How Pro Bono is Revolutionizing the Way We Develop Tomorrow’s Corporate Leaders

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT REDEFINED

In conversation with George Hallenbeck of the Center for Creative Leadership and Austin Dowling of the Macquarie Group Limited

Technology, globalization, and current events have transformed the corporate work environment, and experts agree that the unprecedented pace of change we are seeing will only quicken. With so much up in the air, there is one thing that remains certain: Developing those who will lead tomorrow’s companies has never been more important. Within this context, pro bono is emerging as an innovative, high-impact strategy that can equip corporate leaders with the skills they will need to thrive.

We at Taproot wanted to explore the connection be-tween pro bono and modern leadership, so we brought together two leadership development experts and pro bono enthusiasts: George Hallenbeck, Director, Com-mercialization at the Center for Creative Leadership, and Austin Dowling, Head of Human Resources for the Americas at Macquarie Group. The pair sat down with Cat Ward, Taproot’s National Director of Adviso-ry Services, to discuss essential leadership skills and how pro bono can help develop them.

Over the course of the conversation, several key take-aways emerged.

1. Experiential learning has emerged as the most powerful way to equip corporate leaders with essen-tial but hard-to-build skills like empathy, humility, and resilience.

2. Building this “human skillset” has become increas-ingly important as automation and technological in-novation increase rapidly and change what we require from leaders.

3. Pro bono is the rare experiential leadership op-portunity that directly builds these critical abilities in leaders and has emerged as a powerful, cost-effec-tive way to develop leaders who will thrive in our ev-er-evolving corporate work environment.

Our dynamic conversation, shared here, explores the latest on where corporate leadership development is going - and how pro bono is forging exciting new paths to create the leaders we need both today and tomorrow.

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INTRODUCTION

Austin Dowling Regional Head of Human

Resources, Americas Managing Director

Macquarie Group Limited

George HallenbeckDirector, Commercialization –

All-Access Leadership PlatformCenter for Creative Leadership

Cat WardNational Director, Advisory

ServicesTaproot Foundation

CONTRIBUTORS

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Cat Ward, Taproot Foundation: Welcome, Austin and George. I’m excited to dive into this important topic with you. Let’s get right to it by kicking off with a discussion of the ways top companies today are using pro bono to advance leaders. Austin, tell us how Mac-quarie first began using pro bono to develop talent.

Austin Dowling, Macquarie Group: A couple of things were happening. We were coming to the point where we understood experiential learning was far more valuable than just being in the classroom. You can have very talented people, but if they are just at their desks and doing their day job—even if it is so-phisticated and demanding—it tends to be quite lin-ear. A colleague from the Macquarie Group Founda-tion came to us with the idea of using pro bono as part of our talent development. The idea was to work with Taproot to develop our programming and to send our staff out to the community, really pushing them in projects and partnerships where they can have an impact outside of their day jobs and get to do things characteristic of senior leadership. We thought that it was absolutely gold.

George Hallenbeck, Center for Creative Leadership“ ”Companies are feeling the heat, and they are looking around and they don’t necessarily see leaders who are equipped to effectively lead the change that’s needed.

IN CONVERSATION

Cat: We have been thrilled to be by your side through it all. You’ve really become a leader in this space. George, I know you’re paying close attention to pro bono as an emerging strategy for leadership devel-opment through your work at the Center for Creative Leadership. How are you seeing pro bono used today?

George Hallenbeck, Center for Creative Leader-ship: Pro bono is a great lever that organizations can use to develop their talent. So we talk about experi-ence-based leadership, and a company like Macqua-rie does that extremely well, but I think that they are in the vanguard. In a lot of cases, companies are still playing catch up. They don’t realize that the solution isn’t so much in sending them to courses, or training them and such, but rather “let’s give them something that’s challenging, that’s meaningful.” That’s something that people are seeking and even demanding now-adays. They’re saying, “I’m not going to stick around or be fully engaged unless I really feel like I am doing something.” Pro bono hits the mark on those things.

Cat: So George, if some companies aren’t maximiz-ing their full potential for experiential leadership de-velopment, then is there a gap between the leader-ship those companies have and that which they need?

George: Well, it really comes down to two persistent themes: change and innovation. Everybody knows that nowadays we are working in a world in which it’s “disrupt, or be disrupted.” So companies are feeling the heat, and they are looking around and they don’t necessarily see leaders who are equipped to effec-tively lead the change that’s needed – not just manage it, but lead it.

“You can have very talented people, but if they are just at their desks and doing their day job —even if it is sophisticated and demanding—it tends to be quite linear.”Austin Dowling, Macquarie Group

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Cat: It’s true, we know that the business world today is characterized by an extraordinary pace of change. What do you think is needed to serve as an effective leader given such circumstances?

George: To stay ahead of the game, to not be disrupt-ed, you constantly have to innovate. And that takes a toll on leaders, so we need leaders who are resilient. If you’re going to lead change and you’re going to in-novate then you’re also going to fail – it’s just part of the experience. We have to build leaders who are not just going to get over or get past that failure, but that are going to come back stronger. I think those three things—change, innovation, and resilience—aren’t going to go away, they are just going to keep building in terms of importance.

Austin: The pace of change today is something that pretty much blows us all away, and we are only ex-pecting that to continue to increase. Ten years ago we were looking for professionals with very high aca-demics and numerical skills. But now, technology can do a lot of that work more easily. So when we look at what “good” looks like now and going forward, it’s client management, customer service, empathy, and the ability to listen actively that are critical to growth and success. Those kinds of human characteristics are really starting to be valued as a purely commercial ingredient of success.

George: As you talk about technology and the extent to which everything becomes more rapidly automat-ed, those things that are distinctively human, such as empathy, creativity, and the ability to truly listen deeply are really what will become the stuff of lead-ership. We will need to do that which technology can’t do or can’t do as well.

“Those things that are distinctively human, such as empathy, creativity, and the ability to truly listen deeply are really what will become the stuff of leadership. ”George Hallenbeck, Center for Creative Leadership

Austin: I couldn’t agree more. There is so much re-search that shows that human factors are predictors of high performance. We did research on what our highest performers look like, and we were kind of amazed at the results – it wasn’t the people with nec-essarily the highest IQ’s but rather it was people with an even mix of EQ [emotional IQ] and IQ. We had never understood the importance of the skills like George has described, like communications and resilience. It is almost a very old-fashioned way of leadership that’s come back into vogue – things like ethics, in-tegrity, humility, empathy. I think there is an increas-ing awareness that that is what “good” looks like.

George: I think the manner in which we do work and the settings that we do it in is going to continue to change, as well. Technology is certainly a part of that, but in response to having to be nimbler in the mar-ketplace the way that organizations are structured is going to change as well. An organization is going to have a lot more permeable boundaries in a lot of ways and a lot more things are going to get done through partnerships, through alliances, through building val-ue—not just with companies and clients, but with communities—and we’re going to have to get across these boundaries.

Cat: What I’m hearing from you both is that, given the rapidly changing nature of business, companies need to be nimbler and to develop more partnerships, while those who lead them need to be empathetic, resilient, and skilled at communicating, among oth-er things. With that in mind, let’s turn to the role that pro bono plays in all of this. How does it help to meet some of these needs?

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George: I think there are a couple of different buckets that fall into it.

First, pro bono teaches core skills like communica-tion and self-awareness. It forces people to ask them-selves, “How do I communicate what I know in a way that is going to resonate with a different organization that looks at things in a different way?” Getting out-side yourself, getting outside of your day-to-day re-ally helps to build self-awareness. Those things make a good leader in any situation, no matter the industry or the level.

Second, pro bono provides a forum in which leaders can apply skills to new challenges. It takes you out of your day-to-day. You might be practicing the same skills as in the workplace, but in a completely different environment. The challenges you face make you say, “How is it that I take what I do and translate it to value in this environment?”

Third, pro bono pushes leaders towards new heights of development. The extent to which there is actually a degree of real challenge and even a possibility for failure is beneficial. I know that might seem scary, but it is a part of how we learn. People really need to get out of their comfort zone to develop in a deep and meaningful way. It gives them the freedom and opportunity to take risks, to step beyond what they would normally do.

And fourth, pro bono helps companies develop mean-ingful relationships within the community. It expands the company, its impact, its influence, but also who the company learns from, as well. I think that blurring the lines and diffusing where we define the boundaries of the company is really where work is heading, and pro bono can take us in that direction.

Austin: One thing that George said really resonated. The psychology of being able to take risks and to risk failure has been very useful. Showing a bit of humility is great, as well. People have to learn, “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.” It helps inspire humility, which is a great empathy-based tool.

George: It’s called knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. If you’re learning, you’re feeling a bit of a tension. Development through experience is not a straight line. When you develop as a leader, your performance and your confidence dip, but then you get this big rise after that. And that cues in resilience – people who are able to work through it. If we treat these things as learning moments, then we are doing a good thing.

Austin: You’re dead right. People really do hit that wall. And then they absolutely, universally, have gotten to that point at the end of a learning experi-ence where they think it was incredibly worthwhile. We’ve had pretty much universally positive feedback from every participant in our pro bono projects – even those that have participants who “hit the wall.”

Cat: Does all of this hold true with regards to devel-oping the most senior executives? What do those who already have a lot of leadership experience have to gain from pro bono?

”“People really need to get out of their comfort zone to develop in a deep and meaningful way. It gives them the freedom and opportunity to take risks, to step beyond what they would normally do. George Hallenbeck, Center for Creative Leadership

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George: Pro bono can help senior leaders to further their potential and to lead by example for others. Typically, if we’re grooming someone to be a senior leader we want to develop a certain amount of agility in them, and so developmental experiences are most beneficial. Pro bono can be one of those experiences that starts to make them less rigid and opens them up a little bit more – that might provoke them to take that next leap, that next opportunity, that next risk.

Cat: Fascinating. So now we’ve discussed the quali-ties that leaders need to succeed, as well as how pro bono can help to cultivate them. Let’s zoom out for a moment and consider the costs and benefits of pro bono. What’s the return on investment?

Austin: In terms of return on investment, many talent products are expensive to develop. You can spend mil-lions and millions on developing a training course. So pro bono is very cost effective. The investment is very moderate and the return is quite demonstrable.

George: The upsides massively outweigh the down-sides. The downsides—if there is struggle or failure—that is actually in and of itself an upside. There’s ben-efit for everybody. There’s benefit for the organization, there’s benefit for the individual, and of course, there’s benefit for the community.

Austin Dowling serves as the Regional Head of Hu-man Resources, Americas for the Macquarie Group. Macquarie is an investment banking and financial services group, with 2400 investment banking and financial services professionals across the Americas. Austin joined Macquarie’s Sydney Office in 2005 as an employment attorney and has since held a number of HR roles around the globe, including Head of HR Legal (Sydney), Head of Employee Relations, Ameri-cas (New York), Head of HR, Asia (Hong Kong), before commencing his current role in 2014. Prior to Mac-quarie, Austin worked as an employment lawyer for Ashurst in Sydney, and prior to that he specialized in Psychiatric Law in Dublin, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin, and has post graduates from University of Sydney and University College Dublin.

George Hallenbeck serves as the Director of Com-mercialization for the All-Access Leadership Plat-form with Center for Creative Leadership. Prior to CCL, George joined Lominger International, which was later acquired by Korn/Ferry. Over the course of almost 8 years, he had an opportunity to guide the evolution and enhancement of several of the products originally created by Mike Lombardo and Bob Eichinger including Voices, FYI, Interview Ar-chitect and Choices. He also led the creation of sev-eral new products, especially in the area of learning agility. George finished his career at Korn/Ferry as the VP for Intellectual Property Development, where he was responsible for the strategic development of research-based products and solutions across all lines of Korn/Ferry business including Leadership & Talent Consulting and Executive Search. George be-gan his career in consulting and has been fortunate to stay active in client work throughout his career. He enjoys the opportunity to gain first-hand insight into clients’ needs and partner with them on developing innovative solutions with the potential to inspire new product ideas. An extended assignment in Singapore gave him the opportunity to gain insight into key leadership and talent issues in the APAC region and provided many lessons in learning from experience.

CONTRIBUTORS

”“The ability to make an impact on a community-wide basis is something that is really meaningful to some of our highest performers. Austin Dowling, Macquarie Group

Austin: The ability to make an impact on a community -wide basis is something that is really strong – it’s very meaningful to some of our highest performers. Some of our most senior and most successful bank-ers who control P&L’s 500 million plus will say, “You know, that’s my day job, but I am really passionate about this charity I work in.” That, to us, is terrific.

Cat: I couldn’t agree more. What an incredible discus-sion. I feel inspired and ready to make more pro bono happen. Thank you both for these insights.

Taproot Foundation, a national nonprofit, connects nonprofits and social change organizations with skilled volunteers through pro bono service. Taproot is creating a world where organizations dedicat-ed to social change have full access—through pro bono service—to the marketing, strategy, HR, and IT resourc-es they need to be most effective. Since 2001, Taproot has worked with over 60 Fortune 500 and other organiza-tions to develop best-in-class pro bono programs. Over 4,600 social change organizations have been served through 1.5 million hours of work worth over $160 million in value. Our Advisory Services practice has part-nered with over 75 leading companies across the globe to develop best-in-class, customized, in-house pro bono initiatives. Taproot is located in New York, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Chicago and is lead-ing a network of global pro bono providers in over 30 countries around the world. For more information, contact advisory@taprootfoundation.org

www.taprootfoundation.org