Building a performance culture Conference presenters
Leadership Impact and Effectiveness
	Dr. Rob Cooke Associate Professor of Managerial Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and Director of Human Synergistics/Centre for Applied Research (HS/CAR)
	Dr. Janet Szumal Senior Research Associate for Human Synergistics/Centre for Applied Research (HS/CAR)

Review presentation by Dr. Rob Cooke and Dr. Janet Szumal (Microsoft Powerpoint presentation, 554 Kb)

Dr. Cooke and Dr. Szumal will discuss Human Synergistics’ unique approach to the assessment, analysis and development of leadership in organisations. The essence of leadership is the impact that executives and senior managers have on the culture of their organisations and the behaviour and performance of the people around them.

They will describe the styles and strategies used by effective leaders to promote a constructive and high-performance culture. The effects of these strategies will be discussed in consideration of a study of 5,000 leaders in six countries, the results of which show that positive and “prescriptive” styles consistently have a constructive impact across cultures.

About Robert A. Cooke, Ph.D.

Robert A. Cooke is Director of Human Synergistics/Center for Applied Research in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He also is Asso-ciate Professor of Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he teaches Organizational Behavior, Organiza-tion Development, and Research Methods. Cooke was previously an Associate Re-search Scientist at the University of Michi-gan’s Survey Research Center (Institute for Social Research) and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, North-western University.

Cooke specializes in the development and validation of surveys used for individual, group, and organization development. He has created or co-authored Leadership/ Impact, the Organizational Culture Inven-tory, the Organizational Effectiveness Inventory, the Human Systems Reliability Survey (“The Safety Survey”), the Group Styles Inventory, the Culture for Diversity Inventory, and the Stress Processing Report. He also has developed various group process exercises and simulations published by Human Synergistics and the American Management Association (AMACOM).

Cooke’s research has been selected for the William Davis Memorial Award for outstand-ing scholarly research and the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Excellence in the Applied Social Sciences. Cooke has served as a National Defense Educational Act Scholar and a Commonwealth Edison Fellow. His teaching has been recognized with the Alumni Award for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Illinois.

About Janet L. Szumal [up]

Janet Szumal is a senior research associate for Human Synergistics/Center for Applied Research (HS/CAR). Her work with HS/CAR has focused primarily on the development of simulations, diagnostic instruments, and support materials, including the Challenge Series facilitator’s manuals, the Cultural Change Situation, the Leadership/Impact Facilitator’s Guide, the Management Effectiveness Profile System Self-Development Guide, the Organizational Change Challenge, the Performance Management Challenge, the Project Management Challenge, and The AMA DISC Survey Facilitator’s Manual. Janet co-developed the OCI and OEI feedback reports and co-authored a chapter in the OCI Leader’s Guide, “Interpreting the Cultural Styles Measured by the OCI.” Her research on the reliability and validity of the inventories published by Human Synergistics have appeared in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Psychological Reports, and The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2000). Her recommendations for using group problem solving simulations have been published in Mel Silberman and Patricia Philips’ The 2000 Team and Organizational Development Sourcebook (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2000) and in Training Magazine.

Janet has designed and facilitated training and development programs in the areas of leadership, team building, project management, and organizational change. She has provided consultation to public and private organizations, as well as to management consulting and training and development firms.

Janet received her Ph.D. in Human Resource Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a member of the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, the American Society for Training and Development, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.