Patricia McLagan

Hall of Fame Class of 1998

Patricia A. McLagan has been involved in change leadership throughout her career. She has devoted her life to constructive human and organizational change primarily through her efforts as an independent business person and leader of a small company dedicated to facilitating constructive change.

In addition to her role as Chairman of McLagan International, Inc., in the U.S. and South Africa, she is a part time professor at Rand Afrikaans University in South Africa with responsibilities for a Masters Module in Human Resources Management (HRM) and as an advisor on the overall program and strategy of the HRM faculty. Among her many involvements, she has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the American Society for Training and Development and a member of the Cabinet of the Minneapolis United Way and the Board of the Instructional Systems Association.

Since beginning her consulting business in 1969, Ms. McLagan has worked with the some of the largest organizations in the world, among them: 3M Company, Honeywell, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, NASA, General Mills, Citibank, Eskom, and South African Breweries.

In the decade of the 1980s and into the 1990s, she turned her attention to the larger management issues of strategic change. Some of her important efforts included working with the American Society of Training and Development. She served as volunteer manager for ASTD’s national conference, managing 500 volunteers during an 18-month timeframe in which the fundamental models of the conference were changed. She conducted an international study of the competencies needed by people in the HRD field. For this and for other professional and community efforts, she received ASTD’s highest award, the Gordon Bliss Memorial Award.

Ms. McLagan is co-author of On-the-Level Performance Communication That Works and The Age of Participation: New Governance for the Workplace and the World. She is also author of Customer Focused Goals. She is the fifteenth member and the second woman to be inducted into the International HRD Hall of Fame.