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Many scholars have noted the critical skills needed for leaders in the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). These skills include self-awareness, listening, communication, adaptability, critical thinking, and collaboration. Students who are able to develop these skills would be better equipped to lead in settings where the answers—and even the questions—are unknown. This paper details an approach to developing leadership skills to prepare undergraduate leadership students for a VUCA world, through the use of a classroom workshop on improvisational comedy. I have refined this improv workshop over sixteen course iterations spanning the past nine semesters, and students commonly point to the workshop as one of the most challenging and rewarding class sessions of the course. In this paper I review the literature that has informed my approach, explain the learning objectives addressed by the improv workshop, describe the approach I use, share quantitative and qualitative data that illustrate the success of the approach, and share my lessons learned, all in service of supporting colleagues who wish to try this approach.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the “black box” of how coaching is enacted and how it unfolds in practice. Indeed, some of the mixed results concerning the efficacy of executive coaching appear anchored to the confusion and surrounding ambiguity of the episodic and processual nature of coaching. In this conceptual paper, the authors turn to the power of metaphor to explore how executive coaches, either consciously or subconsciously, approach and enact their role.

This paper is a conceptual or theory paper with a heavy practitioner focus. The authors did augment and enhance their assertions with semi-structured interviews of coaches, a therapist, a pastor and physical trainers. Institutional review board approval was granted.

The authors identify two core metaphors that enjoy some dominance in how executive coaches make sense of their role and duties: coach-as-pastor and coach-as-therapist. Considering some of the limitations of the existing metaphors, the authors offer an alternative metaphor, coach-as-physical trainer, that may offer a more compelling, comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the executive coach.

The metaphors that coaches embrace, inarguably, impact how they perceive and enact their role. For these reasons, the authors suggest that expanding the domain of possible metaphors serves both the study and practice of executive coaching. The authors offer a new, alternative, metaphor that may change how coaches think about and execute their role.

The authors challenge two widely accepted metaphors that are often used in how coaches approach and enact their roles. They provocatively dissect these metaphors to expose limitations and inaccuracies. Given these limitations, the authors offer a new metaphor in which to view the study and practice of coaching.

In this paper, we problematize the prevailing assumptions in the executive coaching literature that effective coaching is deliberative, trust-based and relational in nature, thereby requiring significant time investment before the focal leader might realize enacted benefits from the coaching. Contrary to these prevailing assumptions, we propose five contingencies wherein a more direct, performance-first approach to coaching may be more effective.

This conceptual paper reviews relevant literature to develop testable propositions regarding directive coaching contingencies.

We develop propositions that argue executive coaches will need to employ a more directive, urgent and accountable coaching relationship when the executive's career is in jeopardy, the organization is in distress, if the leader needs to signal legitimacy, if the coaching occurs within the boundaries of a high reliability organization or if the coach is working with an executive who has interim status.

This paper intends to advance the theory and practice of executive coaching by challenging executive coaching orthodoxy regarding the need for a deliberative, relational approach to coaching. Future research should broaden this theorizing and empirically test our propositions.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. The paper focuses on need of advanced business intelligence and the crucial role of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Various case studies are used to highlight benefits.

The paper focuses on need of advanced business intelligence and the crucial role of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Various case studies are used to highlight benefits.

Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Case studies are used to highlight benefits.

Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management.

The value of the paper is that there is very little published writing on benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management stressed upon by the use of case studies.