Interviewed by Larry Janis, Managing Partner, Integrated Search Solutions
LJ: What is your role at INSEAD?
GP: I am associate professor of Organizational Behavior. My work involves researching, teaching, coaching, consulting and administration and it revolves around studying and supporting the development of leaders and leadership. I am particularly interested in how and where people engaged in mobile and uncertain careers develop and sustain the personal foundations, professional abilities and social bonds that enable them to exercise leadership mindfully, effectively and responsibly. I direct the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship program for emerging leaders, as well as customized experiential leadership development program for corporations in a variety of industries. I taught for half a decade in the INSEAD MBA program however, I am currently devoting myself primarily to executive education. I also direct the school-wide Initiative for Teaching Excellence and Learning Innovation.
LJ: In the “Management Acceleration Programme” at INSEAD you meet many people transitioning to their first leadership position. What one thing do leaders typically miss during their first 90 days that adversely impacts their effectiveness later on?
GP: There is no single thing for every new leader. For example, some don’t listen enough to the people they aspire to lead before sharing their vision. For others it is the opposite, they don’t share enough of their point of view while doing the rounds to learn everyone else’s. It seems to me that new leaders often miss paying enough attention to whatever doesn’t worry them enough or worries them too much. The former because they take it for granted the latter because they are seeking to keep it out of sight. Finally, new leaders often fail to ask for help soon and often enough. The reason is usually that they are trying to reassure themselves and others that they are in charge. This is understandable, and in some organizations may even be expected. However, that initial isolation is often hard to reverse—and it makes leadership unnecessarily lonely and sometimes misguided. This is why I often advise new leaders to pay as much attention to building a broad network as they pay to cultivating a tight community. Both are essential, and often overlooked. It’s not lonely at the top, unless you ignore cultivating close relationships in order to get there.
LJ: What are some of the barriers that today’s leaders need to break through? What practical breakthrough techniques would you recommend?
GP: The main barrier leaders’ encounter today is the general, and often justified, erosion of trust in leaders in most fields. There are no ‘techniques’ to build trust. What leaders need to prove themselves trustworthy is genuine commitment to people, place and purpose—and the discipline to consistently demonstrate that commitment in their words and deeds.
LJ: Today’s business world, as well as society overall, is marked by massive increases in information flow and growing complexity; how can individuals, companies and leaders navigate these forces and serve their constituents, shareholders?
GP: While the world has changed much, in many ways the work of leaders has not changed. It involves articulating a direction, holding a community together, and helping it pursue that direction. It entails a measure of resolve moderated by the ability to question oneself and those around. As I, and a growing number of researchers, see it, leaders are first and foremost makers of meaning. They point to what matters and help us understand why it does and what we need to do about it. If anything, focusing on this one essential aspect of leadership—to manage one’s own and other’s attention and to help others find meaning in a sea of information—is more important today than it ever was.
LJ: You recently spoke at the World Economic Forum on the new models of leadership. How would you define these new models, what has caused this evolution?
GP: There has been a growing (and welcome, if you ask me) recognition that leadership is not an activity reserved to those who happen to sit at the top of organizational structures, and that it cannot be limited to exercising influence to realize one’s aims. There is much need to acknowledge, celebrate, and support the efforts of those who lead without necessarily being called ‘leaders,’ and who view their work as representing the aspirations, interests and desires of a broad range of followers. The work of the WEF group that I am honored to be part of is to accelerate the process of broadening our understanding of leadership, to include that exercised without formal authority and on behalf of others, and to support those who aspire to lead with integrity and resolve in different sectors of society.
LJ: In a recent Bloomberg article you stated “Seen from this perspective, the problem is not that business schools ignored the social consequences of the theories they teach. It is that they paid little attention to the ways in which students used their courses to develop their professional and personal identities. Theories don’t run corporations. Managers do. ”How can business schools bridge this gap between management theory and practice?
GP: First, by asking what is the image on management and leading implicitly conveyed by the lessons we teach. Every time a professor says ‘managers should…’ it is interesting to ask – who are these ‘managers’? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they care about? It’s an interesting exercise that helps reveal implicit assumptions and biases we may inadvertently propagate to students. Second, and most important, by putting managers’ experience both outside and within the Business School context at the centre of the learning process. If we just focus on the knowledge and models and ignore what people are going through during an executive program or MBA – and what they could learn from it – we’re contributing to developing leaders with a chronic lack of self- and situational awareness. At INSEAD, we often partner with corporations to design and facilitate learning processes whose aim goes beyond acquiring new knowledge, skills and habits. We aspire to change the conversations leaders have with themselves and each other. To develop their abilities and their relationships so that they can lead mindfully, effectively and responsibly individually and as a group.
LJ: You personally contribute to this increase in information flow through your frequent blog posts and tweets. What are your objectives? What are you taking away from the experience?
GP: I enjoy learning, and I view learning as a social process. We learn the most important things in life with and from other people. We learn putting our ideas out there for others to agree, disagree, and most usefully associate to and build on. I enjoy the immediacy of blogging and the serendipity and conciseness of Twitter. They are wonderful complements to academic writing and classroom teaching. They are an opportunity to write in a more personal voice and to listen to a broader set of voices than I might otherwise hear. They are also closer to the reality of human experience that is more fragmented and contradictory than the carefully constructed arguments and narratives that books and lectures usually contain. In that respect, there is a little bit of a subversive project in my life and work on those platforms—an attempt to avoid getting locked into a limited world, to get out of my comfort zone and to personalize my work. These are things that I often advice others to do proactively, and that I feel compelled to do myself. Finally, one of the most important phenomenon of our times is the technology-assisted blurring of traditional boundaries between personal and professional selves. I don’t think you can understand a phenomenon like that without experiencing it first hand.
LJ: You have developed a great reputation as a thought leader in Leadership development, what has enabled your success?
GP: That is very kind. In all truth, I am not sure. I love what I do and I work hard. I have a healthy combination of restlessness and patience. I have been fortunate to have incredible opportunities and to be surrounded by amazing people who thought what I had to say and what I enjoyed doing were novel, insightful and useful enough. My work happens to be timely. More and more people are realizing the importance of paying attention to the covert, emotional, personal aspects of leadership. I also believe in generosity, in giving it your all and speaking your truth when you have a chance and in working quietly to create those chances the rest of the time. Not because it pays off in the future, but because it makes for a richer life in the present. I don’t always live up to that belief, of course, but everything that others have found interesting and useful in my work has emerged from the moments when I have lived up to it.
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Gianpier
o Petriglieri, MD (@gpetriglieri)is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, where he directs the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive programme for emerging leaders. He is also the academic director of the school’s initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence, and vice-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on new models of leadership.
He has contributed to refining a unique approach to experiential leadership development. He designs and directs customized leadership development programmes for multinationals in a variety of industries. He also consults and speaks widely on the topic of how to develop and exercise leadership in fast-changing, uncertain and diverse workplaces. Gianpiero’s research explores how and where people develop and sustain the personal foundations and professional abilities to exercise leadership mindfully, effectively and responsibly. His work on the personal foundations of leaders’ development received the GMAC Award for the most significant contribution to graduate management education and the Outstanding Article Award from the Academy of Management Learning & Education journal. He was recently shortlisted by the Thinkers50 for the ‘Future Thinker’ award, and blogs regularly on the Harvard Business Review.
For more information, you can visit his web page at INSEAD.