Biography

Graham Ward is Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD Business School in France.

He is the academic director of a number of company specific executive programs at INSEAD including HSF, Unicredit, Pernod Ricard, Essilor Luxxotica, AB Foods, and Allen and Overy among others. He was also a leadership development practice director at the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre for 15 years. He has worked as visiting faculty at Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, Moscow Higher School of Economics and ESMT in Berlin.

Graham’s expertise is in leadership, high performance teams, group dynamics, team dysfunction and change. His doctoral dissertation, published in 2013 is a theory of small group executive coaching using a psychodynamic approach.

Outside of INSEAD, he specializes in coaching C-suite executives and teams. He consults around team dysfunctions, team and organisational development, and communication. Privately he has worked with senior executives at McKinsey, Siemens, Bristol Myers Squibb, AXA, Aviva, Georgia Capital, HSBC, Tesco, AstraZeneca, Deutsche Bank, E.On, UBS, Shell and BP among others.

Graham Ward’s experience as a professor, leadership consultant and CEO Advisor is grounded in an extensive business career in multinational organisations. Graham spent 22 years in finance, 16 of which working for Goldman Sachs, where for seven years he co-led the European Equity business. In 2000, Graham spearheaded an initiative to introduce a Global Leadership Development office that he led for three years, plus led the Diversity initiative division-wide, created the Women’s Committee and other minority networks.

In his work, Graham helps leaders to address behavioral blind spots, develop strengths and eliminate destructive leadership characteristics, thereby enhancing performance through insights and development derived from a combination of the behavioral sciences and action learning.

Graham combines a vigorous coaching style with a supportive framework. His coaching approach is both to encourage the client to reflect while at the same time challenging assumptions and asking the questions that the client may have avoided asking themselves. Graham uses his education in organisational psychology to look holistically at the client, from their abilities to manage transversal, subordinate and superior roles, to the climate the leader creates in his organisation and team. Graham helps the client to push at the boundaries of their comfort zone, to enhance leadership skills in line with their values and ensure greater effectiveness and higher performance for the leader and the organisation.

Graham received his PhD from the economics faculty of the Vrije University in Amsterdam in 2014. He holds an M.Sc and Diploma from HEC/INSEAD in Clinical Organisational Psychology. In 1994 he received a Diploma of Investment Management from the London Business School. He is licensed to use the MBTI, Leadership Circle/GELI/LAQ/Personality Audit and Cultural Audit.

Graham was a contributing author to the books Coach and Couch, The Psychology of Making Better Leaders published in 2007 and The Coaching Kaleidoscope published in 2010. He authored the academic paper Towards Executive Change 2008 and The Use of Transitional Space 2009.

Graham lives in London and travels extensively throughout the world, at last count having visited over 70 countries including Syria and North Korea.

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