Wharton@Work

January 2024 | 

Partners Join in the Advanced Management Program

Learning Together: Partners Join in the Advanced Management Program

“Life-changing.” That’s how Senior Vice President of CDK Global Jeff Beals describes his experience in Wharton’s Advanced Management Program (AMP). Beals says the impact of the five-week immersive program goes well beyond his personal leadership and business acumen — because his wife Lindsey participated in the AMP Partners Program, he also has a stronger marriage.

“Going through the Partners Program together, and being able to share with Lindsey the connections I made at Wharton, makes it easier to have certain conversations now. We can really level-set with each other better. We've always been good at communicating, but this experience gave us another tool that's helped us get better at it. It became an important way for us to make sure that we carry the momentum from the AMP home as a family.”

The result is not surprising to AMP faculty chairperson Mike Useem, who says the program is designed to create breakthrough moments, combining the personal and the professional to integrate and inspire the whole person. The Partners Program is built on the premise that although work-life separation has traditionally been strong in many workplaces, AMP participants benefit if their several selves are brought together when appropriate. Though work settings often tend to separate our personal and professional identities, in Wharton’s view that segregation can be valuably transcended so that family and friends can better appreciate your work life and you can carry the best features of who you are at work to inform and inspire those in your home life.

While many facets of the AMP experience are designed to help you become the “whole leader” at work, including executive coaching and sessions on success, mindfulness, and integrity, the Partners Program is designed to help you also become the “whole person” in your private life. The program seeks to reduce the separation of the personal and professional so that partners, families, and friends have an opportunity to directly witness what you have mastered in the program. They have some of the same coursework in the same setting and they have shared time with your fellow AMP participants. Transcending the separation between work and life makes for a more compelling learning experience that you can take back to both work and home.

Inside the Partners Program

What started over a decade ago as a series of activities for family members is now a highlight of the AMP, intentionally designed to give them their own Wharton experience. Led by Wharton Senior Fellows John Kanengieter and Ginny Hutchinson, the Partners Program offers a sampling of the AMP curriculum, including hands-on exercises and time for deep reflection.

Kanengieter, a principal trainer of NASA’s International Space Station astronauts and developer of leadership programs for the U.S. Naval Academy and Fortune 50 corporations, says the Partners Program is designed to bring partners and other family members together quickly. “Our philosophy about community building is the same one we use at the beginning of the AMP, and it helps the partners form connections with one another on the first morning of the program.”

Hutchinson explains, “They learn about defining happiness and success, and about how to be a more effective communicator. They go through a fast-paced experiential learning session followed by after-action reviews. The overlap with AMP lets them compare a lot of notes with their partner, and by the end, they have become their own supportive community of partners, mothers and fathers, in-laws, and teenaged children. By the end, at the AMP graduation ceremony [in which AMP participants are awarded Wharton alumni status], the partners feel really included and part of the global AMP community.”

“The program really highlights that people are people the world over,” says Kanengieter, referencing the fact that the latest AMP class included only two leaders from the U.S., with the largest contingent from India. “The topics that we're covering — leadership, communication, decision making— are really fundamental life skills that are relevant for everyone, no matter their job or life circumstances.”

He continues, “We teach the use of after-action reviews [AARs] as a tool for improvement, and as soon as the program's done, Ginny and I do an AAR together. Each time we do a little more tweaking on something. We are partners in life and in business, and we have to practice what we are teaching and continually look for improvements ourselves. We truly work well together and enjoy it.”

The Partner Impact

“Something that I did not expect to get was a new appreciation for each other,” says Lindsey Beals, adding, “As a homemaker, I'm not in the same fight club that Jeff's in every day. But the Partners Program made his work life more personal to me. I could see some of the challenges that he faces, and the different ways that he's been taught to handle those things. That isn’t something he would have talked to me about before, but now he does. It's brought us a new level of intimacy in conversation because I can relate better now. The program didn't just do something for him or do something for me. It did something for us together as a couple.”