Leadership skill discussion from one famous American Author - Professor. Allan R. Cohen - in the [Book Sharing] Unseen Leadership: Leading Without Authority event

31 Oct, 2024

Representing an effort towards management capacity improvement in the new era for UEH-afiliated Unit leaders, lecturers, officials, employees, alumni and post-graduate students, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), on October 30, 2024, organized the session named [Book Sharing] “Unseen Leadership: Leading Without Authority” with valuable sharing participation from Author Professor. Allan R. Cohen.

In this rapidly changing context of the new-age management environment, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) has been implementing diverse knowledge-sharing activities for the purpose of providing conditions to UEHers, alumni and postgraduate students with an environment to exchange and to upgrade management skills. With the enthusiastic support from Professor. Allan R. Cohen - Doctor in Business Administration from Harvard University, Former Chief Academic Officer and Interim Dean of Graduate Department, Professor Emeritus of Global Leadership at Boston University (USA), in the morning of October 30, 2024, UEH successfully organized the [Book Sharing] Unseen Leadership: Leading Without Authority session in Hybrid form. This program attracted approximately 100 UEH lecturers, officials and employees, alumni and postgraduate students from 2 different locations (Campus A and Vinh Long Campus) to attend and to listen to the online presentation by this distinguished speaker from America.

Panorama of the Book Sharing session at A103 Facility A

Panorama of the Book Sharing session taking place at Vinh Long Campus

Attending this Book Sharing event presented by Author Professor. Allan R. Cohen, on behalf of UEH was Assoc. Prof. PhD. Bui Quang Hung - Deputy Director of UEH University; Dr. Dinh Cong Khai - Deputy Director of UEH University, Board of Directors of UEH Vinh Long Campus, leaders of UEH-affiliated Units along with lecturers, alumni and postgraduate students that are interested in this topic.

Speaking at the Book Sharing session, Assoc. Prof. PhD. Bui Quang Hung - Deputy Director of UEH - stated: “With almost 50 years of history, UEH has been proud to be one of the leading universities in Vietnam that has been starting a strong transformation journey towards becoming one Multidisciplinary and Sustainable University. This pioneering transformation opens up more new development opportunities in addition to posing special governance challenges and requiring the close cooperation among UEH Member Colleges, Faculties, Institutes and Departments along with the strong spirit of teamwork and initiatives from all UEH individuals. We do believe that those highly applicable leadership and collaboration models in the book Leading Without Authority will be practical and valuable demonstrations that every UEHer should learn and can apply in the future.”

Assoc. Prof. PhD. Bui Quang Hung - Deputy Director of UEH - speaking at the Book Sharing event

Within more than one hour, this sharing session brought to light the most central parts in the book regarding management skills in this new era. Professor. Allan R. Cohen presented the tendencies related to how to influence without using power through the Cohen-Bradford IWA Model. According to the author, it is possible for the IWA Model, upon being applied correctly and accurately, to encourage thinking in terms of benefits listed as promoting cooperation and common interests. This theoretical framework can be applied at the individual, group, and organizational levels in order to improve leadership effectiveness and skills.

What is more special, Professor. Allan R. Cohen spent the rest of the sharing session presenting the identification method regarding a person’s motivations (Currencies) upon his/her action of creating influence comprising of the following elements: (1) Inspiration, (2) Mission, (3) Position, (4) Relationship and (5) Individual. Correctly identifying motivations in terms of personal desire in creating influence does help managers understand employees’ concerns, helping to create relationships, cohesion and trust. It is emphasized that the concept of ‘influence without power’ must be rooted in ‘win-win’ exchanges so as to achieve long-term cooperative benefits.

Cohen-Bradford IWA Model - theoretical framework for creating influence in the Influence Without Authority book

Before closing the sharing session, the participants were eager to raise further questions and concerns directly to the author, especially the practical issues stemming from the working process at UEH. This lively Q&A section illustrated the UEH-ers’ interest in how to apply this Model into the current management environment along with the leaders’ spirit of continuous innovation from Faculties/Departments, lecturers, officials and UEH employees.

The live question session for the Speaker taking place enthusiastically in the Hall

This [Book Sharing] Unseen Leadership: Leading Without Authority event was completed successfully, bringing new useful knowledge and management perspectives. In the future, UEH, with a vision of innovation and reform in governance, will continue to implement more governance capacity transfer events through a variety of interesting and meaningful activities for the purpose of “Connecting the community - Spreading knowledge - Sustainable action”.