Gene Boccialetti is a senior consultant in the Leadership Transformation Practice and is an internationally recognized author, speaker and consultant on leadership development, corporate leadership learning ladders to drive business strategy, custom leveled leadership competency designs, and adult learning design.
Gene's career and experience includes a professorship at a university business school, private coaching and consulting to executives and dozens of major organizations, and internal corporate experience (including P&L responsibility). Throughout all, Gene has promoted practical solutions to leader development with a "results focus" and bottom-line impact.
After earning his doctorate (organizational behavior, organization development, adult development and careers), Gene became a professor in the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. While at UNH, Gene devoted himself to the Executive MBA program, teaching the "lead-in" course for executives to re-shape their leadership and management style while also teaching executive clinics on managing change, courses in organizational design, advanced conflict management and the International Executive Residency (design, management, instructor roles) based at The Center for European Studies, University of Limburg in Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Gene's consulting client list includes dozens of major organizations in both the public and private sector including many Fortune's 100 companies. Project foci included strategic planning and policy formation, leadership and executive development, executive coaching, talent management, and large-scale systems change.
In addition to teaching and consulting, Gene launched a new line of research into the unaddressed side of the leadership equation: authority relations in organizations (how manager and leaders relate to others in authority). This culminated in his highly praised book: It Takes Two, published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley in 1995 offered with a companion assessment tool for assessing executive and management styles in relating to more senior authority. This work was also chosen for inclusion into Organization Development (Wiley, 2006) J. Gallos, ed. promoting the "best thinking in OD topics" focusing on what Edgar Schein (MIT) described as one of the two "paramount issues" in OD going forward "getting upward informational flow in hierarchies."
In 1998, Gene began work with Schaffer Consulting in the M&A practice, working as a senior consultant with Managing Partner, Ron Ashkenas. Their clients included many of the Fortune's 500 companies including Johnson and Johnson, ArvinMeritor Automotive, Zurich America Diversified Products, Welch-Allyn, & PSC.
Rounding out his academic and consulting experience, Gene developed Pfizer's new global leadership development initiative with a special focus in executive development. He authored Pfizer's custom global leadership competencies ladder (six levels of leadership, adopted worldwide) and subsequently led the re-design/re-sequencing of Pfizer's leadership learning ladder with the introduction of a "vertically integrated" series of programs (streaming content across all levels) and high-impact workshops with a sharp focus on Pfizer's six business imperatives.
Leveraging his in-depth understanding of university systems, he also re-designed a university-based leadership program to focus on accelerating "back at work" business initiatives yielding important business results. Gene went on to develop an integrated corporate strategy for organization development, learning and development and leadership development.
More recently, Gene worked with Cornell University's ILR School leading a strategic re-positioning of five practitioner-oriented learning portfolios. In the worst market in decades, a combination of marketing, pricing, cost, re-branding and product mix initiatives limited top-line revenue downturn to 12%, increased prices 15%, reduced expenses 18% which resulted in an increase of 8% net profit FY08-09 (over FY07-08).
Gene received his BS from Fairfield University (Fairfield, Connecticut) in management and economics and a Master's/Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, Organization Development and Adult Development from The Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio). In addition, Gene has held faculty appointments at Columbia and Cornell University.
Gene's other interests include eleven years as a PSIA certified alpine ski instructor; a scuba-diver and dive master; team leader/driver SCCA sports car (road course) racing, avid rollerblader and road cyclist. Frequent teaching in sports has shaped his approach to leadership development, enhancing his approach to: creating readiness for learning; more selective attention to concept-and-competency-driven learning; learning and performing under pressure; more attention to coaching, behavioral practice, and achieving and measuring results.
