Outstanding students and organizations were recently honored during the 16th Annual Leadership & Awards Luncheon at the University of Houston – C.T. Bauer College of Business.
The event was sponsored by Halliburton and presented as part of Halliburton Leadership Day, beginning with a breakfast for undergraduate business students prior to the awards luncheon. A keynote address was delivered by Melissa Calhoun, Halliburton Director of Talent Management.
In her speech, Calhoun emphasized the importance of leadership in the ever-changing business world, specifically how challenging the process of building new leaders can be for companies. Despite the hard skills that degree programs can teach students, it is often “soft skills” that these students are lacking as they enter the workforce. In particular, Calhoun mentioned skills such as coaching and feedback, communicating, delegating and influencing.
“The traditional pyramid-shaped leadership model that most companies have as their model is just not producing leaders fast enough to keep up with demands of business and with the pace of change that is happening,” she said. “That’s true across many companies, not unique to just oil and gas. There is a trend of a gap in leadership.”
Calhoun advised students to focus on “soft skills” such as these. Although they might not be directly taught in a classroom, students should make use of every opportunity to develop these skills in their degree programs. “Leadership skills really do matter,” Calhoun commented. “They have a direct impact on business success.”
Following the keynote address, both students and organizations from Bauer were honored with awards recognizing their hard work and leadership in the community. Such organizational awards were presented as Excellence in Bauer Pride (Bauer Women Society), Excellence in Innovation (Investment Banking Scholars Club) and Excellence in Community Engagement (Hispanic Business Student Association). Individual Awards for Presidential Excellence (Miriam Haddad, BBA Finance Senior) and the Ted Bauer Leadership Award (Lola Soyebo Harris, MBA Candidate) were also presented.