Professional Practice Series: The 21st Century Executive

SIOP Administrative Office

The 21st Century Executive: Innovative Practices for Building Leadership at the Top gives tips on how to build and maintain an effective leadership team, one with great understanding of executive dynamics and development tools. This SIOP Professional Practices Series edition is an essential resource for HR professionals and I-O practitioners.

The multi-authored book also helps executives, CEOs, and middle-level managers wanting toclimb the corporate ladder and refine their skills. Many chapters explore executive performance and documents unique to executive-level human resources applications.

Chapters like “What Business Leaders Do Best” by Anthony J. Rucci, “Coaching Executives: Individual Leader Development” by George P. Hollenbeck, “Finding the Key to the Executive Suite: Challenges for Women and People of Color” by Karen S. Lyness, and many more are sure to show effective executive performance and outline state-of-the-art corporate human resources practices, along with guidelines and principles.

In the first chapter, “Deciphering Executive Failures,” author Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld discusses success coupled with failure, and how career failure may enhance career success. He writes,

Overcoming adversity is a fundamental aspect of transformational leadership. The recovery from life’s challenges helps to build the near-superhuman, larger-than-life aura that is so critical to the heroic identity (Sonnenfeld, 1988). Many contemporary business leaders, such as Robert Pittman, president of AOL/Time Warner, Bernard Marcus, founder of huge home-improvement retailer Home Depot, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, and business media mogul Michael Bloomberg, are great enterprise builders who were only momentarily traumatized when forced from major leadership positions before rebounding.

Dr. Rob Silzer, editor of The 21st Century Executive, is Managing Director of HR Assessment and Development, Inc. and Doctoral Faculty in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Baruch, Graduate Center, CUNY. He has consulted with business leaders in over 150 organizations, focusing on executive and leadership assessment, identification, selection, coaching and development; high potential talent; and strategic talent management. Silzer is an integral part of SIOP, currently serving as SIOP Practice Officer and awarded the 2015 SIOP Distinguished Professional Contributions Award. He is also a SIOP fellow and no stranger to professional workshops, originating the SIOP Leading Edge Consortium , now in its 14th year.Dr. Silzer holds a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Counseling Psychology from the University of Minnesota. He actively pursues adventure travel around the world including high altitude mountain trekking and lives in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City.

The SIOP Professional Practice Series books are informative and relevant guides, intended to provide current information regarding science and best practices in a variety of industrial and organizational psychology topics. In each volume, the reader will find guidance and insights that are firmly grounded in science as well as advice on how to apply the concepts, findings, methods and tools to organizational problems. The series is designed to meet the needs of a broad audience of practitioners, including industrial and organizational psychologists, organizational scientists and practitioners, human resources professionals, managers, executives, and others interested in organizational behavior and performance.