INSEAD has changed and empowered me as an executive, as a person and even as a parent. I have a much clearer vision of myself and of the influence I have on my children. I’ve learned to embrace change, to relax and to be happy with myself—to enjoy what I do and do what I love—and to model this with my colleagues, with my team and with my family.
Coming to INSEAD isn’t just like going back to school. It’s a major shift in your life. Coming to INSEAD to learn is about immersing yourself in a transformational environment; it’s about “living the experience.”
So says Anna Markowska, Corporate Clients Restructuring Director with mBank S.A., Poland’s foremost online and mobile banking organisation. A graduate of the Advanced Management Programme, Markowska believes that the INSEAD experience is a unique opportunity: an opportunity to experiment with new ideas, to question your beliefs and habits, and to forge an unbreakable network of colleagues and like-minded leaders from diverse backgrounds and geographies.
It's also an opportunity to step out of your comfort zone.
“I kind of expected the Advanced Management Programme to be an intense cognitive challenge, with readings and debates and cases,” says Markowska. “What I didn’t expect were the creative activities—the painting and drama workshops we did—that really take you outside of what you’re familiar with, and challenge you to think and respond in new ways.”
Being able to think and respond in new ways and to new challenges has become a critical imperative in Markowska’s career over the last three years—and the imperative that brought her to the programme at the start of 2023. She was promoted to her current role in 2020, and the pressure was on to wear two hats, so to speak; to deliver operational excellence, but also to be more strategic as a manager of others.
“Taking on this role, I realised I needed to be more strategic in my thinking. I chose this programme to help me make that shift, and to get a better world-sense of what was going on—the challenges facing my industry and others—that would require strategic solutions.”
And the programme clearly delivered in this sense. A first critical learning, says Markowska, was that “the world didn’t begin and end with Europe.” With classmates from China, the Middle-East, Asia, Africa and Australia sharing the learning experience, it was eye-opening and exhilarating, she says, to see the big challenges and changes in global business—the shift to digitisation and the concomitant transformation in business models—through diverse and multiple lenses.
“The programme really opens your mind. INSEAD faculty really challenge you to see the bigger picture—the risks and opportunities associated with digitisation, but also with generational change, ESG and sustainability—so that you start questioning what you need to think about today to be a better leader tomorrow.”
Seeing leadership as a “journey,” in this sense—as a continuous process of self-reflection, feedback and improvement—was what Markowska calls a “revolutionary breakthrough” in her understanding. But a breakthrough not without its contradictions.
“When you move into senior leadership, you understand pretty quickly that you need to change certain behaviours or modes of being and that you need to acquire new skills. But there’s a dichotomy of sorts: how do you change while remaining authentic and true to yourself?”
Here, INSEAD faculty and peers were incredibly supportive, she says; with their help she has been able to reframe her leadership evolution as a process of growth—one that aligns seamlessly with her commitment to integrity and “being true to herself.” As a result, she says, she is a better “observer of herself.”
“When I came back to the office after the programme had finished, I caught certain behaviours that I’d always deployed—doing things unconsciously as a force of habit. And for the first time in my life, I was able to stop, observe these behaviours and reflect on what they meant in terms of my leadership and my relations with other people.”
Changing behaviours might not be easy, she acknowledges, but self-awareness is the critical first step.
“Throughout the programme you are challenged, coached and supported in questioning yourself and building up your understanding of why you do the things you do and make the decisions that you make. And as you begin to make sense of yourself, and you are able to pinpoint the reasons—why it is that you behave in certain ways—it becomes immeasurably easier to enact change in yourself and your leadership practices.”
The Advanced Management Programme is a “rollercoaster,” says Markowska, that drives profound personal and professional change and opens up a new road towards fulfilment of leadership potential. Coming out of the experience, she says that she has developed new tools, new capabilities as a communicator, and the confidence to “inspire and empower others.”
“As a leader I feel the Advanced Management Programme has enhanced my ability to focus on people. It has given me the tools I need to influence those around me, to align them around shared goals and strategic priorities, be they tied to our growth or the way we interact with our environment.”
And it’s not just the workplace.
“INSEAD has changed and empowered me as an executive, as a person and even as a parent. I have a much clearer vision of myself and of the influence I have on my children. I’ve learned to embrace change, to relax and to be happy with myself—to enjoy what I do and do what I love—and to model this with my colleagues, with my team and with my family.”
Featured Programme
