What Is The Point of You In The Classroom?  Teaching as Science, Craft or Art? Reflections of An HBS Professor After 40 years of Practice

RSVP * (Please register using your Harvard email.) 

Thomas J. Delong, PhD 
Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice
Harvard Business School 

The presentation/conversation will focus on the multiple levels that occur simultaneously in the classroom for a teacher and student.  DeLong will discuss why teachers often focus on their inadequacies and forget to play to their strengths.  DeLong dissects his own experiences and the observations he has made mentoring and observing teachers in various settings.  He goes into detail about curriculum design, preparing for the first day of class, how to manage the 15 minutes before class begins and how to assess whether the teacher has met expectations. All of these activities add up to a teaching identity which informs why we have found  ourselves  in front of students as a profession.
 

Biography: 

Thomas J. DeLong is a Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice and the former Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior Department at the Harvard Business School. He is an expert in leader development, organizational and career transformation.

Before joining the Harvard Business School Faculty, DeLong was Chief Development Officer and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Group, Inc, where he was responsible for the firm’s human capital and focused on issues of organizational strategy and organizational change. At Harvard, Professor DeLong teaches MBA and executive courses focused on leadership, organizational behavior, managing human capital, and career management. DeLong has served as course head for the required course on Leadership and Organizational Behavior. He has designed MBA courses focusing on managing human capital in high performance organizations and leading professional service firms. DeLong has advised on the development of a course on interpersonal effectiveness for the first year MBAs.

DeLong’s most recent book Teaching by Heart (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020) focuses on the relationship between leadership and teaching as well as highlights his insights into teaching as craft and art after 45 years in the classroom. 

His book, Flying Without a Net (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011) was recognized by the editors of Amazon Publishing as one of the top ten books written on leadership this century. DeLong co-authored two books focused on leadership and professional service firms, When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) and Professional Services: Cases and Texts (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2003).  He has coauthored two Harvard Business Review articles, Let’s Hear It for B Players and Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World. A number of his cases have been taught around the world in universities and organizations. His most notable cases are: Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley, Erik Peterson at Biometra, C&S Wholesale Grocers and the 1977 Alumni Profiles. 

Professor DeLong received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in Industrial Supervision.  He received a post-doctoral fellowship from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

*LInc Talks are intended for Harvard affiliated faculty members.