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  • Leadership is a Kind of Love
    Leadership is a Kind of Love
  • INSEAD's Gianpiero Petriglieri - Leadership is an Art
    INSEAD's Gianpiero Petriglieri - Leadership is an Art
  • Humanising leadership to transform organisations
    Humanising leadership to transform organisations
  • Season 2 Episode 7: Interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri Discussing the Future of Business Ethics
    Season 2 Episode 7: Interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri Discussing the Future of Business Ethics
  • What makes human beings human? | Gianpiero Petriglieri
    What makes human beings human? | Gianpiero Petriglieri
  • DAY02   09   Technocrat or Humanist -  Finding the Leadership Balance
    DAY02 09 Technocrat or Humanist - Finding the Leadership Balance
  • HBRP interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD - May 2017
    HBRP interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD - May 2017

Learn More About Gianpiero Petriglieri, MD

These days, most companies promise employees learning opportunities and a sense of community, while many senior executives claim to care as deeply about people’s well-being and development as they do about the quality and sustainability of their work performance. But what does it take to keep those promises and live up to those claims?

It takes nothing less than humanizing the workplace, beginning with those who manage it.

Award-winning Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, Gianpiero Petriglieri, MD (JAN-pyer-oh PET-ree-glee-air-ee), is an authority on how value-based leadership can foster engaging workplaces in which people need not trade off well-being and high performance, workplaces in which broad inclusion and strong culture go hand in hand. Such workplaces, Petriglieri contends, are the best cure for the current epidemic of disengagement, loneliness and mental distress at work. And building those workplaces require leaders who truly care.

A trained psychiatrist and academic director of the Management Acceleration Programme and of the Initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence, his research focuses on how leaders can stay grounded as well as adaptable, energized as well as effective, purposeful as well as portable. And it uncovers how performing such leadership, with care, unlocks value that fosters inclusion and innovation for groups and organizations.

Building on his experience studying and working with companies around the world, Petriglieri has come to regard leadership as a craft and, at its best, an art – because it involves using one’s energy, intellect, passion and skills to bring a unique intent to life and share it with the world. And he has refined an inimitable approach to learning the artistry of leading. Recognized for his excellence in teaching with the Best Core Teacher Award from the INSEAD MBA class of December 2023, his frameworks help individuals and groups clarify their leadership intent, claim it, commit to it, and forge relationships that sustain it.

The focus on humanizing leadership, Petriglieri shows, allows managers to take a broader look at their role as leaders. It reminds them of who they are, and what they do, when they lead at their best. It urges them to recognize that performance isn’t just about technologies, results and analytics to good leaders. Performance is also a cultural exercise that involves bringing values to life in a credible way. With this mindset, leaders will see business not as a machine but as an organism that must be continuously nurtured to be healthy and grow, and that requires a healthy environment too. He further empowers leaders to see that to bring an organization to life in its ecosystem, they must come alive first, and that they are already in charge of their most significant leadership instrument: themselves.

“Work is very central to people’s lives. It can make us whole and lift us up, and it can make us hurt and break us apart,” explains Petriglieri, who has been recognized three times by Thinkers50 as one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world. “Leaders must build workplaces not with rhetoric, but with actions. Leadership doesn’t exist, leaders do. What matters is not the leadership models that managers claim to follow, but the care they demonstrate while leading. In a time of societal turbulence, we expect a lot from business leaders but trust them little because we think that a leader is just someone who gets their way. Until we change that image of leadership, we won’t be able to practice a more humane, trustworthy, and ultimately more effective way of leading.”

A truly energizing storyteller and presenter, Petriglieri’s keynotes and workshops help managers think like a true leader and an analyst.

“When we are in the analyst mindset, we try to predict what the future might bring. When we are in a leader mindset, we try to build a future. We don’t ask others, ‘will this work?’ We ask ourselves, ‘how do I make it work?”

Petriglieri teaches people how to make that mindset shift and how to help others make it, turning business challenges into something individuals and groups care about and commit to addressing. By building relationships and fostering a mindset of personal responsibility rather than simply a single-minded focus on resource analysis, managers are able to achieve outcomes of trust and performance.

“Managers are central to shaping culture. They have an impact not only on the results of their firms but also on the lives of the people in those firms,” says Petriglieri, who teaches the core course “Ethics: Value-based Leadership for Cosmopolitans” in the INSEAD MBA program and works with global companies on bespoke leadership development initiatives. “Leaders need ideas, resources and commitments, but they also need to realize that they can’t do it on their own. They need peers to create connections and remember that leadership must not just be useful, it must also be hopeful.”

As an advisor to executives across industries, Gianpiero Petriglieri helps leaders see that effectiveness and efficiency aren’t enough. Genuine leadership isn’t about what you say, it’s about who you are.

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Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri is co-director of the Management Acceleration Programme at INSEAD, the school’s flagship executive program for emerging leaders, and is academic director of the Initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence. He also designs and directs customized leadership development programs for multinationals in a variety of industries, some of which have received industry-wide awards. He has chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on new models of leadership and has been recognized three times by Thinkers50 as one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world, most recently in 2023. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award.

In the INSEAD MBA, Petriglieri teaches the core course “Ethics: Value-based Leadership for Cosmopolitans,” for which he has received the Aspen Institute’s “Ideas worth Teaching“ award. He taught the “Leading People and Groups” core course for five years, receiving the students’ Outstanding Teacher Award. He has earned numerous Dean’s Commendations for Teaching Excellence in MBA and Executive Education.

A medical doctor and psychiatrist by training, Petriglieri has worked as an executive coach, practiced as a psychotherapist and served on the staff of group relations conferences in Europe and the United States. He has chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on new models of leadership, and has held Visiting Professor positions at the Harvard Business School, and at Copenhagen Business School.

Petriglieri’s research appears in top academic journals and is featured in a range of media including the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He has written regularly for Harvard Business Review, where his essays have been included among the “ideas that shaped management.”

Gianpiero Petriglieri is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.

Gianpiero Petriglieri was last modified: March 28th, 2024 by Justin Louis

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Empowering Leaders: Transformation Starts with You

Despite executives’ best efforts to create visions of transformation, many strategic initiatives fail to move from intention to reality. Why is this often the case and what can be done to make sure positive change happens? To be skillful cultural conductors, says leadership expert and INSEAD Professor of organizational behavior Gianpiero Petriglieri, leaders need to be visionaries who will embody a new vision, bring a new culture to life, and align people, as well as connectors who will build bonds of clarity and trust, freeing people to thrive in the new culture. In this interactive presentation, he shares his three-point blueprint for achieving transformational leadership. Following this session, leaders will be empowered with the knowledge of what they can do to make sure healthy change happens, ultimately bringing positive transformation initiatives from conception to reality.

Humanizing Leadership: How to Lead with Care

Leadership is neither a position nor a possession. It is a relationship that makes others feel committed but not captive. So, how do leaders employ authenticity for good to earn the trust and commitment of individuals within their organization? In this interactive session, Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD Professor of organizational behavior and an expert on humanizing the workplace, shares important principles about caring leadership and how managers can support, encourage and remind employees of the capacities they have and the value they bring. Following this session, leaders will be equipped with the tools to connect with individuals in their organization and cultivate cultures that see the office not just as a physical place, but also as a positive shared experience that will keep employees happy and productive by making them feel both committed and free.

Bring Your Organization to Life with Value-Based Leadership

What does it mean to bring an organization to life? According to INSEAD Professor of organizational behavior Gianpiero Petriglieri, value-based leadership is the key. “Business is not a machine, but an organism that must be continuously nurtured to be healthy and grow,” he says, and in this presentation, he teaches how value-based leadership, as well as personal investment by those leaders, transforms organizations. By employing a mindset of personal responsibility and urging leaders to pay attention and be willing to listen, Petriglieri shows how leaders are already in charge of their most significant leadership tool: themselves. He’ll illustrate how performance isn’t just about metrics and analytics, but by putting people at the center of their strategy, “performance” also becomes a cultural exercise, as if through the eyes of an artist or actor. This session will enable leaders to see that to bring an organization to life, they must come alive.

MIT Sloan Management Review 2022

Learning for a Living

December 10, 2019

“Leadership Doesn’t Exist, Leaders Do.”

Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri’s customized workshops offer leaders and their teams a unique opportunity to discuss and apply his methodologies related to value-based leadership and leading with care. To empower and inspire workers at every level of an organization, attendees bring their challenges and goals and work toward solutions in a collaborative setting. Petriglieri employs modules that allow for question-and-answer periods and extended discussions focused on how to humanize leadership to build trust and encourage collaboration. Participants will walk away from this workshop understanding how to think like a genuine leader who sees the business as a living organism that requires nurturing for growth, as opposed to an analyst who sees the business as only a machine.