Janet Shaner, IMD

Responsible leadership has been defined as being values-based, ethical principles-driven and involving a relationship between leaders and stakeholders to achieve sustainable value creation and social change.

Educating responsible leaders is a real goal with the challenge to achieve it in the implementation. Providing this education requires exposing students to real business situations, moral dilemmas and the opportunity for failure to learn from these dilemmas.

In the IMD MBA program we strive to achieve this through three primary elements:

1.  Identifying talent whose values align with responsible leadership. Key characteristics include lack of arrogance, integrity, openness and the desire for excellence. It is important to screen for these characteristics in the admissions process.

2.  Designing a program to develop responsible leaders. Three pillars provide the foundation: technical competence, awareness of self and context, and moral judgment. These are achieved by a mixture of coursework, a leadership stream including 20 sessions with a Jungian psychoanalyst, and real world projects and experiential exercises for exposure to stakeholder needs and moral dilemmas.

3.  Commitment to take difficult decisions and provide “learning moments”. Implemention is most difficult when students make inevitable mistakes. The institution must be committed to provide both boundaries and support to help students get back on track and grow as responsible leaders.

Responsible leadership education is a real goal if we as educators are willing to invest the resources, energy and courage to achieve it.

About Dr. Janet Shaner

Dr. Janet Shaner is Director, MBA Program Design and Delivery at IMD. She works with participants to ensure that they are able to maximize their learning within the context of the overall program from the admissions process, in coursework and through to career counselling. She has contributed to the program design and its effective implementation through program scheduling, the Discovery Expedition trip, participant services and financial aid.