Leadership Lab
Leadership Excellence & Learning to Learn
Building leadership capability and innovative learning solutions for the changing world of work
Lab Mission
Hult’s Leadership Impact Lab helps organizations cultivate the leadership excellence they need to navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing world of work.
The Leadership Lab serves as a hub for the constant evolution of learning tools and methods, ensuring their effectiveness and relevance in addressing real-world organizational challenges.
Our highly practical research aims to address:
- Educational content: Researching topical business issues to ensure classroom content is current and relevant
- Content delivery: Taking expertise and best practice in the classroom and using research to build on it
- Impact and organizational context: Exploring and measuring how learning and leadership are applied in the workplace
Lab Impact
The Leadership Impact Lab conducts highly practical research that aims to equip individuals and organisations with the latest thinking around topical workplace issues. The lab focuses on building leadership capabilities, with a particular emphasis on the use of innovative tools and techniques to implement learning.
The lab's work builds on Hult's renowned strengths in leadership, people management, and organizational change, combined with our history of developing innovative diagnostic tools that help managers and teams understand their current state, identify areas for improvement, and develop plans to reach desired goals.
Building on previous successes—such as the in-depth Leadership Experience based on cardio-neuroscience about heart rate learning effectiveness zones, the BoatShare simulation of an Uber-like platform for boat-sharing marketing decisions, and the Mosaic© board game for sensitive gender balance and diversity issues—we will work to develop a broad range of management tools. These diverse methods draw from fields like organizational psychology, leadership theory, and design thinking and include psychometrics, simulations, board games, diagnostic tests, self-evaluations, and strategy frameworks.
Lab Director
Meet Carina Paine-Schofield, PhD
Carina is the director of Hult’s Leadership Impact Lab. She is a highly experienced researcher whose research interests are in the areas of psychology (organizational, educational, social, and developmental) and technology (AI and the effective use of technology in enhancing learning and teaching).
Carina's first degree was in Applied Psychology and Computing. Following this, she gained a postgraduate diploma in Psychology and a PhD in Psychology from The Open University. She is a member of the British Psychological Society.
The nature of Carina's research experience is interdisciplinary in terms of its strong link between theoretical and applied social science research in a number of settings. She has presented at various national and international conferences in the disciplines of both psychology and computing and has also presented her research as an invited speaker on several occasions to practitioners and policymakers. She has published papers in the areas of psychology, education, computing, and online research.
Carina conducted research into the global multi-generation workforce for over a decade. This research resulted in numerous authored articles (academic and practitioner); workshops and conference presentations, and copious press coverage (print, radio, and television). Her current research focuses on exploring the psychological challenges and experiences of working parents from an organizational perspective and investigating the impact of technology on the learning landscape.
Lab Visiting Fellows
Dr. Eve Poole, OBE
Eve Poole is a Visiting Fellow of the Leadership Lab and serves on the Hult EF Global Advisory Council. She is also Executive Chair of the Woodard Corporation.
Dr. Poole has a BA from Durham, an MBA from Edinburgh, and a PhD from Cambridge. She has written several books, including Robot Souls and Leadersmithing, which are the subject of popular TEDx talks. For 15 years, she taught Leadership at Ashridge, after working for the Church Commissioners and for Deloitte Consulting, where she specialized in change management for the financial services sector.
She has been Interim CEO of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Third Church Estates Commissioner for England, and the first female Chairman of Gordonstoun. In 2023, she was awarded an OBE for services to education and gender equality.
René Carayol, MBE
René is a Visiting Fellow of the Leadership Lab and is the world's leading executive coach to FTSE 100, Fortune 500 CEOs, and Heads of State. With a career spanning over three decades in the C-Suite and Boardroom, he has built a strong track record and reputation having worked with the likes of Sir Richard Branson, Sir Tony Blair, Ralph Hamers, and Noel Quinn amongst others. He specializes in leadership, high performance, and cultural transformation.
René is also a renowned leadership speaker and best-selling author. His approach focuses on practical, pragmatic strategies, drawing from his own experiences which include his career as a board director at PepsiCo, and IPC Media, where he successfully worked on Europe's biggest MBO.
His latest book SPIKE is centered around a strengths-based leadership philosophy to enable anyone to reach their true leadership potential.
Lab Areas of Focus
Leading people
Within this focus area, we address themes of:
- Changing leadership: Including algorithmic, ethical, and inclusive leadership as well as pathways to leadership.
- Talent: Including attrition, retention, talent, employee experience, and value creation.
- Wellbeing: Including wellbeing metrics, individual and collective wellbeing.
Learning to Learn
Within this focus area, we address themes of:
- Technology in learning and teaching: Including artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented learning, personalized learning and pedagogy, and hybrid and virtual learning.
- Learner mindset and process: Including learning styles and strategies, curiosity, and insights from neuroscience and psychology.
- Pedagogical innovations and impact: Including experiential learning, EdTech, learning tools, and ROI.
Adaptive organizations
Within this focus area, we address themes of:
- Humanocracy: Including organizational agility, leadership in humanocratic organizations, and human-centric culture and innovation.
- Organizational development: Including change management, organizational culture, and self-efficacy.
- Augmented learning: Including organizational learning, personalized learning, play and gaming, and leadership capabilities.