D. Christopher Kayes

D. Christopher Kayes

Author

Dr. Chris Kayes (PhD, Case Western Reserve University) is a professor of management at the School of Business and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is author or co-author of five current and forthcoming books including Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mt. Everest Disaster (Macmillan), The Learning Advantage: Six Practices of Learning Directed Leaders, (Macmillan), Contemporary Organizational Behavior in Action, (Pearson), and Continuity: The Breakdown and Rebuilding of Learning in Organizations (Oxford University Press). Dr. Kayes has consulted with organizations around the world including National Institutes of Health, Fannie Mae, Oracle, Ericsson, Bank of New York Mellon, Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation, Federal Aviation Administration, The U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Judiciary, U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy. He has taught at universities around the world including Singapore Institute of Management, Zagreb School of Economics and Management, Helsinki School of Economics, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia, University of Hull, U.K., and Holy Spirit University, Beirut, Lebanon. He frequently conducts intensive multi-day seminars to develop leaders and delivers keynote addresses on various leadership topics. He has taught in the Professional Service Firm Degree program, Human Resource Development Program, Senior Executive Service Development program, Executive MBA program, and the World Executive MBA program. Dr. Kayes’s research on learning, leadership, and the destructive pursuit of goals received the first most significant contribution to the practice of management award by a division of the Academy of Management. His analysis of the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing disaster also won a best paper award from Human Relations. His research has appeared in over 30 academic papers in highly recognized journals and has appeared on BloombergTV, The Sunday Times of London, and other news outlets. His research focuses on how leaders learn in the face of complex and novel situations. He has studied leadership and teamwork in a variety of settings as he seeks to uncover hidden sources of vulnerability in organizations to identify ways that leaders build continuity in times of change and turmoil. He was born and raised in the shadow of the steel mills in Northwest Indiana and worked as a stockbroker and a corporate trainer prior to joining academia. He lives with his two sons, wife, and a Brittany Spaniel in the suburbs between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

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Learning-Directed Leadership in a Changing World

The information-intensive, complex, and dynamic world presents unique challenges for leaders. Never before has information been so available but knowledge been so difficult to…

Performance Versus Learning in Teams: A Situation Approach

Mountain climbers recognize the difference between following an existing route and blazing a new one. Similarly, the ability to distinguish and respond to a…