Add our expertise to your talent development strategy
The Tippie Leadership Collaborative is a nationally-recognized resource hub for organizations seeking management expertise and an affordable, flexible learning and development partner. Housed in Tippie's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, we have some of the world's most sought-after experts in the areas of leadership and change management, team development, employee engagement, diversity and opportunity, and talent management.
Our experts share that knowledge through speaking engagements and custom executive education programs. Get in touch with us to learn more about what our experts can contribute to your organization in a format that works best for you.
Challenges we can help you address
Our experts have decades of experience collaborating with organizations to study the kinds of challenges that keep leaders up at night. Here are just a few examples of the work our experts have been doing lately, as featured in outlets like the TODAY Show, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and Harvard Business Review:
Employee engagement and well-being
- Recognizing and addressing job burnout
- Removing obstacles and reducing frustration at work
- Supporting employees' side-hustles
- When to take on tasks outside of your job description
- Breaking the imposter syndrome
- Maintaining productivity and well-being in remote work environments
- Learning from astronauts about working in isolation
Talent management
- What organizations can do about The Great Resignation
- Why the best workers leave and the worst ones stay
- Company partisanship hurts hiring
- Should you re-hire a former employee?
- Why you shouldn't review job candidates' social media
- Experience is useless for predicting a new hire's performance
- First impression do's and don'ts for a job interview
- Why it's hard to find part-time work
Teams and leadership
- How do people feel about working in remote teams?
- Reaping the benefits of informal leadership for developing future leaders
- Does being nice hurt your prospects for leadership?
- Why capable people are reluctant to lead
- Stop making excuses for toxic bosses
- The overlooked key to leading through chaos
- Leadership through story
- When the boss brings family problems to the office
- Rebuilding trust in your relationships at work
Diversity and opportunity
- Addressing gender and racial inequality at work
- Keeping difficult conversations civil
- Challenges of being a working mother
- Importance of women on corporate boards
- Understanding gender gaps in scientific research
- Intimate partner violence is a workplace issue
- Pay inequity and salary transparency
- Insights into DEI initiatives
Resources for your business to conquer its challenges
We're in the business of collaborative, engaging, flexible, and affordable lifelong learning. We offer several opportunities to tap into our expertise, including:
Custom Executive Education
Let us help you design a development experience that challenges and excites your current and future leaders. Our customized programs range from half-day workshops to year-long, cohort-based programming.
Expert Speakers
Tippie faculty have a passion for teaching that extends beyond the walls of the Pappajohn Business Building. Invite our internationally recognized thought leaders to share their knowledge and expertise with your leaders and staff—either in-person or virtually.
"We wanted to give our high-potential employees a very prestigious and impactful leadership opportunity.”
Examples of our work
When organizations like yours want to create a learning and development plan or need expertise on a problem, they look to the Tippie Leadership Collaborative as a partner.
Here are some examples of just a few of the development experiences we've provided for organizations:
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
The VA saw an urgent need to provide their clinicians and researchers with opportunities to develop leadership and teamwork skills in order to improve the patient and employee experience. So they called on the Tippie Leadership Collaborative to provide interactive virtual development sessions for hundreds of employees in 18 different VA Health Services Research and Development centers across the country. Sessions each last four hours and focus on topics such as managing remote teams, leading others through uncertainty, retaining talent and managing change.
Valuable tools for leadership development
"Over the last several years, the Tippie Leadership Collaborative has provided a format that has allowed us to equip our people with valuable tools to develop leadership skills, build effective teams, and hire and retain a talented workforce. They have also given us a platform to openly discuss how to lead ourselves and others through challenging and uncertain times."
- Bonnie Bootsmiller, VA Director of Operations
HNI Corporation
In an effort to break down functional silos, up-skill their managerial workforce, and prepare future executives in the company, HNI called on the Tippie Leadership Collaborative to help design a six-month, cohort-style leadership academy. In this program, a cohort of 20 high-potential managers in the company participate in a series of five in-person, full-day sessions on topics of strategic importance to the business, such as engaging employees, leading with vision, developing teams, and making collaborative decisions.
Trusted partner for customized programs
"We view the Tippie Leadership Collaborative as a trusted partner who takes an inquisitive approach to developing customized programs. They started by asking questions to understand who we are, what our needs are, how they could best deliver content that is going to be impactful, retained, and utilized. Through collaboration with faculty experts, the content is aligned to topics HNI, as a company, is prioritizing. The facilitators do a nice job of drawing out the participants so it's not a one-way lecture. At the beginning we wondered if a large university would be as agile as you hope they will be. And our experience has been nothing but great.”
- Brad Stoefen, HNI Training and Development Manager
Professional and Trade Associations
We also present to professional and trade associations members who can receive continuing education credits through their associations. Past clients include the Project Management Institute, Association for Talent Development, Society for Human Resource Management, and the Iowa Hospital Association.
Perfect blend of content and participation
"Dr. Jennifer Nahrgang recently gave a presentation to our local Association of Talent Development Chapter on ‘Why Capable People are Reluctant to Lead.’ Her facilitation style was the perfect blend of presenting content and encouraging attendees to actively participate in the learning experience. Our members deeply appreciated the opportunity to learn about the topic at hand, as well as about other resources and opportunities available through the Tippie Leadership Collaborative."
- Jon Sexton, Marketing Chair of the Mississippi Valley Chapter of the Association for Talent Development
Iowa City Area Business Partnership
As 2021 came to a close, the Iowa City Area Business Partnership—an organization of more than 800 businesses in Johnson County, Iowa--sensed that local business leaders were struggling. Pandemic challenges had taken a toll, and they were eager to create programming that could help these leaders thrive. So the Partnership connected with the Tippie Leadership Collaborative, who worked with them to craft executive-level training for members of the organization. The result is powerful content for a year-long, cohort-based executive leadership program that includes sessions on retaining and recruiting talent, diversity and opportunity, change leadership, and workplace well-being. Read more about this program.
No one better at developing leaders
“Reaching out to the Tippie Leadership Collaborative was valuable because they helped develop customized content in ways that have been relevant to our business leaders. I don’t think there’s anyone better than Tippie at helping grow leaders.”
- Jennifer Banta, Iowa City Area Business Partnership Vice President of Advocacy and Community Development
Stelter Company
CEO Bev Hutney knew many of her employees had side hustles but were sometimes fearful of talking about them at work. Rather than discouraging side hustles, Ms. Hutney was influenced by Professor Jennifer Nahrgang's research featured in Harvard Business Review showing that side hustles can actually improve performance in one's "day job."
In an effort to help employees find synergies between their side hustles and their jobs at Stelter, she invited Professor Nahrgang to present her research to all employees in a one-hour virtual "lunch and learn" workshop. Learn more about this engagement as featured on CNBC.
Experienced and compelling facilitators
"Why is the Tippie Leadership Collaborative my first choice for executive education? First, the team is world-class—individuals who are deeply versed in management and leadership fundamentals and conduct ground-breaking research. Second, they are among the most experienced and compelling facilitators you will ever encounter. Most importantly, they are flexible and curious collaborators motivated to help create superior learning experiences for your team. Once you engage, it will be hard to stop."
- Bev Hutney, former CEO of Stelter Company
University of Iowa
Leadership development is just as important here on the home front as anywhere else! Various organizations at the University of Iowa have reached out to the Tippie Leadership Collaborative to support their professional students, faculty, and staff in developing fundamental and advanced leadership skills. This support has come by way of one-hour workshops at university conferences or full-fledged leadership academies for professional and graduate students, such as the Healthcare Business Leadership Program with the College of Pharmacy and College of Dentistry.
Helping us stand out
“Healthcare is changing at a rapid pace and pharmacists need the skills to lead teams and creatively solve problems. The HBL program allows student pharmacists to grow their leadership expertise by learning and working with the outstanding faculty at Tippie. Our students have greatly benefited from the HBL experience, and it has helped us as a college to really stand out among our peers.”
- Susan Vos, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, UI College of Pharmacy
"We are rethinking how business schools provide lifelong learning by, first, offering a menu of opportunities for organizations to connect with our experts--as speakers, consultants, and/or educators--and, second, by adopting a client-centric model focused entirely on their specific needs. This is the Iowa way of doing things: collaborative, innovative, and nimble."
Contact us
Allison Hershberger
Program Coordinator
319-467-1864
allison-yoder@uiowa.edu
Stephen Courtright
Director of Executive Education
319-335-1809
stephen-courtright@uiowa.edu