Gianpiero Petriglieri

Author, professor, speaker

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Essays

In the management press. (more…)

Speaking

At events and gatherings. (more…)

Research

In academic journals and books. (more…)

About Gianpiero

Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace. He holds the INSEAD Alumni professorship in leadership and development. 

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 development 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. Leaders, in this age, are expected be grounded as well as flexible, sustainable as well as effective, purposeful as well as portable. It is a lot to handle at once.

The intent of Gianpiero’s work is to humanise leadership, that is, to help leaders recognise and work with those tensions, and foster more integration and less fragmentation, more pluralism and less polarisation, within and around them. 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 helps people and groups clarify their leadership intent, commit to it, and forge relationships that sustain it. Gianpiero works with multinationals in a variety of industries to bring this approach to life in bespoke leadership development initiatives, usually tied to a strategic effort to transform the organisation. Besides various INSEAD awards, these initiatives have received industry-wide prizes for excellence and innovation in executive development.

An insightful and engaging speaker, Gianpiero presents widely at management conferences and corporate gatherings on the meaning and value of humanising leadership in the workplace and beyond. 

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Making Leadership Art

Gianpiero’s latest essay, in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, is an invitation to make leadership art. In an age where work and organisations are becoming more instrumental, surfacing and strengthening the human core of leadership, he argues, requires recognising and treating it as an art. Making leadership art will help us focus on the ways leadership fosters (or hinders) growth, cohesion, and systems that sustain both. And it can help us broaden the study of leadership, foster its development, and improve its practice.

Taking the invitation to make leadership art does not involve diminishing concerns for propriety, productivity, or profits. It only means becoming more deliberate about why and how we pursue all three. Making leadership art requires articulating and embodying an intent; extending an invitation to others to bring that intent to life, and; making an intervention in the fabric of our culture. That framework points to three movements that sustain the development of leadership: A movement from impulse to intent, from imposition to invitation, and from indulgence to intervention.

Speaking events

On the 5-7 October Gianpiero will speak at the Corporate Research Forum. On the 20th of October he will open the WorkHuman Forum. And on the 4-5 November he will be on stage at the Global Peter Drucker Forum.

Check out this excerpt of Gianpiero’s recent work on humanising leadership. A radical reframing of leadership as a kind of love that will 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….

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Honors & Awards

In the past three years, Gianpiero has been included in the biannual list of the 50 most influential management thinkers for the fifth time (Thinkers50 2025), 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 (2023). 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, a prize for the ASQ paper with the most impact in the 5 years prior, and was Runner-up for the 2026 Academy of Management Journal best paper award.

For more recognition of his research, teaching, and public engagement…

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