Having strong leaders at Cornell is essential if the university is to embrace the theme of the university's new strategic plan, "Positioning Cornell University as a Leader in the 21st Century."

To that end, the Division of Human Resources and Cornell University Finance and Administration (CUFA) joined forces this past year to offer a curriculum of six leadership development programs, including the ongoing Harold D. Craft Leadership Program and a new capstone program, Leading Cornell, to further develop high-potential leaders at the university.

On May 8, participants in the Leading Cornell course met with senior university leaders, college officers, human resource leaders and their own supervisors to unveil the results of their work and to celebrate the completion of the eight-month, project-oriented development course.

"What distinguishes Leading Cornell from our other leadership programs," said Cornell Vice President for Human Resources Mary George Opperman, "is its emphasis on the application of leadership concepts and methodologies to a real project sponsored by senior leadership, the dialogue between participants and senior leaders, and the accountability for producing measurable results."

For Leading Cornell's pilot program, participants worked together to design an effective performance management process for the university toward the goal of positioning Cornell as a leader in the 21st century.

"The 30 Leading Cornell participants felt that developing a sophisticated performance management process would help Cornell remain competitive in higher education, especially as so many staff and faculty will be retiring over the next 15 years," said Chet Warzynski, director of Organizational Development Services and co-leader of the Leading Cornell program. "They divided into five teams, each working with a different college/unit to develop a performance management process prototype for that unit. They then came together to develop a single prototype for the university, as well as a presentation of that prototype to senior management. To this end, Leading Cornell participants conducted extensive interviews with a total of over 150 staff members and supervisors to gather their assessments and recommendations."

The five units that participated in the pilot project were the College of Human Ecology; Computing and Information Technology; the Division of Risk Management and Public Safety; Facilities Services; and the ILR School.

"We all agreed that an effective performance management process maximizes the engagement, development and performance of staff," said one participant. "Most people we interviewed also stressed the need for consistency in how performance is judged across units and supervisors; the need for flexibility to meet the varying business needs of each college or unit; the importance of having a process that is efficient, measurable, fair and transparent; and an end result of better aligning an individual's work to the department, college or unit goals and the university's mission."

After reviewing the components that would make up an effective but flexible universitywide prototype, the participants proposed a communication and implementation plan. They also fielded questions that centered on the balance between decentralization and equity; consistency and timing; management and supervisory training; standardization and quantification of rating vs. qualitative measures; and the importance of good, current job descriptions.

"The general response to the pilot project findings and recommendations was very positive," said Kathryn Burkgren, manager of organizational learning for CUFA and co-leader with Chet Warzynski and Chris Halladay of Leading Cornell. "People were particularly interested in the stories, quotes and learnings that were shared. It will be interesting to see how this prototype rolls out over the next several years."

Other members of the Leading Cornell Design Team were Sheila Danko, associate professor in Human Ecology, and Al Gonzalez, assistant director of Integrated Web Services for Cornell Information Technologies.

Leadership courses at Cornell also are taught in nearly every college and school at Cornell, and seminars on the topic have long been offered through Cornell's Organizational Development Services, eCornell and the Executive Education Program in the ILR School.

For more information on the leadership curriculum, go to http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/hr/hrmanage/leadership/leadershipDC.html. Participation in any of the programs in the leadership curriculum is determined through the nomination by a participant's supervisor, dean or unit manager.