The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth this week announced the creation of a new leadership center to build upon existing leadership initiatives at the school. Founded by Tuck professor Pino Audia, the innovative center will focus on students themselves rather than using case studies to analyze how others lead.
The new Tuck Center for Leadership will provide a range of leadership development activities for students that expand upon the initiatives of the Cohen Leadership Development Program, which was established in 2003. With the launch of the new center, every Tuck student will now be required to complete leadership training as part of the MBA course, as well as fulfill a new ethics and social responsibility credit requirement.
The center also will support ongoing research in leadership topics and serve as a place where business leaders and scholars can gather to share and promote best practices and research findings.
“The creation of the center shows Tuck’s continuing commitment to provide the best business leadership education in the world,” Audia said in a statement announcing the center’s creation.
Rather than dissecting case studies to understand how others lead, students at the center will take part in a 360-degree feedback diagnostic, working in small groups and giving feedback to one another about their leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses. Professors, second-year students and consultants will serve as coaches, leading first-year students through the leadership exercises.
“The idea is that effective leadership requires not only knowledge about how organizations are run but also knowledge about oneself,” Audia said. “This second type of knowledge is surprisingly difficult to acquire due to biases that render people’s perceptions of themselves inaccurate.”
There also will be collaboration between the new center and Tuck’s Career Development Office. Richard McNulty, executive director of the Career Development Office, has been appointed to serve as the new center’s executive director as well.
“Our goal on the career planning side is to help students be even more informed about the decisions they make,” McNulty said in a statement. “To choose a path where their strengths are aligned with what it takes to maximize their success.”
