably, the students must quickly decide how to react

to situations such as when a partner is struggling or whose approach is failing, when a partner decides to

dominate the conversation or deviate from a previously agreed-upon strategy or when the situation moves

in an unanticipated direction. The students grapple with questions like -- How do you intervene in a way

that is positive and helpful? How do you assert your views and get an opportunity to showcase your

skills? How do you coordinate actions with someone you may have never worked with before?

Finally, the cases are designed to replicate the competing forces that tug at leaders every day. In one case,

a student assumes the role of the newly designated CEO of a struggling company owned by a private

equity firm. The company has been experiencing extreme performance and liquidity challenges. In the

first meeting with her new leadership team, the student knows that the banks and sponsors are expecting

the meeting to deliver a realistic and achievable budget. While all of the attention seems to be on gaining

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agreement on the budget, the judges assess how well the students balance the need to complete this

specific task with the objective of getting to know their new team members and setting the proper tone for

working together prospectively.

3.3.3 First-year Students

For the majority of students, LEAD ends with a series of adjournment meetings after the final learning

module. Looking at this group, their experiences do not fall into neat, easily differentiated categories. For

illustrative purposes, we highlight a few examples of insights gained through LEAD:

SCENARIO 1: A young woman enters LEAD convinced (despite what she had written in her admissions

essays) that she was not a leader. In her mind, a leader has the answer and is an extraverted, assertive

member of a group. What became obvious to her through the team-based activities in LEAD was that she

had the ability to draw out all of the members of her team and to provide structure that kept the group

moving without stifling creativity. She had a positive, engaging style that allowed her to manage some

tough, outspoken team members and to influence them positively in a subtle manner. She knew when

(and how) to offer her ideas and when to let others dictate the direction. Still, she was surprised when her

peers and the student facilitators told her that she was the “glue of the team,” and that they looked to her

to provide leadership and direction. Over time, she better understood, and learned to leverage, the unique

skills that she had always possessed. The experience changed not only how she viewed herself but how

she thought about her future.

SCENARIO 2: Imagine a bright, driven, and extremely detail-oriented young man who came to Chicago

Booth from a role where all of his colleagues had similar backgrounds and styles. Based on his

professional experiences, he placed a high value on a narrow set of attributes, and adopted a bias that

undervalued differing styles. During the sessions on personality preferences and conflict management, his

beliefs about the characteristics of successful individuals were challenged. This realization stayed with

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him throughout his first year and he found himself thinking about diversity as he formed study groups and

led student group initiatives. Over time, he found himself seeking out complimentary styles and

consciously incorporating them into his teams. Interestingly, he also discovered that he could access

previously underused aspects of his personality that allowed him to connect effectively with almost

anyone. These insights enabled him to develop into a universally respected and highly effective student

leader.

SCENARIO 3: Consider a young woman regarded in her personal interactions as intelligent, generous

and caring but whose professional reputation was as an overly serious and at times “mean” colleague. She

was devastated when, at the end of the Immersion Retreat, she received feedback from her new

classmates that she was distant and difficult to engage. Almost immediately, she sought the help of one of

the program’s coaches to work on her “presence”. She made a commitment to smile and consciously

project a positive, optimistic air. These relatively simple actions quickly changed how others reacted to

her. In addition, her focus on how others received her altered in a positive way both her outlook and

resiliency.

Each year yields new and different examples. The point is that the variety and flexibility of the LEAD

experience gives all students the freedom to find the place, the content or the relationships that are the

most valuable for them. One of the major strengths of LEAD is that it does not prescribe or advocate a

single path or approach. Instead, LEAD challenges each student to chart her course and to take ownership

for her development experience.

4. Challenges for LEAD and Chicago Booth

4.1 Continuing the Lessons of LEAD Beyond the Class

Learning from experience takes on various forms for students once they leave LEAD. Many courses

offer students the opportunity to refine their team skills and communication skills both inside and outside

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of the classroom. However with very few exceptions, after LEAD the non-evaluative feedback offered by

Facilitators and team mates is replaced by evaluative (e.g., performance related) feedback. This creates a

challenge for students seeking to extend the safe, feedback-rich environment of LEAD.

At the time LEAD was created, Chicago Booth had more than 10 years of experience with its New

Product Laboratories. These courses brought real-time projects into the classroom where teams of

students worked for two quarters to define, research, and analyze a given problem for an external client.

As its title suggests, many of these courses related to the challenge of taking an existing product into a

new geographic market or launching a new product. The teams would conduct market research and make

recommendations to the client on market entry.

In designing LEAD, the constructive feedback offered to students by faculty, peers and the external client

within the New Product Lab was emulated. Today, there are ample courses with laboratory in their title

but few that have the focus on intense process coaching offered in LEAD. 6 Students can register for

experiential classes focused on nascent business, the venture capital arena, in private equity, in social

entrepreneurship and in the more traditional marketing area for immersion experiences in these types of

organizations.

4.2 Facilitator Engagement

The success of LEAD is tied closely to the degree of engagement in and professionalism among the

Facilitator team for two academic quarters. In recent years the group has adopted performance standards

and mutual monitoring practices to insure high performance. That said, exogenous factors as well as

interpersonal conflict can undermine Facilitator engagement.

6 One exception is Management Lab, a quarter long course for which students receive two (rather than one) course

credits and for which there are both content and process coaches working with teams of 8-10 students: typically

about 40-50 MBA students participate in Management Lab annually.

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When students serve as Facilitators they are also students themselves. Stepping into the Facilitator role is

a powerful learning experience for these students and it requires great focus to remain committed to the

learning of others throughout the experience. This was evident most recently with the downturn in the

global economy in the 2008-09 academic year. In “normal” times, Facilitators resolved their internship

search well before their Spring commitments to LEAD course began. Most Facilitators would return

from their summer internship with a post-graduation offer. However, the Facilitators from the Class of

2010 faced a fundamentally different experience and had to manage the tension of their own job search at

a time when the demands on Facilitators were greatest.

Interpersonal dynamics can also create challenges within the Facilitator group. Over the more than two

decades of LEAD, there have been a small number of incidents where conflict among a squad of

Facilitators reduced the trust and teamwork to such an extent that it compromised the delivery of the

LEAD course. From a programmatic perspective, these experiences pointed to the need for modifications

in the selection process, clearer expectation setting of the Facilitator role by a wider group of

professionals involved in the full-time MBA program (including the Dean of Students and representatives

of the Dean’s Office), and more coaching of the Facilitators by the staff.

Finally, there is always pressure on Facilitators to be a “normal” member of the student community – to

let down their guard and interact socially with first year students or to find time to spend with their second

year colleagues who are not LEAD Facilitators. A loss of focus can comprise these students’

effectiveness as extensions of the faculty.

4.3 Implication for Other Support Teams at Chicago Booth

Each student leaves the LEAD course with a customized plan for continued development (the PDP.)

With clear direction on areas of continued developmental growth in hand, the philosophy at Chicago

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Booth is to offer students opportunity but to allow each student to “own” her experience. In the context

of the PDP, students can access hundreds of different curricular offerings, participate in and/or lead one of

more than 75 student career-related and social groups, and participate in dozens of school-led programs as

a means to continue to develop their insight and action skills.

In practice, the LEAD course ends just as students’ interactions with prospective employers around

summer employment begins. This in effect passes professional development to the staff dedicated to

career services with the same challenges of peak-load demand experienced in LEAD. Through a series of

class sessions and events designed to expand students’ knowledge about alternate career paths (career

exploration) and to prepare students for interviewing, students receive feedback on their presence and

persuasive abilities in one-on-one and group settings. Over time, the role of second-year Career Advisors

-- a core of 40-45 second-year students selected to represent knowledgeable peers who serve as peer

leaders on the career “communities” -- has evolved. These students are supplemented by no fewer than

another 100 second year students who are called into service in periods of high demand such as the five-

day window just prior to the launch of on-campus interviewing when thousands of mock interviews

occur, complete with actionable debriefs.

In addition, it is common for a student to present her PDP to her academic adviser and career coach to

solicit continued professional guidance on her development. This practice challenges the School to better

prepare these professionals to assist students in their development as self-aware leaders.

5. Conclusions

The LEAD course is a highly interactive leadership development course that offers students a method for

self-assessment that is transferable beyond their academic experience. Built on Davis and Hogarth’s

structure for developing insight and action skills, the course extends the faculty by training second year

MBA students who play a central, multi-faceted role in the course of instructor-mentor-coach. The

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experience is transformative for this select group of 40 Facilitators and offers each Chicago Booth MBA a

rich portfolio of interactions and feedback on which a personalized development plan is built.

References

Becker, S. W. , “The Laboratory Class in Quality Management,” University of Chicago GSB Working

Paper, 1994.

Datar, S.M. and Garvin, D.A., ”The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business,” Harvard

Business School Case N9-308-059, 2008.

Davis, H.L. and Hogarth, R.M., “Rethinking Management Education: A View from Chicago,” The

University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Selected Paper No. 72, 1992.

Dummin, D., Heath, C. and Suls, J.M., “Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education and

the Workplace,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol 5 No. 3, 2004.