This week's interview is with one of the business professors I like and respect the most. He is Manfred Kets de Vries from INSEAD, a rare breed, he is a practicing psychoanalyst and a business professor. Manfred has focused on CEOs and C-Suite occupants for many years.
The last couple of years I have co-taught a course for our MBA on the Role of the CEO. This year with Dick Evans, Ex-CEO of Alcan and Paul Tellier, Ex-CEO of CN and Bombardier, two top tier CEOs. Each week we have a CEO or two show up for class, Calin Rovinescu the CEO of Air Canada, Phillip Crawley the Publisher of the Globe and Mail, etc.. Typically we discuss their path to the CEO job, do a live mini-case and then kick around a theme for the evening, such as: Leading Transformational Change, Working with Boards or Handling Complexity.
The student's favourite article, bar none, is one by Manfred, “The Many Colors of Success: What do Executives Want Out of Life?”, from Organizational Dynamics, 2009. This always sets off a great debate. This is one evening that I run by myself, one night when Dick and Paul are not available. That evening's class is entitled: Who'd Want To Be A CEO Anyway? Are You Nuts? What many of the students question is whether they are willing to pay the incredibly high price of being the CEO or a C-Suite executive in a major corporation. Manfred has given quite a bit of thought and research time to look at the price of great success. This generation is considerably less interested in the relatively single-minded focus that is often required to reach these heights, though there are still many young people who are willing to pay the price, just many fewer than in my generation.
Video transcript:
Today I’m delighted to speak to Manfred Kets de Vries who is a professor at INSEAD.
Manfred, I use, in my class on CEOs, your article on success. What is, for C-suite executives, what is success? How should they or how do they define it?
MANFRED KETS DE VRIES – What they say they do and what they really do is different. When they talk about success, they talk about a family, about having a good family life. But, in fact, I think it is has also has to with how successful they are in the organization. And so, it’s a wish very often. I mean, in the end, if you are on your deathbed, you don’t say, “I want to spend more time in the office.” But, that’s actually one thing I want to bring to them.
I run, once a year, what I call a CEO recycling seminar which I’ve been doing now for 19 years – this is a long time – in which I take 20 CEO types and make them 4 types. It’s really a program which has been my laboratory for many other programs because it’s a way of getting things done. I give a lot of lectures on leadership and, you know, I tell you I forget. I’m involved with you and I start to remember, actually. In that program, things happen. People can’t escape - meaning that they come usually because there are some issues although they might not express it immediately. But, eventually, they start to do things with their life – which is their personal life and their public life.
My fantasy is about the program and I take 20 executives. Probably, they are responsible for three or four hundred thousand people. If I can make them a little bit more effective and a little bit more humane, it might have a cascade effect on the organization – to get better places to work. It’s a very satisfying program.
The program has been the basis for a number of other ones I run. One is the consulting and coaching seminar which is also year long – it’s a master’s degree – in which I try to develop better coaches. Actually, I got, many years ago, a request from some of the better known CA consulting firms, if I could make their younger people, some of the brains-on-a-stick, wise in one easy lesson. That’s not the way it works but that program is now – actually, not everybody who came there are consultants. There were a lot of people who do HR management and some line managers.
KM – We’ve talked about coaching. If an executive is looking for a management coach, you’ve done this for many years now, what should an executive look for in a management coach and how should they work effectively with them?
MKdV – Let me first say that most of the coaching is one-to-one coaching and I do that too but I do it very rarely because I’ve discovered it has more – for example, I’ve done a lot of work in Russia. So, I fly to Moscow, walk in the snow with some goons with some of the Russian tycoons and we talk about the meaning of life – his life, his work – and I give some suggestions sometimes, if the time is appropriate. And he says, “Yes, good idea.” I take the plane back to Paris and he goes back on his merry way because nobody is pushing him back.
If you take a group of executives, top executive team, and one says, “Listen, I’m too much of a micromanager. I realize it now. I should probably delegate more,” and, then, the next day he starts to fall back into his old pattern, the other ones will push him back. So, I’m a great believer in group coaching. It’s more difficult because of the group dynamics – when you take a group of executives – but it has much more “oomph” because I am not there.
Actually, probably the best combination is both – that you do individual coaching and group coaching. But group coaching has a lot of “oomph.” That’s the reason that, at our school, we are the largest in group coaching - something like three and a half thousand executives pass by and get one experience or the other. Usually, fairly short ones to create some momentum but, I run myself, two very long programs which, it’s sure, will do something with their life.
Video ends here but our conversation continued...
KM – So there’s a real sense that an executive should know their team better than just at work. There’s a sense that they should get to know them and their view of the world, if you would.
MKDV – Exactly, really, I mean - coming back to this kind of inner theatre – what are your major operation codes? What is really important to you is to really get the best out of them. I tell this to CEOs – you are in the leadership development business. You are the super coach. You don’t outsource it to your HR department. No, it’s you and that is something they don’t realize very often.
And then, of course, how to create a coaching culture so people can have courageous conversations where people can give feedback and people have mutual support for each other. How to get a team culture. I mean, we now live in the post heroic leadership era. You talk about the great men era of leadership. It’s not the way it works. It is basically a fantasy. We project – of course, we have a tendency to project fantasies on a leader because we feel so helpless and we hope that he or she can do it all but that’s not realistic.
End of interview with Manfred.
I look forward to returning to this issue of the change of leadership from heroic to a more engaging style of leadership - an approach which I believe is particularly better suited for the younger generation. More on this later...
