Organizational Psychologist / Author / Keynote Speaker / Professor / Consultant / Advisor / Architect of Alignment
Arlington, Virginia, United States
407K followers
500+ connections
About
Laura Morgan Roberts, Ph.D. is an organizational psychologist who cultivates strength-based practices with current and aspiring leaders seeking extraordinary performance and personal fulfillment in diverse organizations. She is the founder of a boutique consulting firm, The Alignment Quest Enterprise, LLC. Laura is also Frank M. Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.
As a professor of organizational behavior, Laura has previously served on the faculties of the Harvard Business School, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, Antioch University, the University of Michigan, the Wharton School, Simmons School of Management, and Georgia State University. Laura engages her students and clients in designing personal practices and organizational systems that enable people to contribute maximally from a position of strength. She has published her research on authenticity, identity, diversity, and strengths in over 50 journal articles, book chapters and in her edited books: Race, Work and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience (2019) - Folio Award winner; Positive Organizing in a Global Society (2015); , Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations (2009). Author of The Alignment Quest Toolkit, based on Laura's co-authored Reflected Best Self Exercise, which has been used by hundreds of thousands of leaders in companies and schools around the world. You can find the latest edition of The Alignment Quest toolkit here: https://www.amazon.com/Alignment-Quest-Toolkit-Activating-Selves/dp/1688606963.
Specialties: When you enter the workplace, do you leave a piece of yourself behind? My work helps people to uncover their deepest passions and core strengths, which is the key to full engagement and personal fulfillment. My research, teaching, consulting and public speaking are designed to help people learn more about the aspects of identity that we value and embrace, and to develop strategies for drawing upon identity-based resources and experiences to create value.
Articles by Laura Morgan
Activity
407K followers
Experience
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CEO and Founder
The Alignment Quest Enterprise, LLC
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Frank M. Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
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CEO & Co-founder
RPAQ Solutions, Inc.
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Professor
Antioch University PhD in Leadership and Change
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Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Managerial Sciences
Georgia State J Mack Robinson College of Business
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Visiting Professor, Faculty Affiliate Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship
University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
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Visiting Professor
Simmons College - Simmons School of Management
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Education
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University of Michigan
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Organizational Psychology
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Activities and Societies: Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, Teaching assistant - Organizational Psychology (Intro & Advanced), Organizational Behavior (Ross School of Business), Psychology of Groups and Teams, Diversity in the workplace (Ross School of Business), Black Student Psychological Association (President), Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Delta Psi Omega chapter (FA'96)
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University of Virginia
BA Psychology
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Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa, Office of African American Affairs Peer Advisor, Black Voices, Raven Society
Publications
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How to achieve racial justice in the workplace: reconnecting with 4 basic rights
World Economic Forum Blog
See publicationImagine a workplace in which all people – especially Black and brown people – could be truly free. How would this be measured? Black and brown people – and their colleagues – will experience racial justice at work, and by extension in society, when they can exercise four fundamental workplace freedoms.
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The Alignment Quest Toolkit for Activating Best Selves
Laura Morgan Roberts
See publicationAre you bringing your best self to your work? Are you actively developing your strengths, weaknesses and principles so that your best self will become even better? Do you deliberately and consistently bring out the best in others? Sadly, the vast majority of workers across the world will respond to these questions with a resounding “no.” Instead of activating their best selves, most people bring their average, mediocre, or even worst selves to work. The Alignment Quest™ is a process of bringing…
Are you bringing your best self to your work? Are you actively developing your strengths, weaknesses and principles so that your best self will become even better? Do you deliberately and consistently bring out the best in others? Sadly, the vast majority of workers across the world will respond to these questions with a resounding “no.” Instead of activating their best selves, most people bring their average, mediocre, or even worst selves to work. The Alignment Quest™ is a process of bringing coherence, purpose and joy to your life by learning how to create the most value in your daily living and working. The Alignment Quest™ Toolkit will help you to understand why it is critically important to bring your best self to life and how to do so in a more compelling way. This Toolkit contains the most impactful organizational psychology frameworks and practices that Dr. Roberts has developed from her research, teaching and consulting with thousands of global executives and emerging leaders. This Alignment Quest Toolkit will help you: ~ Harness the power of your strengths and expand your impact. ~ Learn how to understand and embrace your strengths so you can better focus your energy. ~ Increase your capacity to accept your limitations so your attempts to be superhuman (or, all things to all people) don’t lead you to make choices that are out of alignment with your best self. ~ Optimize your engagement and deepen your fulfillment at work. ~ Begin to craft a life that is filled with extraordinary growth, vitality and value creation.
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Race, Work and Leadership: New perspectives on the Black experience
Harvard Business Publishing
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Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity-building and Inclusion
Taylor & Francis
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Out of the box? How managing a subordinate's multiple identities affects the quality of a manager-subordinate relationship.
Academy of Management Review (published online ahead of print)
See publicationPositive manager-subordinate relationships are invaluable to organizations because they enable positive employee attitudes, citizenship behaviors, task performance, and more effective organizations. Yet, extant theory provides a limited perspective on the factors that create these types of relationships. In this paper, we highlight the important role that subordinates also play in affecting the resource pool and propose that a subordinate's multiple identities can provide him or her with access…
Positive manager-subordinate relationships are invaluable to organizations because they enable positive employee attitudes, citizenship behaviors, task performance, and more effective organizations. Yet, extant theory provides a limited perspective on the factors that create these types of relationships. In this paper, we highlight the important role that subordinates also play in affecting the resource pool and propose that a subordinate's multiple identities can provide him or her with access to knowledge and social capital resources that can be utilized for work-based tasks and activities. Yet, a manager and a subordinate may prefer similar or different strategies for managing the subordinate's multiple identities, which can affect resource utilization and the quality of the manager-subordinate relationship. Our variance model summarizes our predictions about the effect of managers' and subordinates' strategy choices on the quality of manager-subordinate relationships. In doing so we integrate three divergent relational theories (i.e., leader-member exchange theory, relational cultural theory, and a positive organizational scholarship perspective on positive relationships at work) and offer new insights on the quality of manager-subordinate relationships.
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Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation
Routledge
Honors & Awards
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Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Societal Impact Award
Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Division
The award for societal impact requires that a nominee translate their academic insights to the world of practice for the betterment of people’s lives. Laura Morgan Roberts’ work has achieved this by helping to shape how individuals can (re)construe their social identities to be seen more fully and holistically at work. She brings a powerful combination of top-notch academic work that tackles issues of structural injustice, racism and sexism, and widespread impact on the world of practice…
The award for societal impact requires that a nominee translate their academic insights to the world of practice for the betterment of people’s lives. Laura Morgan Roberts’ work has achieved this by helping to shape how individuals can (re)construe their social identities to be seen more fully and holistically at work. She brings a powerful combination of top-notch academic work that tackles issues of structural injustice, racism and sexism, and widespread impact on the world of practice. Beyond her professional achievements, she seems to embody the spirit of this award. Her developmental focus and collaborative endeavors have inspired junior and senior scholars alike, both personally and professionally.
Laura Morgan Roberts clearly straddles the worlds of practice and research in a way that amplifies her impact in both realms. Her practitioner-oriented writing, podcasts, and training materials puts her scholarship into the hands of people who can make immediate use of her work. She provides research-backed, practical tools to further conversation about identity and diversity. And her work strikingly inspired mobilization by a wide range of colleagues to recognize her contributions. [This last sentence refers to her nomination letter which was jointly submitted by a large group of people.]
Professor Laura Morgan Roberts is the most deserving of the OB Division’s Inaugural Societal Impact Award due to her work on intersectionality, positive psychology and how to bring one’s full self to the workplace. Given the polarization in the US, particularly on matters of race and gender, research on understanding those intersections and creating pathways for success are critical for effective employee engagement. Centering on intersectionality is a relatively new emerging area of focus, particularly in the workplace. Dr. Roberts efforts are helping unearth and elevate the discussion on challenges women color face and provides tools that can be deployed.
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