Kathleen Hurson

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Kathleen Hurson leads BE GREAT LLC's Leading with Autonomy® product development efforts and its quantitative and qualitative proprietary research. Her front-line management and supervisory knowledge and experience are unparalleled in the field of training and development.  

As the former senior vice-president of product development for Zenger Miller and AchieveGlobal, she directed the development of award-winning supervisory, management and leadership development programs, including FrontLine Leadership™ and Leadership 2000™. Her contributions to research and authorship include a landmark study that involved 2000 people across 450 organizations and identified the 17 leadership competencies employees valued most in their leaders. This research serves as the basis for her book, Everyone a Leader: A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace. 

Kathleen’s earlier book, Leading Teams: Mastering the New Role, includes practical tools and techniques for managing teams in today’s organizations. In addition, her advice on managing difficult teams was included in the case commentary: “The Team That Wasn’t: Why Doesn’t This Team Work?” published in the Harvard Business Review.

In addition to her expertise in research and generic product development, Kathleen is an extraordinary instructional designer of custom solutions. She brings client-specific business strategies, strengthened by considerable hands-on leadership experience, to her work as a designer of custom programs. She has held positions ranging from first-line supervisor to Senior Vice President and has managed departmental teams, including a high-tech training department, cross-functional project teams, executive task forces, and large, geographically dispersed development teams.  

Kathleen's recent client work includes:

  • Microsoft

  • EMC

  • Cisco

  • Safeway

  • Chevron

PUBLICATIONS:

  • Everyone A Leader: A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace. (Co-Author)

  • Leading Teams: Mastering the New Role. (Co-Author)

  • “The Team that Wasn’t: Why Doesn’t This Team Work?” (published in the Harvard Business Review.)

  • “New Leadership Thinking in Play: Simulation Develops Leadership Accountability” (Co- Author) (Published by Paradigm Learning)

Kathleen has served on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Society of Training and Development and has been a mentor for Women Unlimited. 

 Education:

U of Maryland, College Park, BA English 

Pepperdine University, Graduate Studies in Organizational Development

Stanford University, Continuing Studies Program