I mainly teach leadership and leading change: how people step into authority, build influence, and move organizations forward when the path isn’t obvious. I like to teach through cases. We step into the shoes of a real leader facing a hard decision and argue about what they should do next. My favorite moments are when students push back on each other and I learn something new from a class I’ve taught a dozen times.
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At Kellogg, I teach an MBA elective called Leading at Scale: Power, Design, and Influence in Organizations. It’s about a challenge most leaders eventually run into. How do you lead when you can’t personally oversee everyone, or rely on formal authority to get things done? We work through how to build and use power when your title only gets you so far, and how to design organizations that extend your reach even when you can’t be everywhere at once. Before joining Kellogg, I spent seven years at Harvard Business School teaching Leadership and Organizational Behavior, the required MBA course on leading people and building healthy organizations.
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Beyond the MBA classroom, I’ve worked with seasoned executives through Harvard’s Executive Education programs, including custom programs for organizations like Kaiser Permanente, as well as programs for chiefs of staff and senior leaders. Teaching people who’ve been leading for decades is its own kind of fun. They show up with hard-won experience, and the best sessions feel less like me lecturing and more like all of us comparing notes.