“I have been urging this kind of self-knowledge for years, but now it is essential for survival.”
-Peter F. Drucker, “The Post-Capitalist Executive”
Mission
Driven by intensifying change, cultivating the inner life of leaders has become an increasingly important topic in graduate management education. Leaders operate in contexts of accelerating speed and complexity. They are pressured to make more and faster decisions with ever-narrower margins of error and greater repercussions.
Consequently, leaders have recognized the need to grow their capacity and competency to effectively act to produce results.
The Executive Mind Leadership Institute (EMiLI) provides trailblazing thought leadership and resources for the practical inner development of executives. It builds on the Drucker School’s pioneering work of using mindfulness and allied awareness skills to help leaders take effective action in the world.
The Institute builds on Peter Drucker’s insight that “you cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.” It draws on the foundational work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the area of flow and Daniel Goleman’s writings on emotional and social intelligence among others.
What began in 2003 as an experimental 7-week course on “managing experience” has steadily grown into 21 weeks of challenging coursework. It has been continually tested and refined by working executives and represents the state-of-the-art of the field.
More recently, skills like these have been adopted by organizations like Google, Aetna, and General Mills. Progressive knowledge-intensive firms have come to recognize the importance of learning to better manage one’s mind.
The capacity to make intelligent decisions in the midst of challenging situations directly impacts the effectiveness of teams and organizations as well as the functioning of a healthy society. Moreover, in times that demand radical change, managing one’s mind is a key element for innovative and creative results.
Because the world is facing unprecedented challenges, leaders who cultivate the best of themselves help ensure we meet these circumstances with clarity, wisdom, and compassion.
Vision
To live in a world where it is taken for granted that leaders continually develop and refine their inner qualities to better manage their outer challenges. Such leaders live generative lives of meaning and purpose while supporting the growth of others and the well-being of society.
Activities
The Executive Mind Leadership Institute serves leaders and their organizations with boundary-pushing thought leadership. It offers resources for them and their organizations to develop self-management skills and the capacity to use them.
Courses
The Practice of Self-Management (MBA) and the Executive Mind series (EMBA) started in 2003 were among the first mindfulness-based courses for executives to be taught in a North American business school. The courses are a rigorous developmental program that helps leaders integrate mindful action into their lives.
The courses help leaders to better manage their nervous systems, focus and build attention, manage emotional reactions, create growth-oriented dynamics and skillfully manage change and transition.
Certificate Program
The Drucker School’s Executive Education program offers an 8-unit Certificate in Leadership that includes the Executive Mind course series.
Retreats and Development Programs
The Institute offers customized leadership development programs focused on integrating mindfulness and other self-development skills into concrete action.
Dialogues
The Institute conducts dialogues with thought and action-partners around issues of self-management, mindfulness and effective leadership.
Director
Founding Director Jeremy Hunter, PhD, pioneered the teaching of mindfulness to executives at the Drucker School in 2003. He created and facilitates The Executive Mind, a series of demanding and transformative executive education programs.
He also co-created and co-leads the Leading Mindfully Executive Education program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and is Distinguished Fellow at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
He has designed and led leadership development programs for a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 200 aerospace, Fortune 50 banking and finance, accounting, law, pharmaceuticals, the arts and civic non-profits. Program impacts have lead to both positive professional, personal and financial outcomes for participants.
He has been a keynote speaker at Wisdom 2.0 (San Francisco), TEDx OrangeCoast, the Mindful Leadership Summit (Washington DC), the Mindful Leadership Global Forum (Sydney), Mindfulness in Business Conference (Stockholm & Copenhagen), Sweden Mindfulness Week (Tallberg), Mindfulness at Work (UK), and the Mindfulness at Work Conference (Berkeley).
His work is informed by the experience of living day-to-day for 17 years with a potentially terminal illness. When faced with the need for life-saving surgery more than a dozen former students came forward as organ donors.
Hunter received his Ph.D. from University of Chicago. He also holds a degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and in East Asian Studies from Wittenberg University.
Collaborators
Katharina Pick, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Drucker School of Management
Rhonda Rodgers, PhD
Drucker School of Management
Vanessa Kettering, PhD
Claremont Graduate University
Chris Laszlo, PhD
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Weatherhead School of Management
Faculty Director for Research and Outreach, Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit
Visiting Professor, the Drucker School of Management
Lili Powell, PhD
Assistant Professor, Darden School of Business
University of Virginia
Jason Beck
Mindful Squire and Master of the Online Realm
Rose Matzkin
Research Adventurer
Partner Organizations
Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
Darden School of Business, Executive Education
Board of Advisors
The Institute is proud to be supported by a group of individuals who themselves are thought leaders, pioneers and innovators in their own right.
Judson Brewer, MD PhD
Director of Research, Center for Mindfulness
Associate Professor, Medicine and Psychiatry
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Yale School of Medicine
Mirabai Bush
Founding Director, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
R. Adam Engle, JD, MBA
Co-founder, Chair and CEO emeritus Mind and Life Institute
Carmen Foster, EdD
Project Consultant, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia
Faculty, Federal Executive Institute
James Gimian
Publisher, Mindful magazine
Hideyuki Inoue
Managing Director, ETIC Social Venture Center
Founder, Social Venture Partners Tokyo
Associate Professor, Keio University
Ken McLeod, MA
Founder, Unfettered Mind
Larry Ward, PhD
Peggy Rowe Ward, EdD
Founders and Co-Directors, Lotus Institute
Contact Us
Jeremy.Hunter@cgu.edu
“You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.”
– Peter F. Drucker, “Manage Yourself and Then Manage Your Company”