Forum to address challenges to leadership theories and practices and identify new ways to develop leaders for the future
In today’s turbulent environment, leaders are faced with increasing expectations to address the challenges facing business, societies, and the planet, while offering greater predictability, transparency, and agility to navigate unchartered domains. If contemporary challenges require new leadership, what is required of those whose responsibility it is to support leaders’ development? In this new era, do current theories, practices and aims of leadership development hold, or do they need rethinking? INSEAD, the leading international business school, today announced it will host a forum to address these questions titled, ‘Developing Leaders: Challenges to concepts, practices and research,’ from 3-5 December 2009 on the school’s Europe campus in Fontainebleau.
This conference will bring together the most original and influential authorities to reflect upon the challenges facing the field of leadership development, and consider ways to address them. By encouraging discussion on current practices, stimulating creative thinking and bringing together different approaches, the forum aims to produce a significant inflexion in the way leadership development is researched and practiced.
‘As one of the world’s top business schools and recognised authority on leadership, INSEAD takes the responsibility to develop leaders very seriously. We intend to remain at the forefront of research and practice in this area. Approaches that over-rely on the acquisition of knowledge and tools are limited in developing individuals’ ability to lead sensitively, skilfully and responsibly in a turbulent world.’ said Gianpiero Petriglieri, deputy faculty director of the INSEAD Leadership Initiative. ‘We need more personal and more systemic ways to develop leaders – approaches that pay attention to what leaders do and who they are, that foster learning about how groups, organisations and communities shape the way leaders think, feel and act—and vice versa. This forum aims to shape the agenda of leadership development for researchers and professionals, by advancing scholarly inquiry in this area and envisioning the practices that will make a difference to our collective future.’
A cadre of thought leaders in the field have been selected to attend this invitation-only event, which will be led by INSEAD professors Gianpiero Petriglieri, Herminia Ibarra and Manfred Kets de Vries, in addition to the director of University of Exeter’s Centre for Leadership Studies, Jonathan Gosling. Participants will present and discuss each other’s research and activities, and will debate open questions and key dilemmas concerning research, practice and accomplishments of leadership development.
The INSEAD Leadership Initiative, founded by Professor Herminia Ibarra in 2007, aims to make a distinctive contribution to the study and practice of leadership by offering a truly global perspective in both research and education.
About the Professors
Gianpiero Petriglieri is Affiliate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. His areas of interest include leadership development, group dynamics, and experiential learning. His research explores the features which make leadership development effective and meaningful; managers’ use of business school courses to shape personal and professional identities; and the influence of unconscious factors in leadership. He teaches "Leading People and Groups" at the MBA level, and directs experiential leadership development programmes for executives from a variety of industries.
Herminia Ibarra is the Cora Chaired Professor in Leadership and Learning, faculty director of the INSEAD Leadership Initiative and a member of the INSEAD Board. Ibarra directs The Leadership Transition, an executive programme for managers moving into broader leadership roles, and teaches in a variety of executive programmes. She is a member of Harvard Business School’s Visiting Committee, the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils, and the Catalyst European Advisory Board.
Manfred Kets de Vries is a Clinical Professor of Leadership Development who holds the Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chair of Leadership Development at INSEAD. He is also the Director of INSEAD's Global Leadership Centre (IGLC). Kets de Vries is the first non-American recipient of the International Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Leadership Association (ILA) for his extensive contributions to the classroom and the boardroom.
Jonathan Gosling is Director of University of Exeter’s Centre for Leadership Studies, where he heads a team of people who work closely with companies on their leadership development. Jonathan's current and recent research projects include research into how leaders learn from each other, feeding into non-formal but highly focused opportunities for senior directors to learn from their peers in other companies.
