Herminia Ibarra – Distinguished authority on leadership

Herminia Ibarra is a distinguished authority on leadership and career development, advocating the importance of strategic networks, and the value of collaboration.

Professor

Herminia is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and has served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties.

In 2019 she was awarded the LBS Excellence in Teaching prize and Thinkers 50 ranks her among the world’s top management thinkers.

Author

Herminia’s books, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and Working Identity are bestsellers in their field. Both will be updated by Harvard Business Press for their second editions in 2023.

Her articles are published in leading academic journals, business publications, and international news media. She is a bestselling case author, as ranked by the Case Center.

Speaker

Herminia speaks internationally on leadership and transformation for organisations, and at conferences that include TEDx, WIRED Smarter and the World Business Forum.

KEYNOTE TOPIC

How to step up to bigger leadership roles

Today’s breakneck pace of technological change has an immense impact on leaders, and as a result, on their organizations’ capacity to transform.

All too often, executives remain stuck in outdated mindsets and modes of operating, even when they recognize the need to reinvent themselves in order to step up in their careers.

This interactive session upends traditional, introspective advice and says act first — in order to change your way of thinking.

Whether you are moving into a new role or stepping up in your current post, in this session you will learn to change through action, not reflection, and to apply a growth mindset to our own leadership capacities.

Learning objectives

• Identify how to redefine your job so that your contributions are more strategic and client-centered.
• Learn how to expand your network so that you connect to and learn from a bigger range of stakeholders inside and outside your firm.
• Understand different ways of defining authenticity in order to give yourself permission to stretch beyond your ‘natural’ leadership styles and habitual ways of contributing.

KEYNOTE TOPIC

Leadership skills for organizational transformation

Today more than ever we need leaders who can help transform our firms — so they become more agile, more innovative, more digitally savvy, more customer-centric, more inclusive and/or more human.

Herminia has found that five leadership skills are vital for moving our organizations in this desired direction, increasing their people’s capacity to deal with today’s adaptive challenges: situations in which problems are complex, there isn’t an obvious answer, and, the brainpower and enthusiasm of many, not just the top leaders, is needed to solve them.

The five skills

• Cross-cutting: developing networks of relationships that extend and connect to a diversity of people and groups.
• Collaborating: fostering candor and psychological safety to increase team performance.
• Coaching: asking questions to develop others’ potential.
• Culture-shaping: proactively shaping organizational culture and mindsets, including recognizing and modifying practices that are no longer fit for purpose.
• Connecting: growing in empathy and authentic leadership.

KEYNOTE TOPIC

Developing authentic sponsorship relationships

Getting the mission-critical roles and stepping stone assignments that pave the way to a successful career requires more than skills and drive.

It requires a special kind of relationship — called ‘sponsorship’ — in which mentors goes beyond giving feedback and advice to use their influence with other senior executives to advocate for proteges and ensure that they have exposure and visibility with other top decision makers.

In this session, you will learn what sponsorship is, why it matters, and most importantly, how to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships such that, over time, your relationships are more likely to blossom into true sponsorship.

Herminia and the participants will discuss the spectrum of helping relationships, ingredients of effective career conversations, how to manage universal ‘like me’ biases and how to overcome common challenges in sponsoring relationships across differences.