Leadership 2.0 Dirk Verburg

Scenario thinking enables organizations to establish possible visions of the future in the form of scenarios. This enables decision-makers to think through the different ways in which the environment of their institutions could evolve in the future, based on different sets of assumptions.
One of the companies that is best known for its scenario-thinking activity is Shell.  For decades, Shell’s scenarios have supported the decision-making of Shell leaders, academics, governments, and businesses.

Jeremy Bentham led this activity in Shell between 2006 and his retirement in 2022 as Shell Scenarios & strategy Leader and VP Global Business Environment.
In this episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I am interviewing Jeremy Bentham about scenario thinking and leadership.

During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

1 What scenario thinking is and what is it not
2 Why organizations should invest in scenario thinking
3 The development of scenario thinking in the past decades
4 The reason for Shell to start sharing (parts of) its scenarios with external stakeholders
5 The importance of engagement
6 Why and how scenario thinking could lead to wiser decisions
7 Strategic character
8 The possible role of scenario thinking in addressing crises our society faces
9 The Dodo club (recently established by Jeremy)
10 Final thoughts on the topic of scenario thinking

About Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham has a Degree in Physics from the University of Oxford and a Master's Degree in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

From 1980 - 2022 he worked for Shell in various roles and functions, including as Chief Executive for Shell Hydrogen, and later as Shell Scenarios & strategy Leader and VP Global Business Environment, in charge of developing forward-looking scenarios to support strategic thinking and direction-setting.

Currently, Jeremy is Co-Chair (scenarios) & Senior Advisor for the World Energy Council, as well as being involved in several other organizations in the climate and sustainable development space, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Illuminem, Pathfinder International, and the Mission Possible Partnership. 
Additionally, he is a Senior Advisor for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

His interests include theater production, cinema, and art history.

The Dodo Club
Recently, Jeremy started a regular newsletter and vehicle for discussion and community building called 'the Dodo club. The purpose of this club is to help people and organizations make wiser decisions in the face of the radical uncertainties they are facing, including when grappling with issues of decarbonisation and energy transitions.
You can find this club, and sign up for the Newsletter at [https://thedodoclub.beehiiv.com/]

The E-Mail address of Jeremy Bentham is: jbentham@live.com

Additional resources:

Jeremy Bentham: Decarbonisation Scenarios (youtube.com)
Jeremy Bentham: The energy transition (post Illuminem)

40 Years of Shell Scenarios

Scenarios: An explorers guide

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
Vlad's backgroundVlad's engagement with mental healthThe gap in the workplace between the mental health support employees need and receiveThe concept of Kyan HealthMeasuring impactCreating a start-up company: Three DosCreating a start-up company: Three Dont'sVlad's role models as an entrepreneurFinally, 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 stateShould 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?