Atlas Corps and UZH CLFW partner to nurture 21st century leaders
20 September 2022
Prof. Dr. Jochen Menges, Director, UZH CLFW, and Bidjan Nashat, CEO, Atlas Corps.
Atlas Corps and the University of Zurich Center for Leadership in the Future of Work (CLFW) cooperate to identify and nurture human-centered, 21st century leaders from across the globe.
Leaders and employees vastly differ in their assessment of organizational culture: 72% of executives surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2021 believed their overall organizational culture had improved since the beginning of the pandemic, but 86% of employees disagreed. This perception gap illustrates the need for leaders to embrace human aspects more fully in the future of work. For example, research has long proven that emotions matter in organizations, for everything leaders care about, including performance and productivity. Emotional intelligence – or the ability to recognize, reason with and regulate emotions in oneself and others - is therefore an essential leadership skill, yet it is rarely widely assessed, nor cultivated or consciously practiced in organizations.
Working since 2006 to address the fact that talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not, Atlas Corps reaches tens of thousands of young leaders from over 115 countries each year, vets thousands of applications, and selects the most qualified of them for its 12-to-18-month U.S.-based fellowship to strengthen their skills in organizations. Fellows then become part of a global community of social change leaders. The partnership with CLFW will enable Atlas Corps to better identify talented young leaders from across the globe who bring the potential to lead organizations with emotional intelligence.
To begin, Atlas Corps is working together with CLFW researchers to sharpen its vetting process. The two teams will first revise questions, include new questions based on expert input and refine the scoring system. As a basis for a more in-depth research project, the research team will then analyze interviews with artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to gauge communication skills and emotional scores. Atlas Corps will use results to inform final leader selection over time. The two teams will also work on integrating an emotional intelligence ability test into the fellowship application process, further increasing the quality and validity of data points and allowing for triangulation in addition to the written responses, video interviews, and the text of the reference checks.
In a second phase, the two teams will tackle an ambitious research agenda to assess the longer-term impact of skills such as conflict management and emotional intelligence on these young leaders’ career. This promising piece of joint research is expected to advance our understanding of the effectiveness of emotional intelligence and conflict management skills for young leaders from across the globe.
Atlas Service Corps, Inc. (Atlas Corps), established in 2006, is an international network of social sector leaders and organizations that promotes innovation, cooperation, and solutions to address the world’s 21st-century challenges. Atlas Corps believes that talent is distributed equally everywhere, but opportunity is not. And those organizations that make a difference for people at home and abroad deserve access to the best global talent.
Atlas Corps finds diverse global talent, develops leaders, and strengthens organizations through training and fellowship programs and an alumni community of skilled social change professionals.
Since 2006, Atlas Corps have connected 1400+ talented professionals from 115 countries with 300+ of mission-driven organizations in the U.S. Over 1400 young talented leaders from 115 countries are already part of our community of young leaders. Atlas Corps have been profiled as a “best practice” in international exchange by the Brookings Institution and featured in the Washington Post as a model social entrepreneurship program.