Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Manfred and his work at his Institute’s website: https://kdvi.com/.

To learn more about his academic work and case studies, read his faculty page at https://www.insead.edu/faculty/manfred-f-r-kets-de-vries.

His many books include the titles he mentioned in the interview, including: The Neurotic Organization (available in hardback at https://amzn.to/4wauotJ).

And his Medium channel is at Manfred Kets de Vries – Medium.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here. 

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy: 

• How Your Leadership Can Rebalance Society: Solutions from Henry Mintzberg & Jonathan Gosling with Henry Mintzberg and Jonathan Gosling
• Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right, or Center with Henry Mintzberg

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries is Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD and the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus. A pioneer in applying psychology and psychoanalysis to leadership and organizational behavior, he founded INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre and has spent decades helping senior executives and boards become more reflective, effective leaders. Recognized as one of the world’s leading management thinkers, he has authored nearly 50 books and more than 400 articles on leadership, executive coaching, organizational transformation, and the dynamics of human behavior.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome to Innovating Leadership: Co-creating Our Future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, CEO and founder of the Innovative Leadership Institute, where leadership meets innovation and strategy becomes results. Every senior leader has sat in a room where a decision that looked sound on paper, produced the wrong outcome. Not because the strategy was flawed, but because the people making that decision brought forces into the room that no governance framework had accounted for. Today, we’re gonna examine those directly. Our guest, is Manfred Kets de Vries of INSEAD, one of the world’s most influential scholars at the intersection of leadership, psychology, and organizational behavior. Welcome. It’s a genuine pleasure to have you here.  

Manfred: It’s very nice seeing you. Let’s get started  

Maureen: You’ve introduced the idea of inner theater, the deep psychological patterns leaders carry into every [00:01:00] decision. 

How should organizations think about the inner theater of their leaders as a systemic risk, rather than just something for them to deal with personally? 

Manfred: You know, above the Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece was written, “Know thyself.” And what is always striking when you deal with executives: the lack of self-knowledge. I’m always surprised how little self-knowledge executives have about their own behavior. And becomes even worse, the higher they go into in certain positions, unless they sometimes get the kind of feedback they need to have a better knowledge of themself. 

When I did my seminar, what always struck me was the lack of self-knowledge on the part of the executives and how little they knew their colleagues. 

Since it was a modular program, the first thing they would do is after the first week, they would rush to their office and really have some meaningful conversation with their people to get a better sense of them. Not just talking about the weather and whatever, but really have a better understanding of what made those people tick. 

And of course, when you look at certain executive [00:02:00] behavior some very typical dysfunctionality which reverberates into the organization is things like micromanagement is a very typical one. And I have one executive as a client who is a micromanager. 

I laugh at him sometimes and say, “Listen, you have a lot of idiots working for you when I listen to you. Quite a few idiots. But you know, the problem is if you fire them and get some competent people, you have a lot of free time.” And that’s a problem because (if) you have a lot of free time. What are you going to do with yourself? You might get depressed!” It’s a paradox, of course. He complains about his life. He complains that he has no life. At the same time, he has created a situation: micromanagement. Actually, micromanagement is the bread and butter of psychotherapists, I can tell you that. 

It’s l- all over the place. And of course, it reverberates in the organization. People want more details. Actually, it’s a funny story which I sometimes tell. It’s called “The Flowers of Catherine the Great.” You probably never heard it. You have heard of Catherine the Great, the tsarina of Russia. 

Apparently, there was a [00:03:00] person who went to the garden of Catherine the Great, in St. Petersburg. And in the middle of the garden, there was a soldier standing. So there was a very curious person like you, Maureen. And she said to the soldier, “What are you doing there?” 

He said, “I don’t know.” So Catherine the Great, was quite curious and said, ” I have to follow it up.” He went to the sergeant. She says, “Sergeant, why is, why is this person standing in the middle of the garden?” “I don’t know.” But he kept on going, you know, a real detective, and finally found out that 100 years before, Catherine the Great was walking in the garden and saw this beautiful flower. 

She called the soldier and said, “You stand here so nobody steps on this flower.” Hundred years later, the same soldier was standing there. And that’s what happens when you talk about organizations. A new CEO comes in, wants a certain kind of information. It’s added, and you get a lot of social dysfunctionality or social defenses, whatever it might be. 

If you have a bully type of a CEO, and you start to foam at the mouth when you get certain information, that information will not come anymore. That’s gone. You very quickly is surrounded by [00:04:00] sycophants. 

And I want to stress something here which is rather important. We make a lot of negative comments about narcissism. But you are narcissistic, we all are somewhat narcissistic. We need narcissism for self-confidence and things. Otherwise you can’t survive. 

But it can also become pathological. And the Greeks, of course, I come back to the Greeks, which have had a lot of interesting insights, have this marvelous word called hubris, which means excessive pride. And what I see always, too often, and that’s the reason you need checks and balances, that an executive becomes a CEO and people say, “What a fantastic meeting you run.” 

And he like, he likes that. When the person would say, “Listen, you could have done better,” maybe you don’t want this person around anymore. And so you get this kind of Greek chorus finally. So what I’m trying to say is … Plato wrote about a philosopher king, which is fantastic, and of course the role model of philosopher king is Marcus Aurelius. 

You might remember the film “Gladiator,” and there’s Marcus Aurelius and all his philosophical ideas. But even Marcus Aurelius, this real [00:05:00] philosopher king, the emperor at the time of Rome, the most powerful person in the world, he appointed his son Commodus as his successor, who was a total asshole, to say it very plainly. 

So what I’m trying to say is every leader needs a fool, needs some countervailing powers. Now, they can be structurally built in: certain expiration dates which you have in democracies and things like that. 

That’s the danger by autocracy. You might have a very enlightened person, but you cannot trust a person, how enlightened a person is, without checks and balances. 

So you need countervailing powers. So how can we make good people even better? 

And so I went into psychometrics. Yes, me in psychometrics. That’s not my strength, but I, I managed to find the best psychometrician in France by accident, and we teamed up. And so I developed a lot of 360 questionnaires. I developed some of them, and you also see the different roles people play. I I developed one called the GELM, the Global Executive Leadership Mirror, which is [00:06:00] quite a sophisticated piece of instrument. A pain in the neck, by the way, to fill it out, I can tell you that. 

And particularly if you are the CEO, you have to fill it out for everybody else; it becomes a real nightmare. And then the other one is the Leadership Archetype Questionnaire, the different roles executives play. So some people are very good strategists, very good deal makers, good coaches, whatever. 

So you have different roles, and so, when you look at executive meetings, you talk about strategy, about risks and things like that. But people look but they don’t see. What are the elephants in the room? 

Are they discussable? Can you talk about it? It’s kind of funny. When the first I went to America, I went to the Harvard Summer School. I remember 17 years old. And people say, “How are you?” And you know, you’re supposed to say, “Fine. How are you?” That’s the ritual. But I had no idea. So I said, “I don’t feel so well today.” And they look at me like something was wrong with me. So what I’m trying to say is that I try to teach the executives to look and see. 

To really try to listen [00:07:00] to the other sounds and also be aware they may not be so grandiose as they think they are. There’s something called transference in clinical literature. Probably know what it means: all relationships are colored by previous relationship. So if you have a very autocratic father, and you always had fights with your father, it’s a good possibility you see about someone who reminds you of your father, bang, off you go. And of course when a person gets into power, it’s still the same person. Suddenly becomes promoted to CEO, people start to behave differently towards them. And they should become more aware of those factors, that the moment you’re in a position of power — coming back to Kissinger’s comment , power is the greatest aphrodisiac — people start to behave differently. 

And also that, by the way, there’s an article I wrote recently about libido in the boardroom, that maybe a board member is not as attractive as he thinks he is to a secretary. But basically because he’s in a very powerful position, the secretary laughs at his jokes and whatever it might be. 

So they should become more aware of it. It would be good [00:08:00] if boards make it a habit maybe once a month to have an somewhat kind of offsite in which you spend a few hours, talk about the elephants in the room, the difficult questions … And what you need for that is safe space. 

I was lucky in a way because many of the interventions I did was with people I had as students. When they went to my CEO recycling seminar, there was a working alliance and working relationship. Any form of therapy, well, the main thing is do you have a good relationship with, uh, your therapist? 

I mean, if you have a bad relationship with therapist, you hit your head against the wall for a long time. It’s not the best way to go. So there was an element of trust. Of safety, and the person knew that I was not trying to mess up her situation. 

That I had the best interest at heart. So that is very important how to manage in that case, to give the opportunity that apart from talking about strategy, new opportunities, risks, and things like that, also talk about emotional intelligence, to help them to become a little bit more emotionally sensitive. Also, to make them aware of the role each play. I [00:09:00] remember, years ago I did a venture for an investment bank, and they were great deal makers, they were real strategists, et cetera, but they were lousy in coaching each other and things like that. They said, ” Something is lacking in our team.” I don’t see it as a darker side or shadow side. It’s part of you, of who you are. The question is that you recognize it. You should recognize what you’re good at and not so good at. 

Maureen: Some of our listeners probably don’t know the term “shadow side.” Can you give a little insight to what that means?  

Manfred: It has become a very famous term used. But it was started by Jung. Carl Jung, as you know. And basically it has to do with the parts of yourself you don’t really like so much, to say it in a simplistic way. 

You’re uncomfortable with. Things you don’t want to see of yourself. But it’s part of you. I remember this middle-aged gentlemen said, “I put them all in boxes. I don’t want to see it.” But I tell them, “You know, when you do that, it’ll jump out without you knowing it. 

And better have some control over it and know what your weaknesses [00:10:00] are.” 

And when you talk about the alignment of an executive team to see what should be added or should be subtracted. I use sometimes a very simple two by two. 

People understand two by twos: ” Like, Don’t Like, Important, Not Important.” So “Don’t Like/Not Important:” I see some of the micromanagers spending too much time there, and it’s (the solution), listen, know your priorities. Don’t be there. 

Then you have “Like and Not Important.” Go fishing. I mean, my best ideas are not when I sit behind my desk here, but I’m (on) a walk in Jardin de Luxembourg, the park, or lie in the bus stop. Like Archimedes, whatever. I get ideas. I know when I lay in the bus stop for a long time, I get an idea. But also walking, just walking. Do another thing. 

So the “Like/Not Important:” important to some extent. Then you have “Don’t Like-But Important”. 

Now, I’ve written many books. And if you’ve written a book, you know after a while the publishers come with queries. I hate queries because the publishers are very slow. 

That is eight months later. I’m somewhere else. [00:11:00] I don’t remember anymore that quotation, where it come from. And so I, I remember that I had one woman, who kept on pestering me. And I answered her questions. I was very polite. I said to her, “Do you do some private work?” 

She said, “Yes, I know I’m a terrier.” And so now with the books I’m writing at the moment, the terrier talks to the terrier, so I’m out of it. She takes care of it all. It’s fantastic. And by the way you should be, and coming back, Like-Important. And you should realize, and that’s important about self-knowledge, where can I really make a contribution in the team? What am I really good at? Where can I really add value? And unfortunately, coming back to the executive, the micromanager, who is wasting his time on a lot of things he shouldn’t be wasting time. But he has actually this progress. He appointed the chief of staff. It just happened. Uh, I was so happy yesterday. He really is making progress. Things are happening. But, my fear is now that he gets too much time on his hand, because when you think about what I try to do, [00:12:00] it’s I want people to become more self-aware. Creating self-knowledge, which I think is the important factor. 

You know, to become more reflective leaders. Then I want to help them to build a more effective team; most top executive teams are very dysfunctional. And then I want most to create a great place to work. I actually introduced a concept called the authentic exotic organization, which a new word I introduced in the management language, which actually is an amalgamation of two Greek word. 

Greeks are, you know, they’re pretty good in those thing. Authenticus and zoticus. But basically a place where you feel alive. When you think about some of the studies… Gallup, I think 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged. What are they doing? 

I mean, sleepwalking through your organization. It’s terrible. Think about if you can keep them alive, feel excited, and you get so much more out of the people. And then of course, the end is also that I want people to have a life. A somewhat of a balanced, you know, balanced life. 

There is no such thing as a split between your [00:13:00] personal life and your public life. It is so much interrelated, given your internal theater. So that’s the kind of things I try to do. I talked a lot, huh? I have one big, big mono- … one big monologue I gave you. 

Maureen: And that’s self-awareness. So a lot with our clients, in some cases, when they’re ready, they can deal with the inner questions. In some cases, they’re either less safe or less open to dealing with what’s going on inside. And in those cases, working on the outer work is still efficient. Not as efficient as navigating the inner, but I’m curious your thoughts on that approach. 

Manfred: Maureen, I’m a terrible coach . You have to ask meaningful questions and not give advice. I am a terrible coach. I tell them they’re idiots. I give them homework. Uh, I mean, I do it. Yeah. I mean, uh, I ask about their sex life. I’m all over the place. But it makes for a very good relationship, and they listen.[00:14:00]  

Now, before you can do that, you have to start from the outside, go to the inside. That is probably a safer approach. So that’s what I, uh, try to do. I think I can get away with it at this point in my life. I’m … Maybe it’s my age. I can get away with certain questions which would be not acceptable when I was much younger. 

But, you know, you always have surprises. I find an important slogan: “Welcome the neurosis.” Meaning that sometimes you get such crazy reactions; what is going on? The thing is, there’s a term also in psychoanalysis. It comes from Keats. It’s “negative capability.” I don’t know if you ever heard it, negative capability. What I mean by that is when I would do my CEO seminar, it would take 21 people that I could handle at the same time; 21. And, and, and have a colleague with me, because I want to know who’s crazy at certain times. “What the hell is going on?” But I’ve learned, of course, when you get anxious, you want closure. Now I’ve learned let it be, let it be. Let them muck on. 

[00:15:00] In the end, they’re smart enough to come to some form of closure. It’s very difficult the, the tension, what’s going on there, to let it be. But that’s negative capability. To be able to, when you say, “My God, I have no clue what’s going on here anymore. I’m complete confused…” Let it be. Also the people who fight the most argue the most about certain issues are the ones who are going to be biggest defenders in the end. It’s very painful in the beginning. You said, “My God, what a pain in the neck this person is,” as opposed to the person who’s happily nodding his or her head, but maybe half asleep. It’s very hard to feel asleep in my class, by the way. I don’t let them fall asleep. I’m dangerous. 

I’m really dangerous. I was r- I was recently I was in Seoul, and so there was I think, thousand people in the audience. The first speaker was, I think, the dean of a well-known business school in United States. 

He droned on about what else? AI, for an hour and a half. And in good Korean tradition, there was no break. And I said, “My God, I’m next in line.” And looked back and saw the [00:16:00] half-asleep audience of mostly men sitting there. Many with also microphones in the ear because they don’t speak English properly. So I looked around and said, “Who has no microphone in his ear?” 

So I went on the podium, stood on the podium and said hello, I was introduced, and then I walked down from the podium, picked one character and said, “What did you dream about last night?” And suddenly everybody woke up. “What crazy dreams did you have last night? Did you have any sexual dreams or so?” And it got more and more, more and more awake. 

Then I rushed up to the end of the audience because people in the back, they sit at the back so they can escape. Aha. No. And said, “And what about you?” Everybody was suddenly awake. And so we get going. But that’s theater in a way. 

That’s a theater because you give a speech, you have to get the audience. As long as they pick up a few ideas, because, uh, to really help people change is hard work. It’s hard work because people fall easily back on their old patterns, particularly when they regress so quickly. 

That’s the reason I was talking about the idea that if you do an intervention for a team to make a better team, as a one-off, it’s a little bit of a waste of money. You need a [00:17:00] follow-up and then maybe a regular refresher to make it work that they have real serious conversations about issues which are really there. 

When you have two baroness in an executive team and they are starting to fight, also sometimes you realize that some people in executive team shouldn’t be there; I don’t like it, but there are times I say this person should not be there. 

It is completely dysfunctional and destroys the atmosphere in this team. You know, you need to have meaningful conversations. Actually, I started to experiment with team coaching many, many years ago. 

Where I did it was actually two well-known American companies. One was Goldman Sachs, and one was McKinsey. The directors of McKinsey, prided themselves of being the best in leadership team. And it was very interesting to work with them. 

Because in the case of McKinsey, you have one in Singapore, one in New York, one in Chicago, and one in Berlin, and you have to come together very quickly. And it’s very hard to email a smile or, you know, a handshake. 

[00:18:00] So the ability to have authentic conversations and talk about the issues is important. And so this was a training ground for being able to do that. It was actually a shotgun marriage I had with a man at Harvard, Bob Kegan. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him.  

Maureen: I know Bob.  

Manfred: Oh, yeah, you know Bob? 

Yeah. So it was, I got a shotgun marriage because I got three of the people who run the leadership development program at McKinsey came into my office and said, “Do you like to do this together with Bob?” I didn’t know Bob Kegan at the time, but so we worked a long time together. 

And of course what they liked at McKinsey was his “Immunity to Change.” It was really structured. But how to change people, you know? When you come to a micromanager, and you’re giving feedback to a micromanager, you say, “Listen, you have to delegate more, you have to empower people,” et cetera, et cetera. 

And then it’s “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” and the next year it’s the same thing again because nobody does it so well as they do, and this fear that a mistake can be made. And so this immunity to change idea of Bob is a little bit of a way of trying to wean those people [00:19:00] away of that particular behavior, being fairly structured. 

And Bob doesn’t like it very much: there’s a lot of psychoanalytic thought behind it when you’re honest about it. But he doesn’t like that so much. 

Maureen: If you know his work, it’s grounded in ego development, right? 

And so having done this with grad students and clients alike, one of the comments I get back on the Immunities to Change work is, “This is a lot like going to my therapist. It’s just done in a corporate setting.”  

Manfred: Don’t say that to Bob. That, he doesn’t like that very much, no.  

Maureen: The Immunities to Change tool is one of the more effective, very challenging, but more effective that I have personally used with leaders. 

Manfred: It helps. Given many of their mindset, it helps them. They had a more difficult time with the other parts , coming back to Bob’s ideas about the adult stages of development and things like that. That was more difficult for them. 

I see people who look very mature, some they totally regress in certain situations. [00:20:00] And I think the important thing in life is to be able to recognize when you use very primitive defense mechanisms. 

And the most primitive ones are splitting and projection, denial. You know, I didn’t do it, he did it or she did it. And splitting: the people with the white cowboy hats and the black cowboy hats. You see so many executives doing that, and politicians are very good in it, and your leading politician is a master in it, of splitting. 

Now the sign of emotional maturity is to have the tolerance for ambiguity. You can see the good and some the bad sides of a person. Coming back to the shadow side, but also say, “Listen, the person did lots of good.” Now, coming back to my CEO seminar, I’ve had people who had a terrible childhood. And you say, “How did they manage?” And so the one thing could be that the parents couldn’t have been all bad. But very often you have also been in situation which are horrendous, which are incestuous situations. 

You say, “My God, how does this woman got out of it?” Very often it has to do also is there is in their lives some support figures. It could be a [00:21:00] teacher, it could be an older brother, whatever it might be, grandmothers are very important. 

Very important. Particularly in Russia, by the way. They tended, at least after Perestroika many of them married very young to get out of the house. And then they got pregnant, and then they dumped the child at their mother. 

Many of the children brought up by the grandmothers. I listen to stories, that’s what I do, to people’s stories, and particularly in the leadership program I would be running for so long, that people who come from terrible backgrounds, really traumatic backgrounds, how do they end up in my seminar? 

They must have so much resilience. In spite of the horrible background, very often there are some other figures around. 

And important figures are figures like it could be a teacher who believes in the young woman or the young man that there’s some talent there. Or grandparents. A grandparent who plays a very important role. 

We have a woman who does some of the housework, and is from the Philippines, and basically her children are raised by the grandparents. She lives in France. 

Maureen: You’ve written probably 1,000 [00:22:00] articles and stacks of books.  

Manfred: Too many books. Too many books.  

Maureen: Too m- A lot of books. Absolutely. What do you want leaders to be thinking about themselves and the systems they’re creating? 

Manfred: It would be good if they would create the space in the organization where they can reflect regularly on issues which are not immediate, and long-term issues, which also has to do with how well are we working together, and what can we do to be more effective together, and are there certain issues. Psychoanalysts talk about false self and true self, and in a way we always are engaged in a performance. When I teach, when I stand in front of an audience, I make a performance. I’m not going to tell my deepest concerns necessarily. 

But you can at least be as authentic as possible. In the position of CEO, there are a lot of secrets you can even not tell the close circle around you. That’s the reason also many CEOs are actually quite lonely people, to have [00:23:00] somebody to talk to. 

It sounds so trite, you know, the loneliness of command, but it’s true. True. And sometimes they are lucky. They have a good partner they can talk to. And as your good partner can tell you, you know, you’re full of shit at times. I make the comment sometimes, you know, every leader needs a fool. 

The kings had fools, but of course, the fools eventually were beheaded. How long can a person placed in the role of the fool, the soothsayer, the fool of King Lear, survive in an organization? I also tell people, “Please don’t be a hungry consultant,” because then you’re part of the establishment there. 

Be able to tell the person how things stand. Coming back to the word we talked about earlier, hubris, that’s the pitfall. Narcissism can be a treasure, but also can be an enormous spoiler. It’s very delicate balance, and that’s particularly for the top executive in an organization, a very tricky thing. 

And unfortunately, when you talk about top executives and boards, boards are getting a little bit more effective, I think partially because more and more people learn more about the psychological [00:24:00] dynamics, which going on in board. 

But in the past boards, basically people who are retired as senior executives and don’t get enough information very often and they sit, it’s like sitting on eggshells. And even though you see that something is not right because you have been in the same position, you let it be, and you let it be, you let it be until it become a scandal. 

You should really do some preemptive maintenance not to have that happen. Create space on a regular basis in organization of reflection. You have to also manage the CEO.  

Maureen: Mm-hmm.  

Manfred: Because there is always this transferential factor, and so the CEO should not speak up too early, depending on the culture. To be a CEO in America is very different when you’re CEO in, in Russia. 

To be a CEO in Sweden is very different than being a CEO in the UK. There are different rules of the game. And then the industry makes a difference. There’s different filters you have to think. When you have the managing partner of McKinsey, it’s a very different role than running a steel factory in the Caucasus. 

You have to keep that in perspective, [00:25:00] that certain parameters don’t work there to make that work. To repeat myself, which I do regularly, many executive teams are not well aligned, and it is extremely costly. 

You don’t have to sing a company song, which IBM used to have; but there should be room for robust dialogue, honest dialogue, not little political games and things like that, and how to look all the time at what’s the best interest of the whole organization. And that’s very often not the case because sub-optimization is then taking place and who gets the resources, et cetera, et cetera. 

Maureen: In that spirit then , what is the one choice you believe senior leaders or boards should make in the next 30 days; is there a concrete step? 

Hire you, hire me, um, that thing.  

Manfred: I don’t want to be hired. I want to be left alone. I’m like Greta Garbo, leave me alone. No I certainly don’t want to be hired. No, the willingness to accept feedback. It’s kind of funny: the most [00:26:00] difficult people in organization are people with psychopathic behavior, and they’re very good at managing upward. They’re very good in that. They really tell you what you want to hear. 

But the people who notice it are below. They know it. So certain 360s on a regular basis, even though it’s also culture specific. when I started with 360, it was so long ago, and it was no problem for the United States, no problem for Sweden, for Holland. 

But for France, they only give feedback down. Up, not… So you need a culture where the people are willing to give solid feedback. But if that’s there, it is very helpful to basically tease out certain people, say, “Listen, do I want this person in the organization?” 

He pulls fast ones on people. He takes credit for other people’s work, et cetera, et cetera. Coming back to my two by twos. I had the like, dislike, and important, but you also have results and living the values. So we have people who have great results but don’t live the values, and those are the toxic people [00:27:00] because you let them be too long, and those have to be taken out or they have to be told, ” Unless you shape up, otherwise you’re out.” 

But they stay too long and they’re toxic. I have this person in Greece who has fantastic results but nobody stays there, and something has to be done. But He’s a producer. That’s a nice word. He’s a producer. 

He produces. And so they let it be. Again, those questions should be raised. And if you create this kind of reflective space on a regular basis, you will save a lot of money. That’s what it means. In the end, if you as a consultant or coach or whatever, you have to talk about dollars and cents and say, “Listen, if your team is not aligned, it’s going to be extremely costly. It will cost you so much money.” That’s where you have to go. The same thing, when you have a toxic person sitting there destroying the culture of the company and really making reputational damage, better do something about it. We haven’t even talked about the libido element, where people see certain totally inappropriate behavior in your organization, and they say, “Yeah, this is just the [00:28:00] way it is,” and ignore it till it finally explodes. And then it comes to The Wall Street Journal, and you have to pay millions and millions of damages. That’s what happens. So those things should be prevented.  

Maureen: It so totally connects with what you’ve said about power, that as someone elevates, people junior to them don’t feel the freedom, and the leader often doesn’t recognize that their position of power is impacting… influencing in a way they often don’t intend, right? They see people responding and don’t realize they’re manipulating, not collaborating.  

Manfred: Now we have people coming to the office and asks the secretary, “How is his mood today? Can I talk to him?” 

As a leader of an organization on stage, people carefully look at you, what you do. There’s enormous amount of symbolic action taking place. Leadership become more aware of it, about the symbolic role they play, the element of the transferential processes because how people [00:29:00] deal with authority. 

And they say, you know, “We’re very democratic.” In meantime, they might be Louis XIV, the Sun King. And also learning how to listen, really, really listen, the active listening. People say certain things, but how do they say it? 

In what way do they say it? Ask, “How is this person doing?” “He’s doing okay, but…” Say, “What do you mean by but? You know, what is going on? Is there anything you’re concerned about?” Most people don’t listen very well because they’re too busy. They have the response, and they’re holding to the response. 

While they’re holding on to the response, they aren’t listening anymore. They have this brilliant response to make. That’s of course very interesting when you’re on a CEO class. When you have 21 people who are used to talk all the time, they cannot talk at the same time, so they have to put their hand up and there’s a sequence. 

So that’s actually an interesting exercise. Already automatically they have to listen to the others. Actually, I had one person in my class; she was chairman of the board. She loved to talk, and every time she raised her hand, I had to be fair. She had to raise her hand. 

It was her turn. But I said, “My God, [00:30:00] there we go again.” Because I only have so much time, and a long monologue is going to happen. So the next week, next module, she came back, not a peep.  

Maureen: Huh.  

Manfred: Not a word. So I got worried about her. 

You know, what is happening to her mental health? So I went to her after class, said, “Maria,” not her name, not her real name, “what’s happening to you?” She said, “My colleagues in the class told me I not listen very well. I talk too much.” I didn’t do anything. My colleagues took care of it. That’s actually sometimes the advantage of team coaching. 

But the group… they told her, “Listen, you should listen more. You talk too much. Be, be more specific.” So that can be the good thing of group coaching as opposed to team coaching is always trickier because, you know, you have to live together with each other. The other group, they can become friends forever. That’s what happens actually. Many of them can know each other so well. They see each other every year and see each other when they’re in their countries and  

Maureen: things like that. So Manfred, this has been fascinating , and I can see that we could have many more conversations. I [00:31:00] typically try to summarize. I’m gonna hit a couple of high points. 

Manfred: Good luck. Good  

Maureen: luck. Good luck. So a few things I heard though from the systemic level. Do 360s, do them consistently, and understand the context, so have the person debriefing, not just give the feedback, but use it in service of team alignment, and so conduct both solid team alignment sessions, not just on the strategy, but on the team dynamics. 

Do the 360 to help people develop self-awareness, which was your first phrase. And for people in power, there’s certainly a certain amount of hubris and ego, self-confidence required. Beyond that level, it’s diminishing returns and damaging.  

Manfred: Very much so. Remember again, Lord Acton’s statement, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And he is so right. [00:32:00] When a person become the businessman or woman of the year, sell the shares.  

Maureen: Interesting. That would be interesting to look at SpaceX.  

Manfred: No comment. 

Maureen: So thank you so much. You probably have a whole category on Amazon of your work. 

Manfred: I actually, I’ve been publishing too much. I’m actually work on seven books at the same time. 

It’s pretty crazy. Uh, but I write quite a few essays, and I put them also Medium and on LinkedIn. That’s where they are. Eventually what I do is I put them together as a book. That’s the reason I have so many books at the same time, because I’ve been writing prolifically. 

It must be my manic defense or something like that. But I enjoy playing with ideas. The world is not in great shape at the moment, as you all see when you look around. There’s all these wars and all this craziness. And if I can make it a little bit better… I don’t do it with a gun, I do it with a pen, or actually with the computer, to help people a little bit to realize the effects or the consequence of their actions, and to become more aware of it. 

That’s my [00:33:00] fantasy, of course. If you have a little bit more self-knowledge, maybe you would think a little bit before you do certain things. Maybe you’re a little bit more reflective. That’s really coming back to my comment about how to create reflective leadership, and reflective people in general. Not just leaders, but anybody. 

And it also has to do, again, coming back also to your comments about parenting. Helping people to be aware, if you are a parent what it means, that responsibility you have to create a secure base for the children. If you have a secure base, you can go whistling through life. 

Otherwise, If that’s not happens early in life, you have to do a lot of work afterwards. I guess probably it’s easy for me now to say as a grandfather, but still, this is my small contribution to create a little bit of a better world.  

Maureen: I love the focus on self-awareness. So thank you. Thank you to our listeners. Please like us, share us, follow Manfred on LinkedIn or Medium. Follow us on [00:34:00] LinkedIn, and leverage what you learn each week to make the impact each of us can individually make, because it actually really matters right now. 

Manfred: Thank you for having me.