Leadership Expert, Gregg Ward, Launches Center for Respectful Leadership

What’s the most effective leadership style? It depends on who you ask.

Kurt Lewin, the psychologist most closely identified with social psychology, posited that all management styles can be broken down into two categories: task-oriented leadership and people-oriented leadership.

Bestselling author Gregg Ward posits a third category: respectful leadership. Ward recently launched the Center for Respectful Leadership to make respectful leadership development initiatives more accessible, and to help businesses understand the ways respectful leadership will have a positive impact on their value propositions.

Does Leadership Training Pay Off?

Does leadership training really pay off? The statistics say, “Yes.” According to the multinational professional services network, Deloitte, nearly 90 percent of all corporate executives identify leadership training as a top priority. And when a company makes an investment in leadership training, the results can be excellent.

A study conducted in 2015 by the Conference Board and Development Dimensions International found that employees working under managers who have recently completed leadership training reported 114 percent higher sales, 71 percent more customer satisfaction, 90 percent less absenteeism and 105 percent fewer workplace-related grievances.

Who Is Gregg Ward?

“What our society is experiencing right now is a level of public disrespect that we haven’t seen since the height of the Vietnam War,” Gregg Ward observes. “This can’t help but bleed over into our workplaces.”

Discussions of heroism and leadership on sports playing fields was commonplace around the dinner table when Gregg was growing up. His father was the well known sports writer Gene Ward.

Gregg first worked as a theater actor, writer and director. Then in 1986, Gregg was hired by the New York City Police Department, which was suffering at that time from a massive disconnect between its serve-and-protect mission and the needs of the community it served.

The underlying issue Gregg pinpointed was a fundamental lack of respect, which he identified as a key driver behind job performance, productivity and positive outcomes. To help police officers appreciate respect as an effective tool, Gregg developed a dynamic experiential learning program. Gregg’s program was such a success that leading media outlets such as “The New York Times” and CNN covered stories about it.

Building on this unique approach, Gregg Ward has since become an expert on best practices surrounding conflict resolution, interpersonal communication and respect. His clients have included corporate players like Kraft Foods and Ericsson Wireless as well as the U.S. Navy and smaller professional associations. He’s delivered more than 2,500 keynote speeches and seminars, written two bestselling books and appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

The Center for Respectful Leadership gives Gregg Ward the opportunity to synthesize a lifetime of work and use it to open dialogues with a whole new generation.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.