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Biography
A clinical professor of
leadership and
organizational change,
Manfred Kets de Vries
holds the Raoul de Vitry
d’Avaucourt Chair of
Leadership Development
at INSEAD, France,
Singapore and Abu
Dhabi. He is the Founder
of INSEAD’s Global
Leadership Centre and
the program director of
INSEAD’s top
management seminar:
“The Challenge of
Leadership: Creating
Reflective Leaders.” His
most recent book is The
Hedgehog Effect: The
Secrets of Building High
Performance Teams
(John Wiley & Sons,
2012).
Developing global leaders
There are few greater challenges than leading a
large organization in today’s fast changing and
competitive world. Leaders face a baffling
array of questions: How do you create highperformance
organizations? How can you design
effective teams? How do you hold virtual and
cross-cultural teams together, working for a common
purpose, in complex, matrix-like structures?
As the pace of economic globalization continues,
senior leadership teams are becoming increasingly
diverse. And with the growing importance of the
developing world, this trend is only going to continue.
Although most large corporations try and create all
encompassing homogenous global corporate
cultures — that only goes so far. To succeed, CEOs
and senior leaders need more than ever to
understand the international dimension of leadership
– to learn how to work with a diverse group of leaders
from different countries and cultures. Present-day
leaders need to be savvy in building networks in
these organizations through co-creation. They need
to know how to tap the brains of an increasingly
diverse workforce.
Managing a diverse team is challenging
because people tend to like the familiar, what
they know well and understand. Executives
feel most comfortable working in teams where team
members share the same background, values and
experience: in such instances, they know what to
expect. But executives can be challenged when faced
with the unknown, when they have to deal with
individuals whose culture or mind-set is unfamiliar to
them. And in some cases this can trigger certain
defensive psychological behaviours and fears — not
least as our evolutionary history has programmed us
to expect the worst when we do not understand
something, which can lead to seemingly paranoid
reactions. This potential has become exacerbated in
recent years because we now live in an age of virtual
teams, where members need to work at a distance.
To be successful, leaders must learn to overcome
and to manage these responses. They must
understand that they do not always make decisions
rationally and that they may have blind spots in their
decision-making processes. My work with CEOs
focuses on helping them to become self-aware, to
sensitize them to how and why they make decisions,
to help them become more authentic, reflective
leaders; to help them engage in the delicate
balancing act between “doing” and “being.”
The best global leaders are open to new
experiences. They are able to suspend disbelief when
dealing with new cultures and different perspectives.
They are able take into account contextual factors
and have a measure of flexibility. In addition, leaders
must be resilient because they can be subjected to an
enormous amount of stress.
I
also like to emphasize that the most effective
leaders are emotionally aware. They have a high
degree of empathy that enables them to get along
well with people from diverse backgrounds and
cultures. They know how to listen to other people’s
stories, and can integrate these stories into the
organization’s narrative.
How do you help leaders to become better global
leaders? I have learned from experience that one of
the best ways to build trust is to get leaders together
in a workshop situation to share and learn about
each other. We are, after all, a story-telling species!
I have found that this group leadership coaching is
a very effective intervention method to help
organizations to become more agile. The impact of
group coaching can be even stronger – and more
beneficial for the organization – if the intervention
method is applied to “natural” working groups, in
particular top executive teams. To jump-start the
process, an in-depth leadership audit will precede the
intervention to collect material that can be shared.
Critical insights are requested from a wide variety of
people, not only individuals at work but also friends
and family members. This material is then used for
participants to deepen their understanding of
themselves and each other.
This kind of leadership coaching has proven to be
highly effective in breaking down barriers and
preventing silos. By building trust, which is essential
for successful teamwork, and enabling leaders to
understand themselves more deeply, it can help to
create “boundary-less” organizations. The process
also helps executives to deal with lingering
“elephants in the room” – conflicts that should have
been dealt with years ago but that continue to create
major problems.
What’s more, this intervention method also helps
leaders to become more authentic. A good example
of this is Nelson Mandela, who remains the world’s
most respected living leader because he lived
according to his ideals and his values. His authenticity
provides an inspiring lesson for leaders today.
Manfred Kets de Vries,
Professor of leadership and organizational
change at INSEAD
Ernst & Young Issue 07 T Magazine 49