April 26th, 2013, the author of The Leadership Challenge, which is a best seller with 2 million, Professor Barry Posner visited “the 29th Wings Book and SJTU Antai EMBA management forum” and addressed the splendid speech “The Leadership Challenge for Coaching and Talent Development”. Lv Wei, Vice Dean of ACEM and the professor of EMBA course, gave a speech on behalf of ACEM. The forum was hosted by Zheng Xingshan, Associate Professor in Management School of ACEM. Nearly 800 middle and senior manager from all over China participated in this forum.

Professor Lv Wei made a speech first. He humorously compared “leadership” to “love”, both were well known, but few people could interpret clearly, and thus lead to the theme of the forum. He frankly told that the society nowadays belonged to talents. Talents played an important role in the organization, which wanted to develop in the transformation of society. And leadership is the key to success and overcoming challenges. Later on, Ms. Fu Yubo, General Manager of Century Wave Cultural Development Co., LTD, and Mr. Li Yueqing, General Manager of Wings Book made their speeches respectively.

The guest speaker, Professor Barry Posner, is a world famous scholar and educator, the dean and professor of leadership from Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. The book of The Leadership Challenge co-authored by him has been translated into more than 20 languages and sold more than 2 million worldwide, and is regarded as the authority in leadership. More than 250 thousand people have participated in “The Leader’s Habit List”. With more than 1 million observers and 100 thousand samples, it’s the most applied all-round leadership evaluation tool across the world.

During his speech, Professor Posner shared his view from 3 aspects consisting of how leadership can lead to difference, 5 habits of excellent leaders, and how to improve leadership. With a series of data and examples, he proved that people could make themselves different and improve their leadership by learning and practicing the following 5 actions: lead by example, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, encourage the heart. To the view that leadership is gifted, Professor Posner pointed out that, every leader is a natural born, but leadership is a kind of ability that can be acquired.

The audience raised numbers of questions in the communication session, discussing topics with the guests including how to create values and how to build a united team etc. We believe that the passion and action capability inspired by the book of The Leadership Challenge will be a spontaneous self-cultivation, leading to the creation of the better environment to recognize and improve ourselves and the society, achieving the ideal state of “the unity of knowledge and action”.