Paula Caligiuri

(From GreenBiz.com)-Conference season is here. During this time of reconnecting with colleagues, the top question I receive is: “What are the newest trends in the job market?” I’ll take the opportunity to share my response with you and the rest of the GreenBiz community.Today’s needs for agilityIn a world of rapidly changing business strategies, challenging consumer demands, new product creation and formidable data sets, it seems like everything is moving at the speed of light. Rapid is a common prefix. Rapid response. Rapid rewards. Rapid transit. Rapid hair loss.In such a quickly evolving environment, business leaders must learn to adapt and stay ahead by being agile. Agility is the new buzzword. It applies to business as well as to sustainability leadership.From sports to software design to business and leadership, I have seen “agility”bandied about as an increasingly popular term in recent years. The idea is that adaptability and flexibility allow athletes, computer programs, organizations and corporate leaders to react to circumstances where outcomes may be unpredictable or change unexpectedly. In doing so, they take advantage of uncertainty, factoring it into a response that accounts for the eddy of constant changes.As a recruiting professional with over 15 years of CSR experience, I can’t help but notice how well agility applies to sustainability leadership.Agility in business and leadershipAt the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Strategy Conference last month, Paula Caligiuri, professor in the Human Resource Management Department at Rutgers University, presented a session about "How to Build a Pipeline of Culturally Agile Professionals." She spoke of the importance of managing employees who are culturally agile in today’s economic and global conditions.SHRM also offers a webcast on agility in leadership called "Learning Agility: The X-Factor in Identifying and Developing High Potentials." It is presented by Vicki Swisher, senior director of Intellectual Property Development at Korn/Ferry International. Swisher recently wrote the book "Becoming an Agile Leader: Know What to Do…When You Don’t Know What to Do." In it, she proposes five qualities of an agile leader: self-awareness, mental agility, people agility, change agility and results agility.I predict that this article will be the first of many within GreenBiz that feature “agile” or “agility” in its title.Read more

Is 'agile leadership' the next sustainability buzz phrase?

November 2012 - TD Magazine

A review of Cultural Agility: Building a Pipeline of Successful Global Professionals by Paula Caligiuri

Developing Global Savvy

March 2013 - TD Magazine

Do you have the cross-cultural competencies necessary to meet the global challenges facing your organization now and in the future?

Paula Caligiuri

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