East Hill Notes: Behind town-gown management development

LEADBold (leading, engaging, anticipating, and demonstrating boldly), the professional-development partnership between the City of Ithaca and Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, has been renewed for another year, following a well-received set of presentations in 2018.

Begun as a pilot project of the city and college in 2017, LEADBold has offered a diverse series of workshops in the intervening 18 months at no charge for city and county employees, and area non-profit organizations. In addition, college faculty delivered three sessions tailor-made for senior city employees.

Attendance has been strong for this leadership series, with nearly 200 workers participating overall.

“LEADBold grew out of conversations between the college and Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, together with other city officials,” said Rohit Verma, Dean of External Relations, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

“Mayor Myrick wanted to provide city employees with opportunities for leadership growth. At the same time, we wanted to give our faculty members the chance to share their management expertise.”

“A partnership like this is an important part of the college’s mission. Our faculty have a long tradition of sharing the outcomes of their research, for example, through the Center for Hospitality Research and the Center for Real Estate and Finance,” said Verma.

Through LEADBold, SC Johnson College faculty and staff have presented such leadership topics as:
• Effective Management Communication—Barbara Mink, Senior Lecturer, Marketing and Management Communications
• Develop Your Emotional Intelligence for More Effective Listening—Judi Brownell, Professor, Management, and Organizations
• Building Relations with Employees that Don’t Cross the Line—Amy Newman, Senior Lecturer, Marketing and Management Communication
• Getting Employees to Perform Effectively—Brad Walp, Executive Director of Enrollment Management
• Tomatoes: Growing Leadership Skills for End Results—Chris Smart, Professor Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology
• I Am Too Young, Why Should I Think About Retirement—Paul Strebel, Lecturer, Accounting
• Leadership Presence—Theomary Karamanis, Senior Lecturer, Marketing and Management Communications
• Leading in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) World – Retired Gen. George Casey, Jr., Distinguished Senior Lecturer of Leadership.
We are offering an additional benefit this year. Employees who complete four sessions during this 2018–2019 school year will earn a Cornell business certificate.

The next LEADBold session, scheduled for February 2019, will offer a presentation by Drew Margolin, Assistant Professor, Communication: “Communicating Truth via Technology and Social Media: How Do I Know What I Am Reading Is the Truth.” The final session, “Customer Service Attitude in Organizations,” will be presented in April by Alex Susskind, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Hotel Administration.

Participants’ comments highlight how valuable these sessions have been to date. For example, several participants reacted favorably to a presentation on data analytics by Professor Shawn Mankad, “Using Text Analytics to Transform Unstructured Data into Actionable Insights.”

Said one participant: “This was informative and entertaining, and I gained a new understanding of a subject where I did not have much knowledge.” Others added, “Data analytics could be a useful tool for my department,” and were grateful for “specific, doable suggestions.”

Workshop attendees also praised faculty presenters, saying it was, “A perfect amount of information presented clearly, which made it very understandable,” and “The instructor was fun and approachable (and) made things really clear.”
For additional information about LEADBold, contact me at cmm359@cornell.edu.

Candace Maxian is Associate Director/External Relations in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. East Hill Notes are published the first and third Wednesdays of each month in Tompkins Weekly.