Rick Gilkey
Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management | Emory University, Goizueta Business School
Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES
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Biography
Rick Gilkey holds a joint appointment at Emory University, as a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory School of Medicine and at the Goizueta Business School as a Professor in the Practice of Organization and Management. As a recent retiree he continues to be active in both schools.
Prior to joining Emory, Rick was at Dartmouth College, where he held a joint faculty appointment at the Amos Tuck School of Business and at Dartmouth Medical School where he as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry. Rick has also served as a visiting professor of international negotiation at Groupe HEC, Paris, and as a Visiting International Professor at INSEAD, Fontainebleau.
Rick’s research and writing has been focused on neuroscience and leadership, executive development, team effectiveness, and change management. His most research is in the area of neuroimaging, which involves the use of fMRI scanning technology to gain images of executives who are involved in strategic thinking, moral reasoning and creative problem solving. This research is focused on understanding how the brain operates using cognitive and emotional reasoning in executive populations. He is also researching and teaching executive coaching and leadership development and has served as faculty director of the joint Diploma Program in Executive Coaching offered by the School of Medicine and Goizueta Business School.
Rick’s articles have appeared in many leading professional journals include The Harvard Business Review.
Rick has provided consulting and executive education service to a broad array of organizations, including Alcoa, AT&T, Beiersdorf AG, Bertelsmann Music Group (RCA, Arista Records), Chiron Biocene (Ciba-Geigy), Coca-Cola, General Electric, Home Depot, IBM, iVision Inc. Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Morgan Stanley, Mailchimp, PWC, The New York Times, Total, A.G., Siemens A.G., Suez, SunTrust, United Parcel Service, and Zurich Financial. In addition, Rick has also provided services to numerous non-profit organizations including CARE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense (IDB) and The Taskforce on Global Health. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of Quantuvos (where he is helping to develop a research center for evidence based coaching effectiveness). He also serves on the Technology Advisory Group of Morris, Manning and Martin.
Education (1)
University of Michigan: PhD
Areas of Expertise (7)
Change Management
Executive Development
Psychiatry
Neuro-Imaging
Consulting
Neuroscience and Leadership
Team Effectiveness
Publications (6)
Building a Coaching Culture—The Roles of Coaches, Mentors, and Sponsors
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Baker, Edward L.; Hengelbrok, Helena; Murphy, Susan A.; Gilkey, Roderick
2021-05-01
Growth and development as a leader can best be achieved by a disciplined approach involving formal development experiences, self-assessment, and a commitment to taking time for reflection and renewal. Although some of this work can be done alone, support from a coach, a mentor, and a sponsor can enhance the process substantially. In this article, we provide an overview of the interrelated processes of coaching, mentoring, and sponsorship, which we consider to be essential elements in the development of all public health leaders throughout their careers. Our column is directed at those in leadership positions with the admonition that leaders should foster a coaching culture within their organizations as a core strategy to enhance organizational effectiveness. In a later column, we plan to direct our attention to those seeking a coach, mentor, or sponsor to accompany them on their leadership journey and provide practical suggestions on how to implement the process.
Asking Better Questions—A Core Leadership Skill
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Baker, Edward L.; Gilkey, Roderick
2020-11-01
In prior Management Moment columns, we have focused on certain core leadership skills needed for effective practice in public health organizations. Recently, we considered the topic of effective listening skills. As noted, listening deeply nurtures our ability to connect with others and to share our passion for serving the health of the public. Deep listening builds relationships, fosters trust, and thereby establishes a foundation for creative action. In this column, we turn to the companion skill of asking better questions—a central element of effective public health leadership.
Crisis leadership—from the Haiti earthquake to the COVID pandemic
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Keen, P. K. (Ken); Gilkey, Roderick; Baker, Edward L.
2020-09-01
Since crisis leadership in other situations may provide useful insights, we draw upon the massive response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti during which one of us (K.K.) led the overall US and multination humanitarian response.2 Another coauthor (R.G.) participated with LTG Keen in the recovery efforts in Haiti, where they developed leadership support and programs. In this column, we offer specific strategies and tactics that served in the response to the Haiti earthquake that seem applicable to the COVID response.
Listening to Understand: A Core Leadership Skill
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Baker, Edward L.; Dunne-Moses, Abigail; Calarco, Allan J.; Gilkey, Roderick
2019-09-01
As noted in prior Management Moment columns, research on public health leadership practice has identified the ability to “really listen” as a critical success factor. This factor is particularly important in the early phases of entering a new position where rapid learning is needed. As one gains more experience and the span of control increases, listening becomes key to understanding how to face the most daunting of challenges. In this column, we will share a few best practices for leaders with respect to the practice of “listening to understand” based on research from the Center for Creative Leadership and the work of Edgar Schein, a widely respected leadership thought leader.
When Emotional Reasoning Trumps IQ
Harvard Business Review
Roderick Gilkey, Ricardo Caceda, and Clinton Kilts
2010-09-01
Many companies and B schools still treat strategy and execution as separate beasts, despite increasing evidence that the divide does much more damage than good. A large part of the problem may be that people view strategic reasoning as a high-level executive function of the brain and tactical thought as a discrete, lower-level activity. But the two kinds of thinking are linked in an important way: They both draw considerably on social-emotional reasoning, particularly in the brains of the most adept strategic thinkers. Indeed, strategic thought entails at least as much emotional intelligence as it does IQ.
The neural processing of moral sensitivity to issues of justice and care
Neuropsychologia
2007 The empirical and theoretical consideration of ethical decision making has focused on the process of moral judgment; however, a precondition to judgment is moral sensitivity, the ability to detect and evaluate moral issues [Rest, J. R. (1984). The major components of morality. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behaviour, and moral development (pp. 24–38). New York, NY: Wiley]. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and contextually standardized, real life moral issues, we demonstrate that sensitivity to moral issues is associated with activation of the polar medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal posterior cingulate cortex, and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). These activations suggest that moral sensitivity is related to access to knowledge unique to one's self, supported by autobiographical memory retrieval and social perspective taking. We also assessed whether sensitivity to rule-based or “justice” moral issues versus social situational or “care” moral issues is associated with dissociable neural processing events. Sensitivity to justice issues was associated with greater activation of the left intraparietal sulcus, whereas sensitivity to care issues was associated with greater activation of the ventral posterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and thalamus. These results suggest a role for access to self histories and identities and social perspectives in sensitivity to moral issues, provide neural representations of the subcomponent process of moral sensitivity originally proposed by Rest, and support differing neural information processing for the interpretive recognition of justice and care moral issues.
Research Spotlight
In the News (2)
Kempner: Trump’s management style? Burn the textbook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution online
2017-08-11
Has Trump done well from a management researcher’s point of view? “The chaos to creation ratio is way off.”
A way into the hearts and minds of managers
Financial Times online
2014-07-06
Professor Gilkey is consulted in this interview for the Financial Times.
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