Urs Bernhard is an international management consultant and executive coach, and was formerly the Chief Organizational Effectiveness for Siemens Building Technologies, a Group of Siemens, an over US$ 80 billion electronics company. As a senior management and organization development executive with over 20 years of international management development, human resources, executive coaching, leadership and strategy development experience, Urs has introduced strategic business and human resources concepts, quality improvement processes and competency-based training and development into the day-to-day management of many multi-cultural business environments. He achieved optimal human resources and organizational efficiency by designing, coordinating and implementing practical management development and strategy implementation solutions. In this capacity, he managed business relationship with customers in the US, Europe and Asia. His most important ability is to convert company strategy into business results. In this context, his main focus has been on the implementation of practical management development and coaching applications as well as on measurable change solutions. He has an in-depth knowledge of various industries.

Prior to joining Siemens, Urs was Manager Human Resources Development for Philip Morris, NCR and AT&T. His work experience covers many different cultures in Europe, the US and in Asia. Urs has been a speaker at international conferences in the US and Europe in the field of Competency Management and Management Development. He published articles in the field of competency management and part of his work has been published in books such as in Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E., McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press; in Spencer L.M., The Economic Value Of Emotional Intelligence Competencies and EIC-Based HR Programs in Goleman, D. and Cherniss, C. (2001). The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace: How to Select for, Measure, and Improve Emotional Intelligence in Individuals, Groups, and Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; in Boyatzis, R., E. and McKee, A. (2005). Resonant Leadership. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press; in Emmerling, R., J., Shanval, U., at al. (before 2008) Mandal, M., K, V., K., Bernhard, (2008). Emotional Intelligence: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. in Geoff Ryan, Lyle M. Spencer, Urs Bernhard (2012). Development and validation of a customized competency-based questionnaire: Linking social, emotional, and cognitive competencies to business unit profitability. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2012.

Urs has extensive experience in executive coaching, competency assessment and development at executive and managerial level. In the last 20 years, Urs has conducted hundreds of competency-based management appraisals and has done internal and external executive coaching on an ongoing basis. For the last several years Urs has worked as an Executive Coach with a particular emphasis on coaching at the MD and CEO level. Urs also works as an Executive Coach in Paris, Singapore and Abu Dhabi for INSEAD, one of the leading Business Schools in Europe, and for the Global Institute for Leadership Development (GILD) in the US. He has worked for over two years in India where he supported TATA, one of India’s most respected companies. Currently he works on projects in Europe, Asia and the US.

He is a member of the International University Consortium (UNICON). Born in Switzerland, he has worked and lived in the US for over 15 years. He currently lives in California, Switzerland and India.He has a Masters in Sociology from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and a Teacher Diploma from the Teacher College in Fribourg, Switzerland. He is fluent in English, German, French and has basic knowledge of Spanish.

Urs has a FAA Private Pilot license and a Skipper’s sailing license. Besides that, he is currently in the process of climbing the Seven Summits, the seven highest mountains on the seven continents. This is a huge challenge which demands determination, commitment, fitness and risk. It is also a major milestone in anyone’s life, representing a challenge undertaken, adversities faced, and experienced shared in an often unpredictable environment For Urs, these challenges are an excellent training and learning ground for leadership development, team building and coaching. He applies these real life experiences in his leadership development and executive coaching work.