Routledge recently published Seven Essentials for Business Success: Lessons from Legendary Professors (2022). The book includes chapters on award-winning professors from seven business school disciplines. In these chapters, the professors discuss why they decided to become teachers, their role models, how they developed their teaching skills, their preparation for class, their advice for new professors, the major challenges they have faced as teachers, and other topics. The chapters take readers into their classrooms and analyze the teaching techniques that lead to their success. A "Day in the Life" feature describes a typical day in the professors' professional and personal lives. In the concluding chapter I summarize six themes relating to the teaching process used by these legendary professors. That chapter also provides many examples of the authenticity that characterizes their identity and integrity.
One of the chapters focuses on a groundbreaking course taught by Professor Gretchen Spreitzer of the University of Michigan. (Professor Spreitzer is well-known for her research and has been honored by the AOM with the Organizational Development and Change Distinguished Scholar Award.) The course is titled "The Art and Science of Designing Your Life to Thrive in the New World of Work," and its goal is to help students create a bridge from their academic work to the world of work they are about to enter. The course provides students with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to thrive in a world characterized by increasing flexibility and uncertainty. Among the topics covered are teamwork skills, positive deviancy, reciprocity rings, energy management, uni-tasking, and mindfulness. The delivery of these topics is innovative and includes student co-creation of the learning experience. This experience emphasizes active learning. For example, early in a session on the importance of gratitude-a topic selected by students-they text someone expressing gratitude. At the end of the session they share the responses they received during class, responses that illustrate the power of expressing gratitude. In the same session, Professor Spreitzer provides students with a gratitude journal (a "gratitude artifact") and gives them time to make their first entries.
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George Siedel
Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration
Ross School of Business
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
734-262-3211
gsiedel@umich.edu------------------------------