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Dr. Heidi Weigand, a member of the Safe Assured research team in HÂþ»­â€™s Rowe School of Business, focuses on leadership development, communication and resiliency. For example, she studies how leaders manage the balance of positive and negative emotions and the extent to which this practice vicariously affects an innovative mindset in followers. Dr. Weigand will expand this study to explore how Global Generation Z leaders construct kindness and its importance in a leader as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a second example, Dr. Weigand has recently studied how Generation Z leaders are motivated to drive responsible social change through empathy and forgiveness. She will explore how Rwandan Generation Z leaders have constructed forgiveness following the 1994 genocide and what communication technologies they use to promote their change movements.

In a third study, Dr. Weigand and the Safe Assured research team study leadership and quality improvement factors for patient safety practices in dispensing pharmaceutical medication. Dr Weigand and colleagues are extending this research to explore process improvements in quality of health care, particularly in long-term care and home care as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Weigand’s work informs leadership development practices with a focus on inter-generational and inter-cultural dynamics that help leaders thrive in crisis or major change. The goal is to create leaders steeped in an innovative mindset to navigate the complexity of organizational change and global issues, and to inform policy development to create sustainability of these change movements.

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