Michelle L. Buck is Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She teaches Leadership and Negotiations courses in Kellogg’s MBA and executive programs. She also serves as the School’s Director of Leadership Initiatives. In this role, she coordinates and leverages existing leadership-related offerings, such as the array of student clubs, activities and programs, as well as leadership curriculum. She also helps to identify and develop future directions for leadership development at the School. Professor Buck also serves as Academic Director of Executive Education, designing and directing executive programs in leadership and general management, and customized programs for organizations. She has directed some of the School’s international alliance programs, such as Skills, Tools, and Competencies (STC) for Brazilian managers with Fundacao dom Cabral (Belo Horizonte, Brazil); and the Latin American CEO’s Management Program, in alliance with Seminarium (Santiago, Chile). From 1992-1994, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in Kellogg’s Dispute Resolution Research Center.

Prior to her current position at Kellogg, Professor Buck was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal from 1995-2001, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis from 1994-1995. She received her PhD and masters degrees in social psychology from Princeton University, and a bachelors degree in psychology from the University of Michigan.

When teaching Leadership, Professor Buck uses innovative methods in emphasizing three primary themes: 1) Leadership and Organizational Communication; 2) Leadership as Relationship, and the dynamics of leading and following; and 3) the Leader’s Journey, focusing on leaders’ development of their own vision, values, resilience, and stories of learning from experience. Professor Buck teaches Negotiations as a process of effective communication and creative problem solving in which people are able to transform perceived conflict into new opportunities.

At McGill University, Professor Buck taught Organizational Behavior and Managerial Negotiations in the MBA programs in Montreal and in Tokyo. She served as a Module Director of the McGill-McConnell Program for National Voluntary Sector Leaders, an executive-level leadership development program for senior leaders of the non-profit sector in Canada, designed to facilitate leaders in creating a “more compassionate, sustainable society.” She also facilitated training in leadership, conflict resolution, and teambuilding for Canadian leaders from business, labor, community, government, and military organizations for the Governor General’s Canadian Study Conference.

In both 2001 and 1996, Professor Buck received McGill University’s Faculty of Management Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate Teaching. At Washington University, she was named Teacher of the Year in the MBA program, receiving the Reid Teaching Award, in 1995.

In executive teaching, academic direction, and consulting, Professor Buck has worked with organizations including: Baxter International, Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Ernst & Young, Exelon, the FBI, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC Bank, Merck Frosst Canada, Mitsui & Co., National Research Council of Canada, Petro Canada, Pratt & Whitney, Seyfarth Shaw, and YPO.

Professor Buck’s research interests in alternative work arrangements and in negotiations are rooted in a fascination with processes of individual and group transformation. She was a member of an interdisciplinary research team investigating alternative work arrangements among managers and professionals in firms in the United States and Canada, and focused especially on the negotiation of professional part-time work. She is currently writing about leadership as a dynamic partnership between leaders and followers. Professor Buck has presented her work in North and South America, Europe, and Japan.

Professor Buck’s commitment in all of her work is to facilitate individual, group, and organizational transformation, enabling people to find new possibilities in the way they interact with others, the way they work, and the way they think about themselves.

Leadership
Negotiations
Organizational Learning