Background - Institute of Leadership Development

 

Eagles Communications is a Christian nonprofit organization that engages in a variety of activities to advance the cause of Christ in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and around the world.  Eagles sponsors evangelistic events, provides leadership training to ministry and business leaders, and offers mediation services to organizations and individuals.  In addition, it has spawned Meta HR & Communication, which partners with businesses to help them fulfill their strategic initiatives.

 

Founded in 1968 by the current leadership team, Eagles was the outgrowth of its founder’s conversion and passion to see men and women come to know Jesus Christ personally.  Eagles vision is “to share Christ, strengthen the church, and serve the community.”  Its mission is threefold:

• To reach working adults with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through relevant media.

• To disciple Christians through teaching and equipping.

• To restore broken lives and relationships through the integrative approach of mediation and counseling.

 

 

Eagles began its training ministry in 1975 with a single seminar.  Organized in 1990 under Mark Chan, the Institute of Leadership Development (ILD) is currently designing leadership development programs to focus on the following four distinct groups: senior ministry leaders; promising young ministry leaders; lay leaders; and Christian business leaders.  The ILD training will eventually consist of five modules, to be given to participants over a five-year period.  The modules focus on a range of topics, including personal development and conflict management.  The first couple of training modules are complete.  The remaining modules are in the final stages of development.

 

 

 

Engagement

 

This project built on our seminal study conducted during the summer of 2003, in which we conducted Behavior Event Interviews (BEIs) with 12 Christian CEOs.  The purpose of the 2003 study was to uncover common leadership competencies and characteristics shared among top performing Christian CEOs.  The project to be conducted during the summer of 2004 will build on this original work, seeking to validate (or invalidate) our original findings.  It will contribute to a larger study that is being conducted by Eagles, entitled: The Impact of Faith on Human Capital – A Study of Christian CEOS in Asia.

 

Through interviews with Christian CEOs in Southeast Asia, the team gained an understanding of how Christian CEOs in Southeast Asia uniquely approach their work. We also studied the differentiating characteristics and competencies that set top-performing Christian CEOs apart from peers leading comparable organizations. Finally, the team developed recommendations for Eagles to improve the effectiveness of its leadership development projects targeted at Christian business leaders. Like in previous years, the findings were documented

in a monograph or book to be published at a later date.

 

 

 

Team Bios

 

Hannah Kirkbride - Hannah is in the Masters of Leadership and Ethics Program at John Brown University

 

Jeanique Riche - Class of 2004 MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

 

Nicholas Sammer - Nic is in the MBA program at John Brown University

 

Andrea Walrath - MBA student at Spring Arbor University

 

 

 

The team was supported by:

 

Al Erisman – Al is the former Director of Technology at The Boeing Company.  He is Executive-in-Residence at the School of Business & Economics at Seattle Pacific University.  He is the co-founder and Director of the Institute for Business, Technology 7 Ethics.  Al is married to Nancy. 

 

 

Nancy Erisman – Leader in Seattle community and active in issues related to women in the marketplace.  Nancy is married to Al.

 

Matt Mathias – Adjunct faculty in the School of Business & Management at Spring Arbor University.  Matt is a University of Michigan MBA of 2000.

John Terrill – Director of InterVarsity Professional Schools Ministries.  John holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.