Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Hosted by Maureen Metcalf

Conversations with global thought leaders on leadership, culture, and innovation—designed for executives navigating complexity and building resilient organizations.

Reflecting on Leadership & Peace-Building

Episode Description

Mike Hardy, an honored peace-building scholar and Chair of the International Leadership Association, reflects on how leaders can advance conflict resolution even when global peace feels out of reach. He and Maureen Metcalf examine documented historical instances where leaders successfully facilitated peace and ended wars, drawing out the methodologies behind those efforts. The conversation returns to a guiding question for our volatile moment: how can each of us become effective leaders who help build a more peaceful and prosperous future?

Key Takeaways

Global peace is extraordinarily difficult, yet history offers real instances of leaders ending conflict.
Studying the methodologies leaders use to build peace makes those practices learnable.
Organizations like the International Leadership Association help advance peace-building research.
Effective peace leadership matters most precisely in volatile, uncertain times.
Each person can contribute to a more peaceful future through their own leadership.

Why This Episode Matters

Executives come away with a reflective, historically grounded view of how leadership methodologies can advance peace and resolution, even amid volatility.

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Featuring

Mike Hardy

Episode Topics

Culture Change • Ethics & Moral Decision Making • Leadership Capability & Maturity

Podcast Air Date

March 25, 2019

Episode Duration

41min

Watch the episode

Season 5

Episode Number 11

Episode Content:

Leading the world into peace is so monumentally difficult, it’s never been done (Rome’s propaganda about the Pax Romana aside!). But understanding how leaders have brought regional peace, and ends to war, has been done – and more than worthy of study.

Guest Mike Hardy founded the Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University. He’s also the board chair of the International Leadership Association. Mike with host Maureen Metcalf about the importance of uncovering the ways leaders bring about peace – and the roles both organizations play in that. Then he asks the big question: how can we all be effective leaders in this increasingly volatile present to create a more peaceful and prosperous future?

This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association: https://ilaglobalnetwork.org.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Nurturing Peace from the Ashes of Violence with Mike Hardy & Hyppolite Ntigurirwa
ShEquity: A Refugee’s Path to Empowering Women & Their Businesses with Pauline Koelbl
Finding Peace in Conflict: Northern Ireland and Beyond with Lord John Alderdice

Resources:

Information about the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations – for which Mike was the founding director – is online at https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/trust-peace-social-relations.

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. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole
Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski
Own the AI Revolution by Neil Sahota
Time and Chance by Kim Campbell

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy

Why You Fight Against Your Own Interests: Lessons from a Peace Negotiator with Lord John Alderdice
Reimagining American Identity with Amiel Handelsman and Jewel Kinch-Thomas
Academy for Systems Change and the Magnolia Moonshot 2030 Project with Darcy Winslow

Guest(s):

Mike Hardy

Guest(s) Bio:

Mike Hardy is Chair of Intercultural Relations and a founding Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations at Coventry University. He is adjunct professor of leadership at the LSPR Institute of Communications and Business in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mike has been twice honoured in the UK, awarded the OBE in 2001 for his peace-building work in the Middle East, and appointed a Companion of Honour of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the HM Queen’s Birthday Honours June 2010 for his work internationally in Intercultural Dialogue.

Mike is a Board Director and Chair of the International Leadership Association ( http://www.ila-net.org ), Chair of Trustees of The Faith and Belief Forum ( http://faithbeliefforum.org ), the leading interfaith charity in the UK, and life-fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

Transcript