Choosing a President: Leadership in Troubled Times

In the final days of the campaign battle, U.S. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the respective Republican and Democratic nominees, have established their distinctive leadership styles. What leadership traits will the country’s next chief executive need to lead the U.S. in these troubled economic times?

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Upwith the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. Joyce Russell discusses the candidates’ leadership styles and talks about the similarities and differences between a president and a CEO.

Russell is a Distinguished Tyser Teaching Fellow and a senior executive education fellow in Smith’s management and organization department. She is consistently honored as one of the school’s top teachers. Her expertise is primarily in the areas of leadership and management development, executive coaching, negotiation tactics, training and career development, work teams, and change management. An author of more than 50 articles, books and book chapters, Dr. Russell is currently the associate editor for the Journal of Vocational Behavior and has served on the editorial boards of theJournal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management Review and Performance Improvement Quarterly.