Center for Leadership
Studies

Tim Orr has been involved with every facet of the MAOL. Though he entered as a candidate and earned his degree in Organizational Leadership, Tim has since been appointed a business faculty role at The Center for Leadership Studies. Teaching has enabled Orr to advance his leadership and that of others in his organization, providing him deeper insight as to what it takes to produce extraordinary results.

“Based on my previous participation in MAOL as a candidate, and now as part of faculty, I am convinced that achieving breakthrough results is a matter of choice,” Orr explains. “Success seldom happens by chance; it’s designed purposefully and with deliberate intention.”

One of the ways in which Orr has designed success within his own organization is by sponsoring two of his employees through MAOL. As a sponsor, he has watched his employees make dramatic shifts toward becoming more dynamic, creative, and deft leaders with heightened listening and communication skills. The program, he says, has an approach to inquiry that motivates and prepares candidates to actually use the methodology in their jobs.

“Whatever it is that you’re going to work on from a developmental standpoint, you need to bring it back to work. Practical experience is how people develop in jobs anyhow—80% of your career development is done on the job, and perhaps 10% is a coach or mentor. Only 5% is academic. I wouldn’t want to recommend the MBA approach because I think that they fall short with actual application. In MAOL, application is woven into the fabric, which makes a much bigger impact.”

Orr has taken from his own MAOL experience a more rigorous, creative approach to problem solving and a greater self-awareness.

“If you’re going to produce extraordinary work and develop yourself as an individual, you have to constantly move out of your comfort zone,” Orr says. “Since graduating MAOL, I now self check; I ask, am I too comfortable with the way that I’m approaching work or my life? Is it time for me to reach beyond my comfort zone and reach beyond to the potential we all have as individuals?”

Tim Orr is Vice President, Marketing, for Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, a J&J Company. With more than 20 years experience in the diagnostics industry, he has held positions in sales, sales management, marketing management, strategic planning and general management. Foreign assignments have taken him to London, Tokyo and Singapore. He earned a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership from The Graduate Institute. He holds memberships in the American Association of Clinical Chemistry and in the Biomedical Marketing Association.

“There’s a tendency for people to think that they know what leadership is and that they know what needs to be done, and that tends to be that the leader needs to simply get up on a higher rock and yell louder. This sense of certainty gets in the way of leaders’ ability to draw on all the capability and resources around them. MAOL graduates are rid of this limiting certainty, and instead left with possibilities.”