Dr. Cynthia McCauley - An Achievement of the Collective

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Cynthia McCauley is an honorary senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership. With more than 35 years of experience, Cindy has been involved in many aspects of CCL’s work: research, publications, program and product development, evaluation, coaching, and management. Capitalizing on this broad experience, she has developed expertise in leader development methods, including developmental assignments and relationships, 360-degree feedback, and action learning. She has also played a central role in CCL’s efforts to understand leadership as a collective phenomenon shared among people and to expand its leadership development practice to include the development of teams and leadership cultures. 

Cindy has published numerous articles and book chapters for scholars, HR professionals, and practicing managers. She is the co-editor of three editions of The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development (1998, 2004, 2010), as well as two books on experience-based development (Using Experience to Develop Leadership Talent, Experience-Based Leader Development: Models, Tools, Best Practices, and Advice). Cindy has a Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Georgia and is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Psychological Association, and the American Educational Research Association.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• "What we say is leadership is an 'achievement of the collective,' which might be the most concise way to express a relational view of leadership."
• “Assessment, challenge, and support…are the elements that combine to make developmental experiences more powerful. That is, whatever the experience, it has more impact if it contains these three elements.” 
• “Individuals broaden and deepen their leadership capabilities as they do leadership work. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that learning from experience is the number one way that leader development happens…. How can organizations better harness the power of experiences for leadership development?”  
• “A leadership development strategy is a plan for the thoughtful, intentional deployment of organizational resources to ensure the ongoing availability of leadership for achieving the organization’s strategic agenda…." (with Karen Grabow)
• “Relational views of leadership may be the disruptive idea that helps reconstruct leadership development in ways that meets these concerns” (with Chuck Palus )

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• Book: Trust in a Complex World: Enriching Community by Charles Heckscher
• Book: The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson 
• Book: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
• Booker: In Over our Heads by Robert Kegan

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals with a keen interest in the study, practice, and teaching of leadership. Plan now for ILA's 24th Global Conference Online October 6 & 7, 2022, and/or Onsite in Washington, D.C., October 13-16, 2022.

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