Luther Rice PhD

I disagree with this completely. Sure, there are people with irrelevant PhDs out there doing leadership training. One of my colleagues who worked for me in four different situations in the government is one. She did a degree in economics but later found herself doing leadership development. Like me, she's an ICF-certified Professional Certified Coach (PCC). But there are also people (like me) with relevant doctoral degrees that enhance their practice, not just used to burnish their credentials.

The quantitative requirements for studying management have changed dramatically over the past few decades. There was a time when pursuing an MBA required a decent understanding of calculus. Now, calculus is not only irrelevant, it itself is dying out. Computers are taking that over swiftly. The quantitative requirements of doing a PhD in Management are little more than knowing quantitative research methods, and that's not math, it's statistics. (Descriptive and inferential stats.) And even most of the heavy lifting there is done by computer. You don't have to calculate the data using formulas anymore. You don't have to build the tables. You still have to shape the data collection instrument, collect the data, and ensure it is analyzed/processed using the correct procedures. But most of the heavy lifting is in making decisions about all of that, and in interpreting the results. Humans do very little actual math.

 

I like you that disagree, this gets the discussion going. Coaching is not a regulated field so technically anyone can do it with the right experience so I disagree with you here, I work in the area and most people charging the big bucks are not even PCC certified or PhDs but people that have proven results of having coached people into 300 or 500K executive jobs.
This field is not like medicine or psychology, it is about providing tangible results. Most real executive coaches charge between 300 to 500 dlls a session. They are not certified not even PhDs but people pay them because they have produced executives working at top firms.

The idea that you can get a PhD in leadership and coach others into leadership positions with no other experience than a paper is a bit ridiculous to me. If you have not yourself made it to be an executive making 300 to 500K, how can you teach others to be executives? It is like the blind leading the blind.

The idea that you can do research without statistics and quantitative methods is possible but not so feasible in the real academic world. How many journals do you know that are highly ranked with Scopus or Web of science that will accept your papers with no statistics? If the PhD graduate wants to land a job, he or she needs to publish in competitive journals and I dont see it with no quantitative background.

Again, I love to disagree. This is what discussions are for. I respect you Rich.

 

Coaching is not "unregulated." It is self-regulated, like a lot of other specialty areas (like project management). To be a PCC, one must have completed an ICF-accredited coaching program. (There is an alternative path that creates the same result). PCCs also have at least 500 hours of paid coaching experience and have passed an examination and taken an ethics course. Anyone can call him/herself a coach, but it's not nothing.

This would be a bit silly to me, too. Just as it is with consulting firms hiring brand-new MBA grads as consultants. Frankly, they're just followers of a process at that point.

Coaches don't teach. And I cannot imagine anyone being hired to train leaders without experience in both training and leadership, especially with executives. I think we're drifting into strawman territory here.

I'm not an academic, so I can't answer that directly. But I've done both a quantitative dissertation and a qualitative one. I don't see where qualitative analysis is particularly limiting.

In academia? Sure. But isn't that true of any discipline? What makes leadership so different? Same with being employed in the private sector. Freshly-minted PhDs from almost any field would face an uphill climb initially when trying to join industry. Again, I just don't see how the field of leadership is different.

 

Quantitative research methods isn't a statistics course; it teaches study design. Statistics is a subfield of applied mathematics. Some programs or instructors might focus mostly on the theory of statistics and not require students to do many complex calculations either by hand or with the assistance of a program, but this is similar to math courses for liberal arts majors that are designed to be easier than college algebra.

 

This thread went way off topic so I'd thought I'd go ahead and add my two cents to some of the debates and assertions I've read thus far:

1. Leadership can't be learned in 2 or 3 classes.
2. Leadership can be taught, but mastery of the discipline is something quite different. Football can also be taught, as can surgery, guitar, public speaking, and the like. Leadership programs will not turn everyone into good leaders. Management programs won't turn everyone into good managers. Guitar lessons won't turn everyone into good guitar players. I've played guitar for 40 years and am relatively good. I'll never be great no matter how much I practice. Same goes for anything and everything in life.
3. Leadership programs are not just about churning out great leaders. For every leader there has to be at least one follower, and at times that follower will have leadership roles whether or not he realizes it. Additionally, when people think of leaders they tend to think of the top dog in a given area...a CEO, president, general, etc. Those positions are referred to as having positional authority. Positional authority requires that subordinates "follow" or they may face termination or other consequences. While positional authority is considered a form of leadership, it is not true leadership. It's actually much closer to management. Sometimes a group's best, most influential leader is not the top dog. "Followers" can be some of the best leaders at different times for different reasons. So a leadership degree should not be viewed as a vehicle to attain a leadership role somewhere.
4. Having a leadership degree doesn't mean you'll be a good leadership coach. Coaching, like anything else, requires more than just knowledge. That said, I think it's incorrect to think that one has to be an experienced, successful executive to be a successful coach. Not true. Let's look again to the example of athletics. Some of the worst coaches have been great players. Some of the best coaches never played the game beyond a youth level. Being an accomplished executive may help draw clients and give you credibility, but that doesn't mean you'll be any good. Conversely, a truly great coach at developing leaders and executives may have never reached, or even wanted to reach, the top spot on the ladder. Some people are just great at developing others even if they themselves lack the desire or ability to be what they are developing others to do or be.
5. My BA is in Leadership and my MS curriculum focused on management, leadership, ethics, human resources, etc. I am convinced that I would not be the owner and President of a successful business had it not been for my BA in Leadership. That said, the degree didn't "teach me" how to be a leader. It taught me about people. It sharpened skills I already had, developed skills I didn't already have, and helped me to identify all kinds of things I thought I knew, but didn't.
6. While I am a huge fan of leadership courses and programs, I would not recommend them to young people as their sole degree. To get the most out of a leadership program one should have some level of life experience under their belt. Some concepts simply can't be fully grasped without some context. It's like trying to explain the love a parent has for their child to someone who doesn't have kids. It can be understood on an intellectual level but remains unrelatable. It's really tough to apply concepts if you have no situational context.
7. Even great leaders will not be great in every situation. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, leadership is situational and is greatly influenced by other factors. Having a great grasp on all of those other factors will help one to successfully lead, even if the greatest situational act of leadership in a given situation is turning over the reigns and allowing someone else to lead.

I think that about covers my two cents.

Pug

 

You're absolutely right. Coaching is a discipline with practices, standards, competencies, etc. Our success lies in our ability to team with our clients to help them reach their goals. This is done though coaching techniques, active listening, re-framing, using models, asking questions, and engaging is deep dialogue.

 

HR, Management and Leadership are not interchangeable. It's a bit like saying "Well, you COULD study electrical engineering but you might as well just be a civil engineer." It sounds ridiculous, of course, because those fields are more clearly delineated to even the most casual of observer.

Moreover, there is no utility for a PhD in HR in the world of HR just by itself. Its value is, as Rich says, what you do with it. And I'll expand that further to say it greatly depends on the overall picture of a professional.

If you walk in with a PhD in HR but have no certifications and your experience is largely academic and focused on a general practice on HR, such as labor or hiring trends, then you're not going to get that job as Director of Employee Benefits even if your PhD is from Oxford and was conferred by the King himself. It just doesn't matter to an employer. Now, if you're a highly trained professional with a highly relevant PhD and the overall picture of you is as an SME on the specialized field that company is interested in then, well, that degree will probably serve you well.

I have said, and I will say again, that Rich Douglas (as an example) is greater than the sum his academic parts. If I took those exact same degrees and gave them to anyone else, me included, you would see very different outcomes in either direction. We usually summarize this simply as "YMMV" but it reflects the reality that the individual has much more control over how much utility a degree holds than the degree itself.

So unless you work in HR, aspire to teaching HR at the college level as a full time profession or some combination of the two, I would never recommend someone just go out and get a PhD in HR for the fun of it. And HR topics such as compensation, benefits management, labor law etc, while interesting to a person like me, have nothing to do with the topic of leadership or developing leaders etc.

 

I would expand this to any field. Getting a doctorate just to have the title is an absurd notion. That's what diploma mills are for. A real doctorate should be the centerpiece of your career, defining you as a professional. They have other purposes, sure, but getting it to have the title isn't one of them.

 

I disagree.

When I decided to pursue my doctorate, I mostly did so to fulfill my childhood dream. I wrote that in every goal statement for admission. I'll admit that perhaps (no evidence) those pursuing it for the title may be more likely to join the 50-60% of those who don't complete their doctorate.

In 2013, about two months away from my departure from my first police position, I had the opportunity to become a trained police motorcyclist. Even though I knew I would be resigning a few weeks after the 5-week course, I thought it was an excellent opportunity for me to learn how to drive a motorcycle. I passed the course and obtained a motorcycle endorsement on my driver's license. Though I knew I had no actual use for it (and I've never driven a motorcycle since), I knew it would just be a personal fulfillment.

People pursue various things for different reasons. To each their own.

 

You know, I wanted to say the same thing. Moreover, if a person wants a doctorate for the title, and does it ETHICALLY, I have no issue with it. It's no less honorable than going into a doctorate program for it's true purpose...

Which is, of course, to get a scholarship, a visa, and ultimately access to immigration benefits (OPT->H1->EBGC for US, or alternatively points for Canadian merit-based scheme). Almost not joking. My point is, people pursue programs for a variety of reasons, which can be valid FOR THEM.

 

I didn't say people didn't do it. I said it was absurd. It's my assessment of the idea. I have no doubt there are others who feel differently.

Having done it twice and talking about it in places like this for decades now, I've heard a lot of people talk about doing it without really knowing why. But how many of them actually do it?

Neither do I.

 

The amount of hypocrisy and double standards here is astounding.

 

Rainbows left, unicorns right. The marshmallows are on back order. Keep the line moving, please.

 

Right. It's uncommon. Does not make it absurd.

I bet a lot of people want a doctorate for the title. Some are even successful. It is my understanding that, for example, in Germany, dr. title has weight in politics and business, and ambitious people commonly get it for this reason alone. In similar situation in russia and other countries suffering from soviet heritage, this led to massive industry of getting titles corrupt way (plagiarism/ghostwriting/bribery). In Germany, I sure hope it didn't. I read testimonies of students/alumni from Ukrainische Freie Universität München - one was a successful Ukrainian immigrant in Germany, seeking the title. It's frown upon when people cheat. When they don't, it isn't; it's a societal norm.

If you think doctoral studies as immigration path is unusual, you are probably not in STEM. I'm willing to bet that eg. University of the Cumberlands' whole graduate program exists in large part because of students taking "optional residencies", designed to enable F1 visa holders and work under Curricular Practical Training scheme. Yes, PhD program as well. It's most likely a potent subsidy for the university at large, too. As hard as the current broken system is screwing Indians, even not considering CPT schemes with "creative scheduling" - we are talking extra 2 years OPT and potential access to higher priority categories of employment-based green card. That's potent motivation.

 

Who? We've seen a lot of people say that on this board, but who among them has gone on to do it? (Not very many denizens of this board have done a doctorate--for whatever reason--after joining the board. Lots of talk, though. And lots of speculation.)

Who has come to this board, discussed pursuing a doctorate, enrolled in an accredited doctoral program, and completed it? And, of them, who explicitly stated they were doing it just for the title "doctor"? I know of one of the former and zero of the latter, but that doesn't make it so. But I'm not the one making the claim, so I'm not the one who should provide the proof.

 

The line in every goal statement/statement of purpose for doctoral admissions. I applied to 10 and was accepted to 9.

“Ever since I was in primary school, I knew I wanted to be one day addressed as “Dr. Chris.” After toying with the idea of becoming a medical doctor, I decided that I would have to pursue my education to the highest echelon of the academic ladder to realize this dream. “

Every other perk that could be had, which I now enjoy, was secondary. I was pursuing my doctorate for the title, so I applied to DBA, Ed.D., D.CJ., and a Ph.D. I just wanted a doctorate, but I figured a doctorate in a field I love would be better.

 

Thanks, Chris. Out of curiosity, did you enroll before or after joining this site? (It changes nothing regarding your anecdote, of course.)

 

I've been on DI since November 2014

Going off course a bit...

I posted a lot here because I had many questions each time I thought about different doctoral programs. I even found a post in which I said I would never attend Liberty or Cumberlands. If I didn't believe the phrase "never say never," now I do.

 

My PhD was not through distance learning, so not as relevant to this board. But technically, I did enroll after becoming a DI member.