Lifetime Achievement Awardee

Robert Lord

Robert Lord is Professor of Leadership at Durham Business School and Director of Durham’s International Center for Leadership and Followership, Durham University. With a background in psychology, it is not surprising that Lord’s career has taken place at the intersections of leadership, cognitive science, neuro-cognitive science. His exploration of implicit leadership theories delved into how people experience and judge leaders and leadership processes and has been the basis of many research studies as has his work on leadership categorization and leadership prototypes, which was utilized in the GLOBE project.

At the forefront of recent trends, some of his research over the past ten years has emphasized that leadership perceptions have strong emotional components that reflect embodied cognition. Lord has also deployed quantum physics to consider the ways people travel through time, inventing new identities and creating new realities, and how identity and leadership perception engage information processing, motivation, and emotion.

He is the winner of numerous prestigious honors including: Leadership Quarterly’s Best Paper of the Year award; The Distinguished Scholar Award for Career Contributions to the Study of Leadership; and SIOP’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award; among others. The author of three books and over 140 refereed chapters and journal articles, Lord has prolifically explored the nooks and crannies of leadership.

Oral history is an excellent method for collecting and interpreting memories and fostering new knowledge. Dr. Phil Scarpino, past president of the National Council for Public History and Professor of History at IU, exhaustively researches each recipient prior to conducting his interviews and uses the highest standards prescribed by the American Oral History Association.

The Tobias Leadership Center focuses on research and programs related to the study of leadership across all sectors – including corporate, public service, education, religion, medicine, and non-profit organizations. Its focus on multiple sectors and on both the practice and theory of leadership distinguishes its agenda among leadership programs nationwide. Through ongoing research in a variety of sectors, it generates knowledge about leadership and disseminates this knowledge through a variety of programs.

Oral History with Robert Lord
View all oral histories here

Keynote session at ILA Brussels