Cindy McCauley

Cindy McCauley, PhD

Honorary Senior Fellow

Current Role

Cindy McCauley is an Honorary Senior Fellow at CCL. She designs and manages R&D projects, coaches action learning teams, writes for multiple audiences, and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences.

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 2 of CCL’s assessment tools, Benchmarks® and the Job Challenge Profile, and co-edited 3 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.

Educational Background

Cindy has a PhD in Industrial–Organizational Psychology from the University of Georgia and a BA in Psychology from King College.

Insights From Cindy

More women than ever are moving into management roles, but there still aren't very many women in the C-suite. Why, and what can be done? Get specific tips for leaders and organizations.
What skills are most needed to be an effective manager? Our researchers have identified the most critical leadership competencies for people managers, using our extensive research database of 360 rater feedback on mid-level managers around the world.
What's most challenging about leading organizations today? Our researchers analyzed over a decade’s worth of data to determine the top challenges faced at every leader level. Use our research to ensure your L&D programs address the top issues your leaders face.