Affiliation: Ascent Leadership Networks ( ascent.net )
Email: Steve@ascent.net

Biography

Dr. Steve Kelner is President and Co-Founder of Ascent Leadership Networks, a firm that assesses and develops leaders and organizations in ways that matter for results and impact. He brings over 30 years of expertise on top leadership and how to evaluate and develop it, advising numerous global firms.

He has authored works on leadership, competencies (he is an authority on scaled competencies, having co-created the first valid set and creating the first validated executive set), leadership assessment, leadership development, inclusive leadership, motivation (his dissertation on Interpersonal Motivation influences theory and practice today), Emotional Intelligence and its applications, and creativity and writing. His current work, Where You Can Lead: The Pentad of Great Leadership, is in progress now.

As a practitioner, he has assessed and developed thousands of leaders, ranging from CEOs of Fortune 50 firms to startup CEOs, as well as other levels of roles, across every major industry and around the world. He has further enabled numerous organizations to implement robust and rigorous assessment and development processes of their own, including the two top executive recruiting firms globally. Hundreds of leaders, consultants and HR professionals apply his methods to tens of thousands of executives every year.

His ongoing practice and research into leadership assessment has led to multiple iterations of a scaled, groundbreaking leadership capability framework that incorporates EI- and SI-related behaviors, projective tools for evaluating leadership capability potential that incorporates EI and SI, and insight into how implicit and explicit motivation affects leadership, management, and teams.

In prior lives, Dr. Kelner has been Global Thought Leader for two executive recruiting firms, the Senior Director of Services for Blackboard, Director of Educational and Advisory Services for the Center for Quality of Management, and Director of New Products at Hay/McBer. He also writes fiction and nonfiction, and is a member of the Mystery Writers of America as well as the Association for Psychological Science.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Social Relations and Master of Education degrees from Harvard, and his PhD from Boston University in Personality Psychology, focusing on Motivation.

Publications

Kelner, S. (in progress). Where You Can Lead: The Pentad of Great Leadership.

Kelner, S. (2005, 2nd edition 2021). Motivate your writing! Using motivational psychology to energize your writing life. Hanover NH: University Press of New England.

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2023). Measuring Integrity - Or Not. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: August 28, 2023

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2023). Inclusive Listening for Impact. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: August 2, 2023

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2023). Inspiring through Implicit Motivation. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: July 25, 2023

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2022). Are All Great Leaders Jerks? Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: October 5, 2022

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2022). Motivation for Action. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: May 4, 2022

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2022). Surviving, Striving, and Thriving in 2022. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: January 17, 2022

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2021). Science and Research for Non-Scientists. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: September 17, 2021

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2021). True Leadership IS Inclusive Leadership. Worth.com: March 17, 2021

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2021). The Many Levels of Aligning for Change. Worth.com: March 5, 2021

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). Thoughts on a Terrible Year. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: December 18, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). Germany’s Drive Towards Gender Equity: Making It Happen. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: November 25, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). The Myth of the Innovative Executive. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: October 7, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). Why You Need a “No-Person.” Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: May 5, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). The Hidden Leadership Costs of COVID-19. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: April 21, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). Learning the Right Lessons: Why We Do - and Don’t. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: April 7, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2020). Leadership at a Distance. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: March 23, 2020

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). Human Sustainability - Two Ways to Manage Motivation. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: September 30, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). Human Sustainability - Be Positive. Take Responsibility. But Don’t Take It Personally. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: September 10, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). Human Sustainability - It Matters More than Resilience. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: September 3, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). At a Crossroads in Your Career, this is Your Most Useful Tool. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: August 20, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). How to Make a Personal Development Plan that Works. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: August 13, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). Why Your Company Should Offer You a Mentor. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: August 7, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). How Top Leaders Successfully Navigate Change (Part V): Self-Management. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: July 30, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). How Top Leaders Successfully Navigate Change (Part IV): Empowerment. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: July 24, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). How Top Leaders Successfully Navigate Change (Part III): Tapping into Emotion. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: July 15, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). How Top Leaders Successfully Navigate Change (Part II): Putting It Into Practice. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: July 9, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019).How Top Leaders Successfully Navigate Change. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: June 24, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2019). The Secret to Great Leadership Programs. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: March 27, 2019

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2018). The Power of Playing Together. Ascent Leadership Networks Blog: November 10, 2018

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2017). How to Think about Assessing Leaders for Development. Point of View, Summer 2017.

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2016). How to Get the Most from Executive Assessments. Spencer Stuart blog, December 2016.

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2016). How to Think about Assessing Leaders.  Spencer Stuart white paper, August 2016.

Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2016). Death at the Althing. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 2016
Kelner, S. P., Jr. (2015). Developments in Predicting CEO Success: New perspectives on identifying and assessing the essential traits of effective leaders. Spencer Stuart white paper.

Kelner, Stephen P. et al., “Managerial Style and Organizational Climate” in Daniel Goleman, et al., Primal Leadership

Boyatzis, R.E. and Kelner, S.P. (2010). Competencies as a Behavioral Manifestation of Implicit Motives, in Schultheiss, Oliver and Brunstein (Eds.), Implicit Motives.

Return on Leadership — Competencies that Generate Growth, McKinsey &Company and Egon Zehnder International.

Kelner, Stephen P. and Slavin, Lois. “The Competitive Strategy of Mutual Learning,” Training & Development , Vol. 52, No. 6, 1998.

Kelner, Stephen P. and Patrick, Chris. “Your Leadership Portfolio: The View from C-Level,” CIO Magazine, 24 July 2010.

Kelner, Stephen P. and Patrick, Chris. “Developing the Competencies of a Future-State CIO,” CIO Magazine, 19 April 2010.

Stephenson, Ashley and Kelner, Stephen P., Jr. “What Boards of Directors Should Know,” Directorship, July 10, 2009.

Kelner, Stephen P. Motivate Your Writing! Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England,2005.