Creating and Leading High-Performing Teams

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Dates Location Tuition
Jun 8, 2009 - Jun 12, 2009 Philadelphia $7,850
Teams drive organizational progress. Yet forming and leading high-performance teams is one of the most complex challenges facing any leader. Creating and Leading High-Performing Teams combines the best insights from research and case studies, tested in the context of hands-on, experiential learning. The program places executives into team challenges in diverse settings — from rowing crew shells to the performing arts. These experiences will change the way you create and lead your own high-performing teams.

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The dynamics of teamwork are too complex to be understood in the classroom alone. This program provides a distinctive combination of classroom and case work along with daily experiential exercises. It builds upon years of programs by Professor Mike Useem and Wharton Leadership Ventures, which have immersed MBA students and executives in rigorous outdoor challenges around the globe. Senior guest speakers also will offer their experiences from business, the military, and other areas.

Creating and Leading High-Performing Teams Session Topics

  • Forming and Sustaining Successful Teams
  • Aligning Individuals Around Group Goals
  • Team Dynamics
  • Leading from the Front, Middle, and Behind
  • Experiential Learning

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Related Books

Book LeadershipIn his book The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All, Michael Useem presents a series of poignant real-life examples of people facing their "moments of truth" — making the tough leadership decisions that change destinies — to show readers how best to perform under the pressures they face in the business world.


Book Upward BoundUpward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits brings together a remarkable team of nine writers equally at home among the high peaks and in the corridors of corporate power. Whether it's up the career ladder or toward a creative peak, Upward Bound addresses the fundamental question of why we climb, while capturing the power of mountains to instruct as well as inspire.


Book Leading UpThrough vivid, compelling stories, Michael Useem reveals how upward leadership can transform incipient disaster into hard-won triumph. Leading Up: How To Lead Your Boss So You Both Win is a call to action. It asks us to get results by helping our superiors lead and by building on the best in everybody's nature, and it offers a pragmatic blueprint for doing so.

The program is designed primarily for managers of small to mid-sized teams, specifically middle and senior managers from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

Gain a direct understanding of what makes teams successful. Among the takeaways:

  • Understand the stages of team formation.
  • Gain hands-on experience in building, participating on, and leading teams in diverse contexts.
  • Understand how team leadership resides in action rather than position.
  • Learn to manage strong individual players within a team and draw out the best from everyone — so the team is more than a sum of its parts.
  • Learn about your own leadership style and its impact on team performance.
  • Build a network of fellow leaders for sharing challenges, insights, and perspectives.

Mike Useem, PhD MIKE USEEM, PhD
Academic Director
The William and Jacalyn Egan Professor
Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Mike Useem offers courses on management, leadership, and corporate governance to MBA and senior executive audiences in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has worked extensively on leadership development and governance with many organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He is the author of The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide; Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win; The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All; Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America; and Executive Defense: Shareholder Power and Corporate Reorganization. From the slopes of Mount Everest to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Dr. Useem has gone to great lengths to present leadership lessons to executives.
todd henshaw TODD HENSHAW, PhD
Academy Professor and Director of Military Leadership
US Military Academy
West Point

Todd Henshaw was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Field Artillery at the US Military Academy at West Point in May of 1985 and has since served in a variety of command and leadership positions. He earned his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995, concentrating on strategy, organizational culture, and executive leadership. He went on to complete a PhD in business at the University of Kansas in 2003, which examined the impact of organizational culture on leader development and behavior. And in 2005, Todd received a degree in Columbia University's Advanced Organization Development and Human Resources Management Program.

Returning to West Point in 2003, he designed and directed the new Eisenhower Leader Development Program, a graduate program offered in conjunction with Teacher's College, Columbia University. He also directed West Point's leadership and management programs, growing enrollment five-fold the first year and initiating the program's progress toward AACSB accreditation. He currently serves as an Academy Professor and Director of Military Leadership at West Point and as director for its core course in leadership.
JEFF KLEIN
Director, Graduate Leadership Program
Director, Wharton Leadership Ventures
The Wharton School

Jeff has served as the associate director of the Wharton Leadership Ventures and as a lecturer in the Wharton Management Department. As a lead Venture instructor, he supports multiple expedition-based experiential leadership programs each academic year. In addition, Jeff designs and delivers leadership workshops within the university community, serves as a project head in Wharton's Field Application Program, an instructor in leadership and group dynamics in a variety of Wharton Executive Education programs, and as a graduate advisor in Adventure Education at Prescott College. He has presented the experiential education and risk management philosophies of the Wharton Leadership Ventures to a variety of industry and professional groups, including the Wilderness Risk Managers Conference, the Boston University Executive Development Roundtable, and the Graduate School of Education/Wharton Executive Education's Executive Program in Work-Based Learning Leadership.

Jeff graduated with honors from the Wharton School (MBA, Entrepreneurial Studies) and Penn State University (BS, Finance; BA, Media Studies). Prior to Wharton, Jeff had a successful eight-year career at AT&T. He joined AT&T as part of its Financial Leadership program, graduating at the top of his class. After graduation, Jeff was the first finance employee to transfer to AT&T Broadband, a newly-formed business unit established after the purchase of cable companies TCI, Media One, and Liberty Media. While at AT&T Broadband, Jeff held a variety of roles within the CFO organization, including senior director of financial operations for the cable telephony product and executive director of finance, planning, and analysis. In this last role, Jeff led the strategic planning and budgeting process, and served as the lead finance representative on the working team that successfully negotiated the merger with Comcast, that led to the unit's sale.
Dan Lyons DAN LYONS
President
Team Concepts Inc.

Dan Lyons is the Founder and President of Team Concepts, Inc. (1995) and founder of the non profit Champions of Hope, Inc. (2002). As an oarsman, Dan rowed on seven US National Teams, during that period winning two world bronze medals, a world gold medal, and a Pan American gold medal. In 1988, he competed in the Seoul Olympics in the coxed pair. He has won 11 National Championships in various events. Dan has coached since 1983 at the US Naval Academy, St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, Oxford University, Stanford University, Drexel University, Georgetown University, and is now an elite coach at Penn Athletic Club in Philadelphia. His remarkable rowing career was recognized in 1997 with his induction into the US Rowing Hall of Fame in Mystic, CT. Dan is the subject of two books True Blue, and The Yanks at Oxford as well as the movie True Blue which depicts events during the famous "Mutiny" at Oxford in 1986.

Dan received his BS from the US Naval Academy in 1981, MS from Oxford University, England, in 1987, and MA in history from Villanova University in 1989, and is pursuing his PhD in Military History and Foreign Policy. He has taught history at the US Naval Academy and Rutgers University, Camden.

Dan is noted for his intelligent seminars on a wide range of topics related to teams, team building, and leadership, which reflect his unique combination of high achievement in the sport of rowing, his perspective as a coach, and his extensive knowledge of military and ancient history.

Jennifer S. Mueller JENNIFER MUELLER, PhD
Assistant Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Jennifer S. Mueller is an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research primarily focuses on how high quality social relationships might aid or hinder performance at work. Specifically, she is interested in how relational losses contribute to individual performance in larger teams, and how close relationships contribute and shape the process of innovation at work. She received her PhD in social psychology from Brandeis University and has taught at New York University in the Stern School of Business as well as Yale School of Management. Jennifer has published her work on creativity and innovation in several leading journals including Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Journal.

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