Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking 

Leadership in the 21st Century

Throughout history leadership has been typically associated with a person. Yet, effective leadership is never accomplished alone.

The Foster Way: We focus on pairing and growing leadership and strategic thinking at all levels of organizations with each and every organizational member.

The Foster Assumption: Leadership and strategic thinking are increasingly being distributed throughout organizations at all levels, across functions and indeed in many instances across geographical and cultural boundaries.

Organizations that are better at resourcing every employee to lead horizontally, diagonally and up will be better prepared to optimize and sustain growth. Why?

  • Every single employee needs to feel a sense of ownership for leading within his or her job domain and then to be aware of how what he/she accomplishes fuels the work of coworkers, supervisors, and so on up to top leadership.
  • We consider that at any moment, any employee can be thrust into a strategic challenge and can be the face of the organization with other organizations, governments, clients/customers and suppliers.

Apple changed the way we buy and listen to music.
Toyota changed the way we manufacture cars.
Facebook changed the way in which nearly 200 million people connect.

Foster is changing the way leadership and strategic thinking are developed.


Watch a video of Dan Turner, Foster Associate Dean for Masters Programs and Executive Education, discussing how leadership and strategic thinking are at the core of the UW Foster School of Business.
Join our leadership discussion via a short survey.

“My hope is that, in five years, you will be able to identify a Foster graduate by the way they go about leadership and strategic thinking—whatever field or discipline they’re in. We want to make the Foster grad different. Because, given equal or greater quality, different trumps everything else in the market.”

Bruce J. Avolio, Foster Professor of Management and Executive Director of Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking