Improving gender diversity is a top ten priority for many organisations. However, executive women still have to navigate a glass labyrinth to reach leadership positions. Our research explores the unconscious dynamics in organisations as well as systemic issues that hinder diversity in the workplace.
Around the world, plans are being launched to fight COVID-19. Impressive change management and leadership will be necessary to convince people to adjust their behaviour, to eventually conquer the virus and revive the economy.
Leadership in the Next Phase of COVID-19, Apr 2020
Blogs
Don’t wait for the world to change. Find your own individual way
Don’t wait for the world to change or for some quota to propel you to the top. Find your own individual way. But what does that mean?
KDVI Writer's Colony, Mar 2020
Blogs
Career planning for creating gender balance at the top
Career planning is a sophisticated practice of developing talented individuals at the top by means of carefully selected job placements.
KDVI Writer's Colony, Feb 2020
Blogs
What is next? How do I realise my future ambitions? Annette explores practical steps women can take to grow further in leadership.
Blogs
“Think narcissist, think female!”
"Think narcissist, think male"? A further addition to our narcissism blog series, this blog shows that women leaders, too, can be narcissistic. Yet it's a different kind of narcissism with different implications for leadership development. Three types of narcissistic women leaders - the Super Woman, the Perfectionist and the Lenient Leader - are examined.
KDVI Research Lab, Jul 2018
Blogs
One key obstacle for women to be identified and selected for senior roles is "leadership cloning”
Authenticity - which comes down to leveraging difference - is the key to career success as a woman leader. But women often find themselves in a double-bind - needing to fit the prevailing leadership prototype in order to be successful while at the same time needing to stay authentic. How do you get out of this double bind? Wait for organisations to change their leadership development and come up with a truly gender-neutral system? This is likely to make you miss the boat. The solution is rather in finding a way to become successful in the existing system. This blog explains how a psychodynamic approach to leadership development can help female leaders to be authentic.
KDVI Research Lab, Feb 2018
Blogs
#BeBold ForChange
As International Women's Day is celebrated today across the globe, we asked ourselves what we would pledge to drive ground-breaking action within organisations to truly drive the greatest change for women.
KDVI Research Lab, Mar 2017
Blogs
"Let's talk about sex in the boardroom"
Manfred Kets de Vries explores whether sex and man’s unconscious drive for survival are keeping women locked out of the C-suite.
INSEAD Knowledge, May 2015
Blogs
"Sexual dynamics in the boardroom"
This working paper explores how people today are very much governed by the same sexual desires that drove our primitive ancestors.
INSEAD Working Paper, May 2015
Working Papers
"Why do women still fail to secure top positions in the workplace?"
This paper deals with the issue of whether the kinds of organisational structures and practices that attract women might also benefit men, and ask whether the male-oriented default position of organisational design has had its day.
INSEAD Working Paper, Nov 2010
Working Papers
