Cindy McCauley

Experience

With over 30 years of experience at CCL, Cindy has contributed to many aspects of CCL’s work: research, publication, product development, program evaluation, coaching, and management. Cindy co-developed two of CCL’s assessment tools, Benchmarks and the Job Challenge Profile, and co-edited three books for talent management professionals: The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Experience-Driven Leader Development (Wiley, 2013), and Using Experience to Develop Leadership Talent, (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Her most recent publications include Change Now! Five Steps to Better Leadership (CCL, 2014), which guides leaders through a process of crafting and enacting development plans, and Direction, Alignment, and Commitment: Achieving Better Results through Leadership (CCL, 2016), which helps leaders diagnose leadership issues in groups. As a result of her research and applied work, Cindy is an advocate for using on-the-job experience as a central leader development strategy, for seeing leadership as a collective endeavor, and for integrating constructive-developmental theories of human growth into leader development practice. Cindy was awarded the 2017 Marion Gislason Award for Excellence in Leadership Development by Boston University.

Current Role

Cindy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC. She designs and manages R&D projects, coaches action learning teams, writes for multiple audiences, and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences.

Areas of Expertise

Experience-Driven Leader Development, 360-Degree Feedback, Relational Leadership, Adult Development, Talent Management

Educational Background

Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Georgia; B.A. in Psychology from King College

Professional Affiliations

Cindy is active in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and a member of the Academy of Management. She is a Fellow in SIOP, the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Cindy is an Editorial board member of both Group and Organization Management and Organizational Dynamics.

Select CCL Publications

• Experience-Driven Leader Development: Models, Tools, Best Practices, and Advice for On-the-Job Development
• Direction, Alignment, Commitment: Achieving Better Results through Leadership
• Change Now! Five Steps to Better Leadership
• Developmental Assignments: Creating Learning Experiences without Changing Jobs
• The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development (3rd edition)

Curriculum Vitae

Cindy has contributed to more than 75 publications in academic journals, business magazines, books, white papers, and the CCL Press. She has served on editorial boards for scholarly journals (Leadership Quarterly, Personnel Psychology, Group and Organization Management) and for practitioner publications (People & Strategy, Organization Dynamics), and was the editor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice from 2010 to 2012.  Cindy has developed leadership assessments, facilitated leadership workshops in a variety of organizations, and evaluated leader development programs. She also manages a websitefor sharing research and practice related to experience-driven leader development.

See Cindy’s Curriculum Vitae

Select External Publications

• Make Experience Count
• Concepts of Leadership
• Direction, Alignment, Commitment: Toward a More Integrative Ontology of Leadership
• Designing Relationships for Learning into Leader Development Programs
• The Use of Constructive-Developmental Theory to Advance the Understanding of Leadership

Honors, Awards, Grants

• Marion Gislason Award for Excellence in Leadership Development, Boston University, 2017.
• Named Fellow in the American Educational Research Association, 2008.
• Named Fellow in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2003.
• Named Fellow in the American Psychological Association, 2003.
• Named Senior Fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership, 2003.

Current Projects

• Measuring Direction-Alignment-Commitment