Helen Brophy, Director, Smurfit Executive Development, on equipping business leaders to deal with change in an ever-evolving business landscape.

UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School is Ireland’s premier business school, ranked among the Top 50 globally, and triple-accredited, by US, European and UK bodies. Within this, the Smurfit Executive Development faculty brings skilled educators, ground-breaking researchers, and accomplished authors together with participants who come from the upper echelons of the Irish and international business world. Through executive education, participants are exposed to multiple perspectives, challenge their thinking and learn and develop new practices that result in superior business leadership and results.

Helen Brophy, Director, Smurfit Executive Development, led the organisation through the challenge of quickly moving the executive education experience online when the first lockdown happened. With tools like Zoom in use within the business school and among the faculty since 2015, the transition was relatively smooth. Although now they are back on campus, with the full experiential offering bringing like-minded people together to foster discussion, debate and peer learning, for Brophy, this couldn’t happen soon enough: “It was a challenging year, not just for us, but for everybody. We were very lucky in 2020 that we transitioned all of our programmes very successfully over to online delivery. Everything we were doing was virtual and that was working very well for us, but at the beginning of 2021 we would have had an expectation that vaccines were going to allow us to resume normality quicker, and it didn’t pan out that way, so we had to adapt.” 

BEST IN CLASS

Smurfit Executive Development were recently awarded the InBusiness Recognition Award for Executive Development for the second year in a row. The Awards are run in partnership with Chambers Ireland. Hosted by Vincent Wall the Awards took place on Friday, 25th February at the Clayton Conference Hotel Burlington Road. The InBusiness Recognition Awards aim to honour and celebrate success, achievement, and ambition within Irish business and acknowledge individuals' contributions to grow business in this country.

CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Commenting on the Recognition Award, she says, “This award is a great recognition of the work everyone has done and also the fact that we managed to keep clients and executives on track with their programmes and learning. It was a really productive, constructive year. The strongest highlight for us is that we managed to maintain all of our programmes and our clients, and also added new programmes and new clients during that period.”

The constantly evolving nature of work and management, and indeed the uncertainty across the business world, actually gave rise to more need than ever for executive education. “That in itself tells a story about what is going on in organisations at executive level,” Brophy points out. “The need to upskill, the need to reflect…How do I manage in these times? How do I lead my teams? How do I adapt to hybrid working environments? How do I encourage and motivate people? The pandemic brought challenges that while not new, had not been experienced at that level before.”

Looking at the main themes and challenges on the minds of business leaders who come through the doors at UCD Smurfit Business School, Brophy says, “Since last autumn I have seen organisations feeling a level of instability on a macro level, but now also, wanting to keep stability and therefore retention. It’s not just about attracting talented people into our organisations, but how we retain them. ‘The Great Resignation’ that has been talked about in the US is certainly being felt here as well. Even since the new year, I’m quite amazed at the number of people who have moved roles.” 

LIFELONG JOURNEY
Overall she feels this is an inspiring time to be involved with executive education. “There’s a lot going on at the moment and that’s exciting for us because we’re challenging ourselves and we’re thinking about how we meet these demands, how we bring new thinking to the table and how we help organisations and executives to be as agile as possible to be able to meet these new challenges.

She notes in particular the portfolio of coaching programmes, which is expanding hugely at the moment. “Things like emotional intelligence, resilience and adapting to change are actually very hard skills to master. There’s a conscious need in businesses at executive level to be in tune with that and to be able to adapt.” 

She cites courses like the Professional Diploma in Organisational Change & Transformation, the Diploma in Strategy, Development and Innovation and the suite of coaching programmes as some that have been particularly relevant in this area. “Our short courses are expanding very rapidly,” Brophy notes, pointing to the partnership in place with Leinster Rugby around building and leading high performing teams, a course which offers an introduction to leadership, the fundamentals of coaching, how to deal with difficult people, how to build resilience.

“We’re true believers in Smurfit Executive Development that lifelong learning is a journey that is never completed. While every year you become wiser and more experienced, the world also keeps evolving, so that demand for learning continues as well. The pandemic has really shone a light on areas where there is a need to upskill and develop leadership skills.”