A Scientific Perspective on Leadership Development - Ayse Yemiscigil

In this episode, I am interviewing Vlad Gheorghiu about mental health in the workplace, a highly relevant topic.

Why? 

The World Health Organization estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year due to depression and anxiety. This costs $1 trillion in lost productivity.

McKinsey research showed that ‘60 % of employees have experienced at least one mental-health challenge at some point in their lives’. According to the same study ‘Failing to address the effects of mental health and well-being challenges is a missed opportunity for employers’.

Employees dealing with mental health issues are 4x more likely to say they intend to leave, 3x more likely to report low job satisfaction, 3x more likely to experience toxic workplace behavior, and 2x more likely to report low engagement.

At the same time, classic Employee Assistance Programs do not seem to work…

Vlad Gheorghiu experienced mental health issues firsthand, whilst working for McKinsey. 

This experience inspired him to design solutions. First for McKinsey, and later by co-finding a start-up company called Kyan Health.

In our conversation, we covered the following topics

1. Vlad's background
2. Vlad's engagement with mental health
3. The gap in the workplace between the mental health support employees need and receive
4. The concept of Kyan Health
5. Measuring impact
6. Creating a start-up company: Three Dos
7. Creating a start-up company: Three Dont's
8. Vlad's role models as an entrepreneur

Finally, we also talk about his personal experiences as an entrepreneur and co-founder of a start-up.

Vlad’s email address is:  vlad@kyanhealth.com 

Website KyanHealth: www.kyanhealth.com

Links to relevant (McKinsey) reports:

https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/present-company-included-prioritizing-mental-health-and-well-being-for-all

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/the%20state%20of%20organizations%202023/the-state-of-organizations-2023.pdf

In this episode, I am interviewing Eugene Sadler-Smith about hubristic leadership. A highly relevant topic in the light of the corporate scandals we faced in the last two decades, as well as the current geo-political tensions we are seeing around us. 

None of these would have happened without hubristic leaders.

During our conversation, Eugene and I discussed the following topics:

03:00 The meaning of hubris
05:05 Examples of hubristic leaders in politics and business
11:00 The origins of hubris: nature and/or nurture?
14:57 Do we co-create hubristic leaders?
20:26 Recognizing hubristic leaders by the language they use
27.57 How can teams become hubristic
33:06 Eugene's new book: 'The Hubris Hazard'
38:08 The role of HR and Leadership Development professionals
40:03 Does hubris also have a bright side? 

Eugene Sadler Smith is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Surrey Business School. His research interests include hubris (in leadership, business, and politics) and intuition (in decision-making and creativity). 

He published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and his research has featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC Local Radio, Sky TV, The Insight Channel, The Times, The Guardian, and others. 

Eugene worked on research and executive education projects with, amongst others, Tesco, Mind Gym, ICSA, CIPD, Met Police, Surrey Police, Welsh Government, Forbes, Home Office and the Scottish Government.

He has written a number of books: Learning and Development for Managers (Blackwell, 2006); Inside Intuition (Routledge, 2008); The Intuitive Mind (John Wiley and Sons, 2010, translated into Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian); Hubristic Leadership (with a Foreword by Lord David Owen, SAGE, 2018); Human Resource Development: From Theory into Practice (SAGE, 2022), and ‘Intuition in Business’ (Oxford University Press in 2023).

In the next coming months two new books by his hand will be published ‘The Hubris Hazard, and how to avoid it’ (Routledge), and ‘Trust your gut: Go with your intuition and make better choices’ (Pearson Academic).

The E-Mail address of Eugene Sadler-Smith is: e.sadler-smith@surrey.ac.uk

His website dedicated to the topic of Hubris is: www.thehubrishub.com

Everyone is an expert in leadership development, or at least has an option about it! 

For this reason, I decided to interview Professor Ayse Yemiscigil.

Ayse Yemiscigil, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and a Research Affiliate with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. 

In February 2023, she, Dana Born, and Horace Ling, published an article for HBR.org of the Harvard Business Review titled: 'What Makes Leadership Development Programs Succeed?' 

In their article, they argue that global organizations spend, on an annual basis, more than $60 billion on leadership development programs, but that it is hard to establish the ROI of these programs.

During my conversation with Ayse we discussed the following topics:

1 Why most investments in Leadership Development programs fail

2 The format of Leadership Development programs

3 The content of Leadership Development programs

4 The ‘whole person’ approach

5 Whether knowledge building on business topics should be included in Leadership Development programs

6 The long-term impact (or not) of Leadership Development Programs

7 How to measure the impact of Leadership Development programs

8 Stimulating the self-reflection of (potential) leaders

About Ayse Yemiscigil:

Ayse Yemiscigil, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and a Research Affiliate with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from Warwick Business School and has been a postdoctoral research fellow at The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. 

Professor Yemiscigil’s research brings a humanistic lens to leadership development and management. Using an interdisciplinary approach, she studies how leaders cultivate humanistic ideals such as flourishing and well-being, meaning, purpose, and authenticity in themselves, organizations, and the broader society. 

Drawing from her interdisciplinary background in behavioral science, economics, and management, Professor Yemiscigil’s research focuses specifically on the social-economic barriers and support factors that are contextual and modifiable which may impact the humanistic development of leaders and organizational communities. She applies advanced quantitative methods to large-scale, longitudinal data and conducts natural field experiments in multi-country settings and organizations. 

Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including Psychological Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Harvard Business Review, and featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal among other media outlets. 

Professor Yemiscigil teaches humanistic management and leadership development and has been recognized for distinguished teaching performance by the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. She is a research consultant to multiple organizations including the Core Leadership Institute and Heart Mind Design. 

She holds a master’s degree in behavioral and economic sciences from Warwick University, UK, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from Koc University, Turkey.

The E-Mail address of Professor Yemiscigil is : ayemiscigil@fordham.edu

The article ‘What Makes Leadership Development Programs Succeed?’ 
by Ayse Yemiscigil, Dana Born, and Horace Ling’ can be found here: https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-makes-leadership-development-programs-succeed

Current thinking in Psychology is that there are five dimensions we can use to describe the most important personality dimensions. Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th one: 'the Numinous'.

The five-factor model of personality (FFM) is a set of five broad trait dimensions or domains, often referred to as the “Big Five”: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (sometimes named by its polar opposite, Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience (sometimes named Intellect). 
The Big Five/FFM was developed to represent as much of the variability in individuals’ personalities as possible, using only a small set of trait dimensions. 
Many personality psychologists agree that its five domains capture the most important, basic individual differences in personality traits and that many alternative trait models can be conceptualized in terms of the Big Five/FFM structure (www.oxfordbibliographies.com). 

Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th factor: the Numinous. According to Ralph Piedmont 'the numinous deals with our ultimate existential engagements with life. The Numinous has three central concerns: issues about mortality; meaning in life, and personal worthiness.'
(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364950266_An_Introduction_to_the_Numinous_1_An_Introduction_to_the_Sixth_Major_Dimension_of_Personality_The_Numinous)

During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

(1) 01:58 - The origins of the Five-Factor personality model 
(2) 08:08 - The Five-Factor personality model versus adopting a growth mindset
(3) 15: 26 - Dark Triads
(4) 17:12 - What is the Numinous?
(5) 25:00 - The relevance of the Numinous for agnostics and atheists
(6) 26:19 - Practical implications of the Numinous
(7) 33:00 - Applications of the Numinous in the world of business
(8) 41:37 - Leadership development and the Numinous
(9) 50:50 - Dysfunctional leadership behavior and the Numinous
(10) 57:50 From the "Big 5" to the "Big 6"? The future of the Numinous

Dr. Piedmont received his Ph.D. in Personality Psychology from Boston University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Aging, where he was trained in taxonomic models of personality and their relevance for understanding mental and physical outcomes. 

Dr. Piedmont was a full professor in the Department of Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University Maryland and is now the Managing Director of the Center for Professional Studies. 

His current research interests focus on the measurement of Spiritual Transcendence, a construct that represents a broad, nondenominational, motivational measure of spirituality. He has demonstrated the predictive value of this construct in both normal and clinical contexts, using both American and cross-cultural samples. 

Dr. Piedmont is extensively published in the scientific literature and is on the editorial boards for Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Assessment, and Journal of Personality Assessment. 

He was the founding editor of the new APA journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA). He is also very much involved in Division 36, the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for the APA and ACA’s Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling.

E-mail dr. Ralph Piedmont: info@thecfps.com
Website: https://centerforprofessionalstudies.com/

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bJTbCUIAAAAJ&hl=en

'The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology'. 

With this quote from Edward O. Wilson,  Matt Nixon answered my question if our requirements about leadership have changed in the last decades. 

Matt Nixon has more than 30 years of experience as a management consultant and HR executive, working with CEOs and senior leaders around the world. An Oxford classics graduate, he was a partner in Towers Perrin in Chicago and London, and subsequently held the positions of Global Head of Organization Effectiveness for Royal Dutch Shell, and Managing Director, Group Head of Talent for Barclays, before returning to the consulting industry.

Nowadays Matt works as a partner in a specialized consulting boutique where he coaches and advises CEOs and other senior leaders during career transitions and other periods of change and transition.

Matt has written and taught extensively on hubris in executives.

During our conversation, Matt and I discussed the following topics:

• Have the demands on senior leaders changed in the past couple of decades?
• How can senior leaders stay relevant and deal with the changing nature of their roles? 
• What makes a successful executive an effective supervisory board member? 
• The reputational life-cycle Matt describes in his book 'Pariahs – Hubris, Reputation and Organizational Crises' 
• How top leaders could prevent their organization from landing in the Hubris state
• Should leaders who find themselves in the middle of a corporate scandal stay or go?
• Should companies take a stand on political issues (e.g. Human rights, Immigration, Ukraine)
• Should coaches proactively force issues on their senior clients?

In this episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I am interviewing Arend Ardon about how leaders can create deep, and sustainable behavioral change in their organizations.

Arend Ardon (1967) is a management consultant and co-founder and co-owner of the Change Studio, a consultancy firm specializing in change management. 

He is a leading thinker in this area and has published dozens of articles and books.

During our conversation, I asked Arend questions about the following topics:

- Why Arend decided to become a management consultant

- To what he contributes his success in implementing changes in large organizations, despite never having worked as a leader in such an environment

- His fascination for change and change management

- Why we, in the context of change, need to adapt a different paradigm than thinking in terms of initiating leaders on the one hand, and reactive and dependent employees on the other.

-  Why leaders and experts should reflect on their own role in change processes

- Why and how leaders should release control if they want to make things happen

 -  ‘Creating a sense of belonging’ versus 'Burning platforms' to drive change management

- What the undertow in organizations is, and why leaders should pay attention to this

- Why Arend decided to pursue a PhD study

- Arend's drive for writing

- Why Arend decided to establish his own consulting firm (The Change Studio)

- The type of clients that are attracted by the Change Studio

- The profile of the consultants that work for the change studio

- Why Arend Still makes the time available to lecture at universities

Information about Arend's work:

Arends' book Doorbreek de cirkel! has meanwhile sold more than 30,000 copies and was recently also published in English (Break the Cycle!). Other books include Ontketen vernieuwing! (which translates as ‘Unleash innovation’) and, more recently, with Cynthia van der Zwan, ‘Wat speelt hier? Laat de onderstroom spreken (which translates as: ‘What is going on here? Listen to the undertow’). All books have become best-sellers in the Netherlands.

In partnership with GoodHabitz, Arend developed the online Change & Innovation course, especially for use on smartphones and tablets. The course offers lots of video content, interactive tests, and a vast library of further reading (http://bit.ly/2qLlDr0).

Relevant contact details and links:

Arend can be reached at: arend@thechangestudio.nl

The website of the Change Studio: https://www.thechangestudio.nl/?lang=en

Arend's PhD Thesis "Moving moments" can be downloaded here: https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/42174484/complete+dissertation.pdf

In this episode, I am interviewing Saskia Schepers about unleashing the power of neurodiversity in the workplace.

Saskia Schepers studied organizational science and works as a creative brain, consultant, project manager, speaker, trainer, and coach.

She recently wrote a book titled ‘Als alle breinen werken - Waarom ruimte voor neurodiversiteit op het werk goed is voor idereen'.  In English:  ‘If all brains are switched on - Why space for neurodiversity in the workplace benefits everyone’.  

The book almost immediately reached the number 1 position in the Dutch bestseller list of management books, was quickly sold out, and is now in its third printed edition.

An English translation is in the making and will be published in 2024.

During our interview, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:

- What neurodiversity is

- Why neurodiversity is a leadership issue

- Why leaders find it hard to deal with neurodiversity

- Recommendations for leaders struggling with neurodiverse people in their teams

- How to start a conversation about neurodiversity as a leader

- Accepting Neurodiversity  versus adopting a ‘growth mindset’ 

- Why working in teams can pose challenges for neurodiverse people and how leaders can accommodate this

- To stimulate innovation, more and more businesses start to ‘encourage’ staff to return to the office. Is this necessary, and which special challenges does this pose for neurodiverse people

- The special challenges working in an agile manner can pose for neurodiverse people

- The application of ‘strength-based management’ beyond neurodiversity in organizations 

- The role Saskia's neurodiverse profile played in the way she wrote this book ('The creative process')

Link tot the website of Saskia Schepers: https://saskiaschepers.com/

Link to the book of Saskia Schepers: https://www.atlascontact.nl/boek/als-alle-breinen-werken/

John Hollwitz is a University Professor of psychology and rhetoric. Before coming to Fordham, he was the A.F. Jacobson Professor of Communications at Creighton University and dean of arts and sciences at Loyola College in Maryland. He also has been the vice president of academic affairs at Fordham.

Professor Hollwitz's teaching interests include management; experimental/quasi-experimental design; statistics; item response theory; structural equation modeling; team-building, especially in high-pressure teams; life-span career development; religion, and work. His avocations include martial arts, especially classical Tai Chi sword; jazz and blues music. 

He is currently working on a book about blues music, and we also discussed this at the end of this interview.

Our interview was focused on the why and how of corporate ethics.

During this interview, we discussed the following topics:

- John's research into structured ethical integrity interview techniques

- The relationship between ethics and capitalism

- Engraining ethics in the mindset of business leaders

- The relationship between ethics and a sense of purpose

- The consequences of a lack of purpose for organizations and their employees

- How organizations can create a sense of purpose for their employees

- John's love for blues music, and a book he is preparing about this topic

- The soul of organizations

John can be reached on hollwitz@fordham.edu

Sophia Town, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Gabelli School of Business. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Town explores how leaders can cultivate both knowledge and wisdom in service of individual, organizational, and societal flourishing. 

During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics :

- Our changing expectations from leaders

- Leadership versus Management

- The blurring boundaries between our working lives and our private lives

- Managing paradoxes

- Value alignment between organizations and employees

- Knowledge versus Wisdom

- Mindfulness

- Time and decision making

- Stories we tell ourselves

- The power of questions and self-reflection

- Preparing students for leadership positions

- Emotional intelligence

- Profit as a ‘happy coincidence’ (CSR)

- The importance of curiosity in the context of motivation

More about Sophia Town:

Dr. Town’s research program reflects three primary streams of research: (1) wisdom-based leadership, (2) systemic change for human flourishing, and (3) transformative business pedagogy. 

In the classroom, Professor Town’s curriculum is guided by the question: “How can we develop compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world?” Professor Town has designed and taught a number of reflective and experiential courses for the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA levels covering topics such as leadership development, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, conflict management, and negotiation. Each course aims to humanize business education by fostering the ‘knowing,’ ‘doing,’ and ‘being’ of wisdom in the workplace. 

Regarding transformative pedagogy, Dr. Town leads Fordham’s Human Flourishing Project (FHFP), a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research lab that explores behavioral, psychological, communicative, and spiritual development in business education. Related to this project, Dr. Town serves as a Research Affiliate and Advisory Board Member for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. She currently oversees Fordham’s collaborative participation in a multi-year, grant-funded research study with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University to study the role of ‘Love’ in business education.

In addition to her professorial role, Dr. Town is a Fellow for the Center for Humanistic Management at Fordham University and a Research Consultant for the Center for Mindfulness, Compassion, and Resilience at Arizona State University. In 2018, Dr. Town was named the Jeanne Lind Herberger Fellow for transformative research on work and life. She has received several teaching awards, including the 2018 Teaching Excellence Award (ASU) and the 2021 Dean’s Award for Teaching Innovation (Fordham University). In 2023, Dr. Town won the Dean’s Award for Faculty Service (Fordham University). Dr. Town’s work has been supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, and the International Association of Jesuit Universities.

To connect with Dr. Town or her work, you can find her on LinkedIn and Google Scholar.

A full list of her publications can be found here: https://www.fordham.edu/gabelli-school-of-business/faculty/full-time-faculty/sophia-town/

I am a big proponent of the work of Carl Jung and the business world could benefit from his insights. Therefore, I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk to Murray Stein about applying Jungian Analytical Psychology in the workplace. 

Interestingly enough we met on labor day, something Jung would call undoubtedly label as synchronicity!   

Murray Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich (Diploma). He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and the President of The International School of Analytical Psychology-Zurich (2008-2012).

He published tens of books about Carl Jung and analytical psychology, including for instance ‘Jung’s Treatment of Christianity’ and ‘Jung’s Map of the Soul’. The focus of our conversation was a book he edited with John Hollwitz called ‘The Psyche at work - Workplace Applications of Jungian Analytical Psychology’. 

We discussed a number of topics, including

- The essence of true leadership

- The identity of organization

- Business ethics

- The need for embracing the shadow to prevent shadow possession and corporate scandals

- The leadership style of different American presidents

- The relation between the need for self-reflection by leaders, executive coaching, and psychoanalysis

- The validity of MBTI

- The importance of having a personal North star