BOYATZIS, Richard E(leftherios) 1946-

PERSONAL: Born October 1, 1946, in New York, NY; son of Kyriakos Eleftherios and Sophia (Glacous) Boyatzis; married Sandra Scott, September 17, 1977. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., 1968; Harvard University, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Organizational Behavior, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106-7235. E-mail—Richard. [email protected].

CAREER: Northrop/Norair, Los Angeles, CA, engineer, 1966-67; private consultant, 1967-72; Veterans Administration Hospital, Brockton, MA, consulting psychologist, 1970-72; McBer and Co., Boston, MA, director of research, 1972-76, president/CEO, 1976-87; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, began as associate professor, professor, then dean, 1987—; Council for Adult Experimental Learning, Chicago, 1989-95; author. Member, Consortium on Research on Emotional Intelligence; Journal of Management Education, member of editorial board.

MEMBER: Academy of Management Learning and Education (founding member), American Psychology Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management, Theodore M. Alfred Distinguished Service Award, 1996, and Research Recognition Award, 2000.

WRITINGS:

The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, Wiley (New York, NY), 1982.

(With Scott S. Cowen, David A. Kolb, and others) Innovation in Professional Education: Steps on a Journey from Teaching to Learning: The Story of Change and Invention at the Weatherhead School of Management, Jossey-Bass Publishers (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

Transforming Qualitative Information: ThematicAnalysis and Code Development, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1998.

(With Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee) PrimalLeadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard E. Boyatzis, a psychologist, professor of organizational behavior, and former management consultant to several major U.S. corporations, has been hailed as highly influential, both nationally and internationally, in the field of human resource management. In fact, his 1982 publication, The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, is often referred to as a seminal work in the emerging industry of competency consultants, researchers, and academics. It was in The Competent Manager that Boyatzis first outlined several ways of assessing the characteristics of managers that best enable them to be most effective on the job. His continuing work as professor, lecturer, and author has led Boyatzis to refine and enhance his initial findings. He now concludes that the most important task for top executives is not maintaining budgets, establishing business strategies, or hiring staff but rather that managers should, most importantly, assess their own behaviors in order to understand the impact of their moods on the development of their companies. Employing his theories, Boyatzis has created innovative college business classes during which students must go through extensive self-assessments. He has also coauthored Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (2002).

In an interview with Arthur K. Yeung for Human Resource Management, Boyatzis stated several characteristics that a successful manager, especially a human resource manager, must have. Among them are such things as the ability to be efficient, to pay attention to detail, to be flexible, to maintain self-control, to be persuasive, to exhibit empathy, to have selfconfidence, and to communicate well, both orally and in written communications. However, Boyatzis believes that overall, the most important underlying characteristic of any manager is genuineness, which he defines as "being congruent with one's self and being open to others." Boyatzis also makes it clear that the characteristics of successful managers have not changed over the years. "As a matter of fact," he continued in his interview, "I would venture to guess that they haven't changed much in the past twenty years, nor do I think they will change a lot in the next twenty years." The business environments might change, Boyatzis admitted, but successful managers will always be those who are most efficient, empathetic, and confident.

In order to find out if a person has these characteristics, Boyatzis has created an assessment program. It is through such a program, Boyatzis pointed out in his interview with Yeung, that you can "figure out where your strengths are. You have to use your strengths for your leverage. A second issue is you really have to spend some time developing your personal vision. If you don't know what it is you really want . . . you are going to be wasting a lot of time."

In his first book, The Competent Manger, Boyatzis lists what effective managers do that make them stand out from less-successful managers. As stated by Howard S. Schwartz for Contemporary Psychology, "the factors that determine effective managerial performance [are]: the 'competencies' of the manager, the demands of the job, and the organizational environment." Boyatzis's focus is on "competencies," which he "measures with a critical-incident interview technique and with which he attempts to predict effectiveness." As noted by Donald L. Grant, writing for Personnel Psychology, "psychologists and others interested in the topic" of competencies are offered "much to ponder" in Boyatzis's first book. "The modeling is especially provocative, and the lengthy list of references provides much material for further study."

In 1995 Boyatzis worked with several colleagues from Case Western Reserve University, where he is a professor in the Weatherhead School of Management. Together they wrote and published Innovation in Professional Education: Steps on a Journey from Teaching to Learning. This book chronicles the changes made to the MBA program at Case Western at a time when degrees in business were declining as students began questioning the value of an MBA. As reflected in the book, change was slow to come. Although suggestions for change were first made in 1981, it would not be until 1990 that any modifications would be implemented. Much of the material in the first chapter of this book, "Introduction: Taking the Path toward Learning," deals with the slow process of change as well as the necessity of the MBA faculty at Case Western to meet the needs of their students. As stated by Daniel J. Gallagher for Personnel Psychology, "the ideas in this chapter are quite thought provoking." The chapter covers the difficulties the faculty had in seeing their own shortcomings and transitioning to a place where they were giving students skills they would require in a business setting rather than information that would help them pass tests at the university.

Other topics in Innovation in Professional Education include the process of strategic planning to initiate the changes necessary. Part of this process involved linking the faculty to businesses outside the university, thus "prompting them," according to Gallagher, "to promote a curriculum aligned with changes in the external environment."

An element of Boyatzis's book that Gallagher found most interesting is a conclusion the authors came to: that in many college settings, teaching is more important than learning. As Gallagher wrote: "Observations of the current state of education would suggest that education is about everything but learning—about research, about teaching, about budgets and taxes, about drugs and discipline, about religion and values, about political correctness and political connections."

Although Gallagher stated that Innovation in Professional Education does not provide all the answers required to make the necessary changes on many college campuses, it does "ask all the right questions." Gallagher added: "This book deserves a wide audience, not only among our academic community . . . but for those stakeholders of the system or any party interested in how our educational system might be reoriented."

With his next book, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, a cooperative venture with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee, Boyatzis focuses almost entirely on the ability to create business success through a positive emotional climate. In a review of the book for T&D, Deanne Bryce stated: "The first chapter explains . . . how leaders tap into our emotions." Bryce added: "The authors describe the ability to drive emotions in a positive direction as 'creating resonance' in an organization." If a leader maintains a positive emotional level, it appeals to the emotions of the employees and makes them "feel in sync. And true to the original meaning of resonance, that synchrony resounds, prolonging the positive emotional pitch."

This book also delves into how the brain works in regard to emotions. The authors explain that, according to current theories, the emotional centers in the human brain function in a so-called open-loop system, as contrasted to the closed-loop system of a body's blood circulation. "What's happening in the circulatory system of others around us does not impact our own," explained Bryce. Whereas, "an open-loop system depends largely on external sources to manage itself." Thus, the positive emotions of one person will affect those around her or him. In conclusion, Bryce stated that Primal Leadership offers "sound advice worth understanding and promoting."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Academy of Management Executives, May, 1995, H. William H. Vroman, review of Innovation in Professional Education: Steps on a Journey from Teaching to Learning, p. 80.

Contemporary Psychology, January,1983, Howard S. Schwartz, "Tautology in Action," pp. 53-54.

Human Resource Management, spring, 1996, Arthur K. Yeung, "Competencies for HR Professionals: An Interview with Richard E. Boyatzis," pp. 119-131.

Personnel Psychology, winter, 1982, Donald L. Grant, review of The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, pp. 894-897; autumn, 1996, Daniel J. Gallagher, review of Innovation in Professional Education, pp. 749-752.

Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2002, review of PrimalLeadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, p. 279.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 1998, review of Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development, p. 59.

T&D, March, 2002, Deanne Bryce, review of PrimalLeadership, pp. 81-83.^*