Regional President of M&I Bank.
Hoosier Fellows Program Equips Executives with Tools for Leadership
The Hoosier Fellows is a unique program offering emerging Indiana leaders the rare opportunity to learn about the many facets of leadership in a way that’s meaningful as they grow in their careers. Sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, the program, now in its fourth year, is a year-long study that examines various leadership elements and contexts. The program, solidly grounded in real-world experiences, centers around narratives – stories of leaders and their moments of trial where their leadership was tested.
Carol Madison, executive director for the Tobias Center, says some Hoosier Fellows alumni have compared the knowledge they’ve gained through the program to having a bag full of golf clubs and knowing just the right one to use in any particular situation. Part of that, she explains, comes from the program’s focus on various leadership skills such as planning and implementing change, articulating a vision, coaching, team building, recognizing the styles and preferences of others, communication, and problem solving.
Meeting venues and related studies include St. Benedict’s fifth century words on leadership at St. Meinrad Archabbey, adaptive leadership and military decision making at Camp Atterbury, the art of leadership at the opera, team building at Bradford Woods and peace keeping and micro-finance at Notre Dame.
Each Hoosier Fellows class is between 15 and 25 members strong with their organizations and firms representing a cross-section of society. The diversity this brings to the discussion is one of the program’s strengths.
“Each class is assembled from all sectors of the working world,” Madison says. “When you gather people together from the arenas of business, non-profit, education, medicine, government and religion, you get such a variety of perspectives with wide-ranging, in-depth analysis and discussion.”
Hoosier Fellows are selected through an application process. The program is designed for, but not limited to, more experienced, senior-level executives. Ideal candidates are often identified as high-talent, high-potential leadership pipeline individuals. Participants meet monthly for 10 months of the year beginning in January. The meetings generally begin on Thursday evening and conclude on Friday afternoon. A program fee is required to cover the cost of books, meals, lodging, speakers and instruction.
“I enjoyed the highly participatory nature of the Hoosier Fellows program and the diverse membership of our class,” says Reagan Rick, regional president, M&I Bank. “Listening to and debating different perspectives of leadership and life helped me grow as a person and a leader.”
The Hoosier Fellows program is designed to help participants enhance their leadership skill and to help them anticipate and manage different leadership dilemmas. Through the course of this executive leadership program, participants will:
- Be equipped with an array of leadership perspectives from which to examine and confront challenges and opportunities;
- Be better able to plan and implement organization-wide strategies within their companies;
- Be better able, within their own organizations, to present and defend ideas outside the norms and culture of the organization;
- Be more thoughtful – aware of the world, other people and other organizations around them;
- Develop a passion for lifelong leadership learning; and
- Understand the link between leadership behavior and organizational results.
“Hoosier Fellows offered an opportunity to expand my thinking in ways I haven’t experienced since graduate school,” says Sharon Sullivan, Eli Lilly and Company. “The program gave me a broader set of leadership and management tools for my work leading a complex and diverse organization and also connected me to a group of bright leaders across the state.”
