Career Booster: Lifelong learning with SMU Cox

SMU Cox School of Business is helping oil and gas firms prepare their current high-potential employees for new leadership challenges.

Fourth dimension leadership brings bottom-Line dividends to oil and gas companies. Frank Lloyd and Bruce Bullock at the SMU Cox School of Business explain how

Where will tomorrow’s oil and gas industry leaders come from? Talent available to lead the industry in the future is insufficient to backfill the baby boom generation.

Case in point: while interest in the oil and gas industry is growing among students at SMU’s Cox School of Business, oil and gas companies—even those acclaimed for world class environmental and sustainable energy solutions—face difficulty in attracting top job candidates. Why? Many students believe the industry is broken.

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Based on perspectives gleaned from journalists, politicians, educators and even other business leaders, they see the industry as focused solely on profits for shareholders and willing to jeopardize public health and safety by turning urban and suburban areas and even farmland into heavy industrial drilling sites.

Fortunately, four new trends in leadership development give forward looking firms in the industry new tools to attract and keep the best talent.

The most profound of these trends adds a fourth dimension to the principles of managerial psychology that define the basic dimensions of leadership competence.

• Leading yourself (awareness of your personal values, skills and personality preferences and how those are perceived by others in the organization)
• Leading your team (interpersonal and group skills to motivate others and build effective teams)
• Leading your organization (corporate and enterprise skills to work across boundaries, communicate direction, and lead change)

The new fourth dimension takes leaders outside themselves and their organizations to establish leadership presence in their communities. It requires them to expand their competencies accordingly.

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