Towards Developing Responsible Global Leaders: The PwC Ulysses Experience.

Ulysses is an inhouse partner development programme run by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It links leadership development with citizenship engagement. The authors describe how the programme provides an experiential learning frame for developing future global leaders at PwC through participation in cross-sector aid projects.

The assumption is that through this learning intervention, firstly, an awareness and understanding for the responsibilities of business and leaders for the pressing problems in the world is raised; secondly, deeply rooted human values (like equality, care for other human beings, recognition, coorperation) are activated; thirdly, capabilities to build sustainable relationships are enhanced; and last but not least, motivation to initiate further social change inside and outside the organization is triggered.

One of today's key challenges of talent development is to prepare future leaders for the social, cultural, environmental and strategic challenges of business in an uncertain and complex environment and to develop executives who lead business responsibly and sustainably in a global stakeholder society. The authors present PwC's approach towards developing responsible global leaders by outlining the organizational context and the leadership challenges that call for a development programme like Ulysses.

They then present the programme itself, its learning philosophy, objectives, phases and the developmental methods used. Finally, they discuss some of the success factors for developing future leaders through aid projects in cross-sector partnerships.