From Good to Great: How Leadership and Stewardship Behaviors Can Improve the Quality of Decision—Making
Sean Hannah, PhD Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired
Wake Forest University
Professor Hannah is an experienced senior leader, scholar, and organizational expert. He studies, teaches, and consults on exemplary leadership, leader development, business ethics, strategy, culture-building, and building high performing teams. He is a co-creator of Behavioral Governance©, the intersection of leadership, stewardship, and governance used to develop fiduciaries and those in key decision-making positions; as well as the groundbreaking academic research in Neuro-Leadership that has identified key neurological and psychological capacities that impact leaders’ effectiveness.
Prior to his appointment to the Wilson Chair at Wake Forest he served 26 years in the US Army, retiring in 2012 as a Colonel. He served as the Director of the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic, and the Director of Leadership and Management Programs, both at West Point. He served as an Infantry officer in command and staff positions in Europe, Cuba, Panama, Southwest Asia, and the United States, including combat with 3d Armored Division in Desert Storm, where his unit received the valorous unit citation and he the Bronze Star; and in contingency operations such as Operation Sea Signal (Panama and Cuba), and the control cell for Joint Task Force Los Angeles (LA Riots). Present in the Pentagon on 9/11, he was reassigned after the attack to lead the reconstitution of the organization that sustained the highest casualty level in the attack to rebuild its multibillion-dollar operation. Upon his retirement from the Army he was awarded his 44 th military decoration and was inducted in the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame.
A recent Stanford University study has identified Sean as being in the top 1% of all 8 million researchers worldwide across all sciences based on other scholars’ citations of his research in each of the last three years. He has been honored as a Fellow in both the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and sits on the editorial boards of three other major academic journals. He has published over 70 papers on leadership, character, and management in premier journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and many others. He was recognized by the Academy of Management amongst its 19,000 members with the 2017 Practice Impact Award, recognizing his overall significant impact on management practices.
Sean has conducted over 700 speaking, executive education, and consulting engagements in the US, Europe, and Asia, mostly with Fortune 500 firms.
Dr. Hannah holds a PhD in Management from the University of Nebraska, MBA from Syracuse University, Masters of Public Administration from Syracuse University, Masters in National Security Studies from the Marine Corps University, and a Bachelor of Political Science from California State University.