Edward M. Marshall

Edward is a pioneer in helping us understand the power of collaborative leadership cultures, cultures that are principle-based, build high trust, are ethical, and empower the workforce to be their best selves and do their best work. He comes by his passion for workplace empowerment honestly. Not only did recover from polio, but he also recovered from his highy dysfunctional family that disempowered everyone. His recovery helped him learn what it takes to empower oneself and others. Early in his career, he worked in the Civil Rights movement, the community economic development movement, and other social justice movements designed to empower people and to achieve equality. This mission took him into workplace empowerment as a management consultant, where for 35 years he worked with senior leadership at some of the world's leading corporations, like DuPont, Marriott, Microsoft, and Philips, helping them create collaborative solutions to their critical business and people challenges. Now, as a Professor at Duke University, he continues his mission empowering tomorrow's leaders, helping them learn how to build high trust relationships in their teams, to be ethical above reproach, and to become collaborative leaders.

Edward's writings on collaborative leadership have included hundreds of articles and at least three books: The business best-sellers "Transforming the Way We Work: The Power of the Collaborative Workplace" (1995), and "Building Trust at the Speed of Change" (2000); and now the most comprehensive book of all, "Leadership's 4th Evolution: Collaboration for the 21st Century". This work is based on work with thousands of business leaders on 5 continents, and hundreds of teams, all committed to transforming their approach to leadership and change, becoming more collaborative. "Leadership's 4th Evolution" not only offers us a comprehensive new theory of collaboration, but also a practical handbook for how to implement it at the individual, team, organization, and global levels. It represents a replacement for 20th Century Industrial Age hierarchical leadership based on power, control and fear. It is a 21st Century Digital Age leadership paradigm based on principle, empowerment, and trust that helps us build trust so that we can work together across boundaries and cultures to solve the critical challenges we now face.

Edward was educated at Claremont McKenna College (BA), Syracuse University (MPA), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D.). During his Masters internship at the Ford Foundation in India, he was profoundly affected by the people and their dignity and pride in the face of economic impoverishment. This experience helped him understand the power of culture as a driver for human behavior. Edward carried this principle of culture-first into his work in collaboration, where he pioneered the development of the "Collaborative Method", an award-winning Best Practice (DuPont), and the cornerstone of the 4th Evolution of Leadership. His awards include the "Excellence in Organization Development" award from the Association for Talent Development, and a "Lifetime Top 15 Trust Thought Leader" from Trust Across America.