Leadership Development at Claremont Graduate University

Faculty and graduate students at Claremont Graduate University have extensive research and applied experience in the area of leadership development. We are offering a number of leadership development programs to select community leaders and organizations as part of applied research projects. If you are interested in nominating a leader or organization to participate please contact Dr. Becky Reichard at Becky.Reichard@cgu.edu.

Claremont Leadership Assessment Center

Most commonly used for selection, promotion, and development of executives, an assessment center is a method of accurately evaluating leaders’ knowledge, skills, and abilities using simulated scenarios. Due to the labor-intensive process of coding leaders’ behaviors, assessment centers cost an average of $500-$1,000 per participating leader. An assessment center provides a much better measure of leadership than self-report surveys or 360-degree ratings because the leader’s actual behavior is assessed. By providing participating leaders with feedback on their leadership behaviors, the leaders’ self-understanding will be increased providing them with a clear direction for their future self-development efforts.

The Claremont Leadership Assessment Center has been designed to assess managers’ and supervisors’ leadership behaviors in various life-like situations that leaders are likely to encounter and must be responsible for on a daily basis.  Upon completion of the assessment center, the research team’s trained personnel will review the recordings (written and audio/visual) looking for specific and explicit behaviors displayed by the participating leaders during the simulations. This rating process will provide an accurate and reliable evaluation of participating leaders and ultimately allow us to provide participants with helpful, developmental feedback that they can use to improve their future leadership development experiences. We have categorized the leadership behaviors to be assessed based on leadership theory and research into the following four overarching categories: Executing, Strategic Thinking, Relationship Buliding, and Influencing.

Participating non-profit organizations include All Our Children International Outreach, Boys and Girls Club of Redlands, Bright Prospect, Claremont Community Foundation, David and Margaret Youth and Family Services, Family Service Association of Redlands, House of Ruth, Inland Valley Hope Partners, Inland Valley Humane Society, Kiwanis, LMWS Inc. Pacific Lifeline, Pomona Valley Workshop, OPARC, Shoes that fit, and Trinity Youth Services. We are currently accepting nominations from additional non-profit organizations.

Click here for an in-depth executive summary, including information about the training format and content and a sample feedback profile.

For more information, or to register, please contact Dr. Becky Reichard at Becky.Reichard@cgu.edu or (909) 607 - 0457.

Claremont Cross-Cultural Interaction Skills Training

While valuable, the typical diversity training or cultural etiquette training, which usually consists of memorizing customs and facts of a specific cultural group, falls short in preparing employees who need to effectively interact with customers or fellow employees from a wide variety of cultural groups and sub-cultures on a daily basis. While your employee may know how low to bow when interacting with a Japanese colleague, do they have the self-awareness and cross-cultural skills to in one meeting conduct negotiations with a middle-eastern client, place an order with a French-Canadian sub-contractor over the phone, and then resolve a complaint from a Hispanic employee that afternoon?

The Claremont Cross-Cultural Interaction Skills (CCCIS) training takes a new approach to preparing you and your employees for success in diverse cross-cultural interactions by building general competencies and psychological resources such as motivation, optimism, confidence, and resilience when engaging in cross-cultural interactions. Building these generalizable skills results in more flexibility and adaptability when interacting with individuals from a variety of different cultural backgrounds.

The CCCIS has been successfully pilot-tested demonstrating strong results in increasing participants’

• Confidence in their own cross-cultural skills
• Motivation to work with diverse cultures
• Overall understanding of different cultures
• Ability to overcome obstacles faced in cross-cultural situations

Our trainers have many years of both cross-cultural and organizational consulting experience and training. They have lived in at least two different countries and conducted hundreds of training sessions throughout their careers. For a limited time, the CCCIS will be provided to a select number of local organizations and their employees free of charge and as part of an applied research study conducted by a Claremont professor.

Here is the list of organizations we have worked with:

Universities: Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College, Non-Profits: LA Care, SBC Global, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, ChildShare, PVW Online, Salem Christian Homes, Lincoln Training Center, Exceed, Industrial Support Systems, House of Ruth

Click here for an in-depth executive summary, including information about the training format and content, a sample personal profile, and sample cross-cultural scenario. 

For more information, or to register, please contact Dr. Becky Reichard at Becky.Reichard@cgu.edu or (909) 607 - 0457.