How to become successful in executive education – Bill Fischer

IMD-professor (and formet CEIBS dean) Bill Fischer wrote up on his weblogwhat makes him successful in executive education, answers on questions from CEIBS professor Ellie Weldon. “One of the few advantages that I have found to be associated with aging, however, is that sometimes people ask for your opinions, and then actually listen.”

Bill Fischer, on one of the key factors that made him succeed:

A belief that my role is no longer to be the “purveyor of truth” but rather, instead, to serve as a “smart person facilitating smarter people.” This is not easy. It defies decades of professorial prerogatives and requires a willingness to cede control over the classroom experience to the participants, but it is a sober and realistic admission that the people in our executive education classrooms know a lot, are smart people, and should own the experience. My role, then, is to put them into a position where it is their program and not my own.That is not to say that I abdicate my responsibilities as an “instructor” or as someone whose job it is to observe many different managers and businesses, and to draw opinions from these experiences, but the emphasis should be on applying this knowledge to move the participants’ conversations forward, rather than “dazzling” them with what I think that I know.

Much more on Bill Fischer’s weblog.

Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch, or fill in our speakers’ request form.