Gianpiero Petriglieri
Author, professor, speaker
About Gianpiero
Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace.
His award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. He is particularly interested in the meaning and practice of leadership in the age of “nomadic professionalism,” an age in which people have deep bonds to work but loose affiliations to organisations, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success.
The intent of all of Gianpiero’s work is to humanise leadership, that is, to account for the complexities and contradictions within and between people and organisations, and to help leaders be grounded as well as flexible, sustainable as well as effective, purposeful as well as portable. This work has earned him a spot among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world.
Building on his research, Gianpiero has refined a unique approach to developing the art of leading. This approach aims to help people and groups clarify their leadership intent, claim it, commit to it, and forge relationships that sustain it. Gianpiero collaborates with multinationals in a variety of industries to bring this approach to life in bespoke leadership development initiatives, usually tied to a broader effort to transform the organisation. Besides numerous INSEAD accolades, these initiatives have received industry-wide awards for excellence and innovation in executive development.
An insightful and engaging speaker, Gianpiero presents widely at management conferences and corporate gatherings on the value of humanising leadership at work and beyond. At INSEAD, he directs the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive programme for emerging leaders, and chairs the initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence.
How Leaders Can Encourage Learning
Gianpiero’s latest essay, in the Harvard Business Review (January 2025 issue) unpacks what it means for leaders to cultivate learning in the workplace.
Learning is necessary for individuals and organisations to succeed and grow. It changes lives and keeps cultures alive. And yet, what learning means, and what it takes to cultivate it, is often misunderstood. The essay presents three distinct approaches to the leadership of learning and the circumstances in which they are most valuable.
Gianpiero discussed the findings and applications of the study in this Harvard Business Review Podcast too.
PODCASTS AND MORE…
Gianpiero is a frequent guest on popular podcasts. Here are a few episodes on…
Passions at work – with Esther Perel
The promise and perils of making work personal.
How love and loss make us who we are.
Positive leadership: A matter of love
Humanising leadership. What’s love got to do with it?
Faith in the work and friends at work. That’s what leaders need most.
Why leadership is an art, literally.
How to stop making humanism the handmaiden of instrumentality in organisations.
Speaking events
On the 24 and 25 of September, 2025, Gianpiero will deliver keynotes at the Nordic Business Forum and the Oslo Business Forum.
Check out this excerpt of Gianpiero’s recent work on humanising leadership. A radical reframing of leadership as a kind of love, that can help you find, pick, groom, and become a better leader.
If you are interested in booking Gianpiero as a speaker for your management gathering or retreat, check out the speaking page.
Teaching
The overarching purpose to humanise leadership through transformative learning informs all of Gianpiero’s development work. The courses and workshops he designs and teaches build on the assumptions that (1) leadership is a craft, not a conquest, that (2) we learn to lead through cycles of experience and reflection, and that (3) both our personal history and social context matter in determining if and when we get to lead–and how we do it. Hence learning for leadership always needs to incorporate experience, make room for practice and reflection, involve the whole person, and take their context fully into account. Ultimately, leadership development needs to benefit individuals, their organisations, and society at large.
Gianpiero’s teaching aims to foster transformative learning. It builds upon his research on why humanising leadership matters, and how to do it, as well as on what it takes for organisations, and how it will benefit them. Read more about the courses and workshops that bring his approach to life….
Honors & Awards
In the past three years, Gianpiero has been included in the biannual list of the 50 most influential management thinkers (Thinkers50 2023) for the fourth time, was voted best core course teacher by the MBA student twice (classes of 2023D and 2024D), and received the Dominique Hèau award for Inspiring Educational Excellence at INSEAD. The latter is a yearly honour bestowed upon one professor whose work has strengthened the fabric of the school and touched the lives of students, professors, and alumni. He has also received the 2025 Administrative Science Quarterly award for Scholarly Contribution for the ASQ paper with the most impact in the last 5 years.
For more recognition of his research, teaching, and public engagement…