In October 2011, the Korn/Ferry Institute issued a white paper entitled “The Business School Dean Redefined”. The paper outlines several broad categories of leadership skills required by modern business school deans: 1) strategic skills, 2) enterprise management, 3) innovation, and 4) people and relationship effectiveness. Typically the “meat” of the paper can be found interviews with current and past business deans. The following two quotes really resonated with me:
Sally Blount, Dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, credits the following advice to Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, Jr..
Your message internally and externally must be absolutely seamless, and you better take internal communications just as seriously as you take external branding and public relations.
Along these same lines, Phil Hanlon, provost at the University of Michigan, has the following say:
The key skills of the dean include innovating, dealing with situations that you have not dealt with before, and possessing the confidence and the experience to be entrepreneurial.
A full copy of the Korn/Ferry report can be found here.
In addition, I would highly recommend that you read my posting on “Screening Criteria for the Business School Dean”. There are valuable insights to be found.
– from the pen of Dr. Percy Trappe
The Academic Anchor 
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