Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD, is one of the world’s leading thinkers on leadership, coaching, and the application of clinical psychology to individual and organizational change.
Palgrave’s professional business list operates at the interface between academic rigor and real-world implementation. Professor Kets de Vries’s work exemplifies that perfect combination of intellectual depth and practical application and Palgrave is proud to bring almost a decade’s worth of work together in the Palgrave Kets de Vries Library.
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The CEO Whisperer
Meditations on Leadership, Life, and Change
1st ed. 2021
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Sometimes, given my work at the boundaries of organizations and depth psychology, I feel like an invited guest on the Jerry Springer Show —that infamous, confessional TV forum for dysfunctional and dispossessed Americans. At other times, I feel more like “Dear Abbie.” In my real life, however, I am a business school professor who has spent many years teaching organizational behavior , the study of human functioning in organizations. But before I was drawn to the field of organizational behavior , I studied economics. And I have since become a psychoanalyst —so the running joke of my professional life is that I try to combine John Maynard Keynes’ “dismal science” with Sigmund Freud’s “impossible profession.”Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.
―Irvin Yalom
I decided to become a psychoanalyst because too many management scholars in the field of organizational behavior conveniently left the person out of the equation. Organizational structures seemed to be a much more attractive proposition for most of them than studying the behavior of people in a work setting—far too messy and confusing. I decided that a clinical training would give me a very helpful lens to counter this regrettable trend and acquire a greater understanding of the complexity of human beings. And I have been proved right. Clinical training and practice have provided me with a more holistic understanding of why people do what they do. It has also made me realize that there’s no Chinese Wall between people’s public and private lives. Working life affects personal life, and vice versa.
Given my work, I am sometimes privy to strange requests for advice. In the past, people would only occasionally solicit my advice but with the rise of social media the barriers to access have disappeared. Nowadays I receive a continuous stream of communications that are often cries for help. But although many of these requests are interesting, they don’t make my life any easier. Like Henry David Thoreau , I find myself thinking, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Although most people we meet seem completely normal, behind this façade there often lies a very different reality. Quiet desperation isn’t difficult to find. For example, what do you make of the following email, which is typical of the sort of thing I get these days. Like every case study in this book, I have anonymized it and disguised the details.
Dear Professor, I hope that this e-mail will reach you. But let me first introduce myself. I am an executive at a medium-sized IT company where I have been working for many years. Until recently, I kidded myself that I was doing ok. But when I look at my current situation, I realize my life is falling apart. I am not doing well at work or in my private life. My personal worries are affecting my work and my work worries my personal life. My boss recently told me that my performance is not up to snuff. Now I am worried that she is going to fire me. If that happens, it will be a disaster. My salary is my only source of income. There are also lots of deeply troubling issues in my personal life.
The reason I am writing to you is that I have read a number of your articles. In particular, your articles about the victim syndrome and greed resonated with me. I also looked at one of your articles about psychopathic behavior. These articles brought me with some comfort, as they helped me understand my present predicament. Thank you for making these articles available. I really appreciate how you wrap up all these threads of human dynamics into a nice, understandable ball. Your articles made me realize that I’m like some of the victims you describe. They helped me better understand why certain things are happening to me.
Until recently, I thought I had my life together but that changed when my stepfather died. Since then, things have been falling apart but I’m beginning to wonder whether that started much earlier, to be exact, when I caught my brother in a sexual act with my wife. I forgave my wife but now I’m asking myself why I didn’t I see it coming. How long was their affair going on? Was I blind? And since then, my 19-year-old daughter has told me that my brother used to make passes at her. Everything is such a mess. My relationship with my wife has never been the same. There isn’t much going on between us.
But that’s not all. What has upset me even more is finding out that I have been written out of my stepfather’s will. Everything will go to my brother. (Our mother died from a stroke a number of years ago.) My brother pulled a fast one on me. He got our stepfather to adopt him and took on his name. He got away with all of this because our family lawyer had died, and his replacement had no idea what my brother is really like.
When I confronted my brother with all this, he attacked me, and said terrible things, like that our mother hated me (that was the worst) and made a number of other accusations. The police were called and had to intervene. When they arrived, my brother said I had assaulted him, which is a lie. He started the fight. He also told the police that I tried to run him over in a parking lot, which is completely untrue.
The upshot is that I can’t go to our family home anymore. My brother has told me to stay away. I am no longer welcome there. He says that everything in the house now belongs to him and if I want any of it, I better contact a lawyer. But a lot of my personal belongings are in that house. Our mother kept things there for me, like the photos from when I was a child, all the family photographs, the school memorabilia and so on. It’s terrible.
And it gets worse. My brother’s girlfriend came to see me recently and said that he owned her money, and could I help her get it back? How can I, the way things stand? She also told me that she’d had a fight with my wife, who was in my brother’s apartment. Everything she said about him upset me even more.
I keep asking myself what went wrong in our family? I know life was very hard when we were children My mother got pregnant with me when she was very young and put me up for adoption when I was a baby. A few years after my brother was born, my grandfather insisted on getting me back. But I always tried to make the best of a bad thing. As the oldest, I tried to be strong. I was always there for my brother, protecting him when he got himself into trouble, but I clearly didn’t do a good enough job.
Quite early on, he became an alcoholic and drug addict, but he started to get into real trouble when he was a teenager. He would tell lies, accuse me of things that he had done, and stole money to support his addictions. That period was hell for me. He went to jail when he was around 19 for hitting someone in a bar with a baseball bat. But as he is a very good talker, he only got probation. Personally, I think, he’s got psychopathic tendencies.
Looking back, I realize that I couldn’t have had the same relationship with my mother as my brother (in secret) had with her. Otherwise, why would he scream at me that my mother hated me? I never felt that was the case but on the other hand, why he would say such a terrible thing? What he’s said, and the financial mess I’m in now I’m not going to inherit anything, make me wonder whether my mother and stepfather ever really loved me. All in all, my family background is a mess but your articles about family dynamics made me realize I’m not alone. Reading them was like a lightbulb going on.
I’m sure you can understand that my personal situation is affecting my work. Like I said, I’m worried I’ll get fired. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with my boss. She isn’t an easy person. She is very manipulative and self-centered, although I have to admit that she can be quite charming. I think she’s a flaming narcissist. She claims that she cares about me, but I wonder if that’s really true. Her words sometimes sound very hollow. And she’s always taking credit for my work. It makes me furious, but I find it hard to stand up to her.
In spite of it everything, I feel sorry for my brother. I think he is lonely. Although he’s very good looking, he’s never been capable of stable relationships . He’s been married and divorced several times and he has very poor relationships with his children. I don’t think that he has any real friends. But although I feel sorry for him, the way he’s treating me kills me.
What do you advise me to do? Should I sue my brother for my part of the estate? Do you think it’s worth the fight? What am I going to do about my relationship with my wife? Should I start looking for another job? As things are now, I am just muddling along. I’m just trying to survive. And while all this is going on, I’m trying to be the best father I can to my daughter, hoping I can leave her with good memories of me.
Quite some email to get out of the blue. A lot went through my mind as I read it.
You Cannot Not Communicate
Sometimes, the loudest cries for help are silent. Often, when people communicate, many things remain unsaid. Bearing this in mind, this particular cry for help has an Alice in Wonderland quality to it. The writer seems to have been drifting through life for far too long not seeing the dramas playing themselves out around him. Of course, as a defensive maneuver, it may have been less painful for him not to see them but now he can’t shut his eyes to them any longer. Maybe reading the articles he mentioned caused some imbalance in his usual modus operandi. They may have helped him take a few steps toward understanding what’s going on in his family and his life in general. But will self-diagnosis be enough?
I am not saying that a light bulb, or “Aha !” moment can’t have an enlightening effect. Understanding psychological dynamics can be therapeutic, and after all, diagnosis is the first step toward taking greater control of your life. Most of us look ceaselessly for some kind of order in a very baffling universe and try to make sense out of mystifying things. But even assuming the author of this email has a modicum of self-understanding, will he be able to untangle all the strands of his very troubled life on his own? Does he see what’s really there? Does he realize what he is up against? Is he aware how toxic his present situation is? Does he understand the motivations of the people he’s dealing with? In other words, will his diagnoses be enough? Is it enough to label people as depressed, paranoid, obsessional, bipolar, narcissistic, or psychopathic?
I am always hesitant to categorize people myself. I have always been wary of making fixed diagnoses, although, I admit, I have never been exactly a saint in the matter. I’ve done it many times. The fact is that the more I get to know individuals, the harder I find it to assess what they are all about, and to make sense of what drives them, which makes classification redundant. Frankly, I am far more interested in the “scripts” that drive an individual’s inner theater —what’s going on inside them. At the same time, I am fully cognizant that the “other” will never be fully knowable. With this in mind, I wonder whether the sender of this email was helped by labeling the behavior of the people around him (his “narcissistic” boss, his “psychopathic” brother). It might have given him the illusion of having a degree of control over a very messy situation. It might make him feel a bit better.
Dramatic though this email is, I get the impression that a lot of the drama (whether consciously or unconsciously) remains unstated. This raises the question of what this person isn’t seeing? What has been left out of this story? Also, given how ignorant I am about his situation as a whole, what help can I realistically provide? And while I am at it, can I deal with not knowing? Realizing how handicapped I am, in light of my ignorance, should I just ignore this communication? At the same time, I always tell myself and others that the capacity to tolerate a large amount of uncertainty is a prerequisite for an effective executive coach or therapist. It is what the poet John Keats called as being “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”1
My clients may have a fantasy that I guide them systematically and sure-handedly toward a known goal, but I have to admit that the reality is very different. The journey is much more of an emerging process, during which I improvise and feel for direction. I also have to tolerate not knowing—to accept the isolation , anxiety , and frustration that are inevitable parts of the work I do.
This email made me wonder how effective I can really be when attempting to provide psychological “containment” from a distance. Dealing with emails is very different from dealing with clients face-to-face. Taking a dispassionate view of this person’s predicament, the question was whether I should even try. Do I have the ability to manage this person’s troubling thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Should I make his problems my problems? After all, he came into my life uninvited.
In a more professional setting—not this kind of long-distance communication—I always try to absorb my clients’ feelings. I try to reframe whatever they are experiencing in a more manageable way. In my various roles as coach, psychotherapist , or consultant ,2 I try to take on my clients’ anxieties , sadness, and pain. I try to be empathic. Also, I try to create a safe space that can help my clients to model healthier ways of dealing with their life challenges. What’s more, I remind myself continuously that, as an executive coach or psychotherapist , I have to make myself obsolete. I want my clients to become their own caretakers. I want them to reach a point when they can take care of their issues by themselves.
All these thoughts were going through my mind while trying to deal with this email that came out of the blue.
Although this email was unsolicited, it was not the kind of communication I felt I should simply put aside. I couldn’t ignore it. Troublesome as it was, it was a life drama that stuck with me. I kept thinking about the person who wrote it. After giving it further thought, I decided that the author deserved a response. So, I wrote back briefly that I appreciated his email. I told him that it would be very important for him to have the strength to own his own life. He should ask himself whether he wanted to be the product of circumstances or the product of his own decisions. If he decided to choose the latter, he might want to take a few action steps.
I explained that while reading my articles may have helped him understand his predicament better, reading by itself might not be enough. More work might be needed to put together the various strands of what was clearly a terribly confusing life situation. Given the extent of his difficulties, I questioned whether he would be able to do this by himself. He might consider seeking out the help of a psychotherapist or coach to help him untangle what was happening to him.
As a starter, I suggested that something should be done with respect to his relationship with his wife. He might want to explore whether they have enough in common to continue to stay together. Living parallel lives did not seem to be a solution. What’s more, it could negatively influence his daughter—about whom I knew very little. With respect to his tenuous work situation, it could very well be that coaching could help him clarify his relationship with his boss. In any case, whatever he planned to do, it would be a good idea to contact a search consultant to see if he had other options, workwise. I also told him that a greater understanding of his various troubles could very well lead to further insights and actions. It could even give him the strength to contact a lawyer to become better informed of his legal position vis-à-vis his brother.
The question that stayed with me was whether this individual would be able (and prepared) to untangle his messy past. Would he regress? Would he prefer to continue not wanting to see? Would he have the courage to deal with some very unpleasant realities? It begged the question of how much “truth” he would be able to handle. Would he continue to act out some of his dysfunctional behavior patterns? Would he be able to accept the idea that moving forward implied letting go of certain illusions?
Sometimes, damaged people, if they want to move forward, have to relinquish the fantasy of having a better past. In many instances, their challenge is to let go of a number of illusions, as they need to work on how to make the best of the future. But moving forward also implies that they have to forgive themselves for the mess they find themselves in. Therefore, I ended my reply by applying to the “oxygen mask first” principle. We all know that when a plane is in trouble, we need to put on our own oxygen mask first, before helping others. Likewise, it is essential that we love ourselves before we can love another. Although my correspondent might not have much control over his current situation, he did have some control over himself. Perhaps that’s where he should start. Only by taking greater care of himself would he be able to take care of others, including his daughter.
That’s where I left it, but his story still kept me in knots, wondering how I could have been of greater help. I was curious about how the situation would end. Would he be able to take the actions needed to improve his situation? Would he find ways of dealing with his demons of guilt, self-justification, and self-destruction? And would he be able to overcome his sense of despair—the price that we usually pay for a greater sense of self-awareness ?
Wandering and Wondering
Receiving communications like this makes my life quite challenging. These life dramas keep me on my toes. I get a constant stream of requests for advice, not just emails of this kind that come out of the blue, but also WhatsApp, FaceTime , WebEx , Zoom , and Skype exchanges, through which I try to help my clients solve knotty problems. And, in my role as a consultant , I see people in my office, and in their offices. Every time, there is the expectation that I can help them untangle complex situations. Then again, as a professor, I give talks at conferences, and I give a great number of lectures about my work. Many of these presentations lead to intense dialogues, in which I am asked to respond to difficult issues. All these activities require much travel. These trips take me to unusual places—in reality and in fantasy. They also lead to many strange encounters, providing me with exciting new learning opportunities.
Sometimes I feel like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, who bumbles around the world, and, due to his extreme nearsightedness, constantly finds himself in messy situations. Like Mr. Magoo, I do “wander” around a lot, “wondering” what is happening to me. But Mr. Magoo always manages to untangle himself, ending up unharmed. This is a fantasy ending for me. Emotional labor always takes its toll.
As a wanderer, I have always been intrigued by the wanderer who graces the cover of this book. Caspar David Friedrich’s iconic painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog , is one of the greatest works of Romanticism. It shows a lone man, dressed in boots walking clothes, steadying himself with a cane, and standing on a precipice overlooking a cloudy, inhospitable landscape. As he looks over the sea of fog, he seems to be in a state of self-reflective introspection.
The emotion I always experience when I look at this painting is intensified by the fact that we see the figure in the foreground from behind. This presentation is known by the German term “ Rückenfigur ” (figure from the back). The composition enables the observer to identify with the figure and see what the painter is trying to see. In Friedrich’s words, “The artist should paint not only what he has in front of him but also what he sees inside himself.”3
Looking at this painting, I identify with an individual comfortable with an ambiguous, psychic landscape, wondering at the fog but ready to explore it and find clarity. I see it as a metaphor for the kind of work I do. As a wanderer I try to bring clarity in an unknown psychic landscape, all the time wondering what’s going on. I try to help people to find their way through the fog of life. During these guided journeys, I put on my clinical hat to understand better the micro issues that emerge from the fog but also try to make sense of the societal conundrums at work.
I like to be empathic and helpful during these explorations but at the same time, I don’t want to get completely lost in my clients’ pain. That would make me less effective as a coach or psychotherapist . I also need to resist the temptation to be a know-it-all consultant . I constantly remind myself that I don’t have all the answers. I am not the one who should fill all the voids in the encounter with my own version of meaning. On the contrary, it should always be the clients who steal the show. They should be able to find the answers by themselves. My role is to ask the right questions. I can only create tipping points. I often ask myself, what do I really know? In fact, the older I am, the less I seem to know. And I am no longer young enough to know everything.
In my work, it is essential to appreciate the uniqueness of the other. All my explorations of individual and societal issues should be seen as a co-creative process from which unique “goals” emerge, often as surprises—a process through I arrive at “truths” that I could never have known beforehand. My ultimate objective is to give my clients more freedom of choice —to help them stretch their minds, because, to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes , “[a] mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” The aim of the kind of work I do should never be an illusory “cure.” What I aim for is to help people change and grow. Whatever happens, it is always a work in progress.
This is a book of meditations on leadership and life that I have written for executives and the people who deal with them. I make observations on what it means as a therapist or coach to help these people to become more effective in what they are doing. I reflect on what it takes to become a better leader. Also, I present many situations in organizational and political life—being it micro or macro issues—that can lead to various forms of derailment. I point out numerous pitfalls of leadership—including loneliness, meaninglessness, hubris , and greed —and discuss how leaders can manage disappointment , deal with regrets , and detect the dangers of closed minds or toxic corporate cultures . I also comment on the developmental challenges executives face, including the human life cycle—aging being an important concern. I look at talent and culture management and discuss how to create—something that is always top of mind—best places to work. Other themes are cult-like organizations and the danger of creating false prophets in the helping professions; the leader-society interface—how leaders can (and do) take advantage of historical moments to affect societal trends, for good or for bad; the consequences of societies moving from a “we” to an “I” focus; and the implications of living in the cyber age.
This is also a book of very personal reflections on how to live a fulfilling life. And the coronavirus pandemic with its many regressive and paranoid strands, has made the theme of self-exploration even more urgent. Drawing on a number of events in my personal history, I try to explain why I do what I do and what makes me feel at my best. The ancient Greek philosophers struggled with this theme, trying to discover the supreme good for mankind, the best way to lead our life and give our lives meaning. For Aristotle , in his Nicomachean Ethics ,4 this supreme good is best understood by looking at its purpose, or goal. Aristotle introduced the term eudaimonia , arguing that the goal of life is to maximize happiness by living virtuously. To achieve this, we need to fulfill our own potential as a human being, and engage with others—family, friends, and fellow citizens—in mutually beneficial activities. But there is also hedonia , the pursuit of subjective well-being—seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, searching for the fundamental pleasures afforded by food, sex, and social interactions, which are central to our survival. Both hedonic and eudaimonic pathways play a crucial role in leading a fulfilling life. This is what this book is all about.
Along the way, I try to provide insights into the way I work to help the reader see what people in the helping professions can do to help others change. My reflections come from different angles. Not only do I have to think about how I experience the other, I also have to pay attention to the other’s perspective. The work I do always implies building bridges. It means giving in without giving up; it means staying openminded when things aren’t always what they seem to be. While operating in this complex interpersonal field, I realize that our intrapersonal relationships define our interpersonal and group relationships . In more than one way, everything that happens in our lives is a reflection of what we experience within ourselves.
brings a different view to the much-studied subjects of leadership and the psychological dimensions of individual and organizational change. Bringing to bear his knowledge and experience of economics (Econ. Drs., University of Amsterdam), management (ITP, MBA, and DBA, Harvard Business School), and psychoanalysis (Membership Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, Paris Psychoanalytic Society, and the International Psychoanalytic Association), he explores the interface between management science, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, psychotherapy, executive coaching, and consulting. His specific areas of interest are leadership (the “bright” and “dark” side), entrepreneurship, career dynamics, talent management, family business, cross-cultural management, succession planning, organizational and individual stress, C-suite team building, executive coaching, organizational development, transformation management, management consulting.
The Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD, he is Program Director of INSEAD’s top management program, “The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders,” and the Founder of INSEAD’s Executive Master Program in Change Management. As an educator, he has received INSEAD’s distinguished teacher award six times. He has held professorships at McGill University, the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Montreal, the European School for Management and Technology (ESMT), Berlin, and the Harvard Business School. He has lectured at management institutions around the world. The Financial Times, Le Capital, Wirtschaftswoche, and The Economist have rated Manfred Kets de Vries among the world’s leading management thinkers and among the most influential contributors to human resource management.
Kets de Vries is the author, co-author, or editor of 50 books, including The Neurotic Organization, Leaders, Fools and Impostors, Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane, The Leadership Mystique, The Happiness Equation, Are Leaders Made or Are They Born? The Case of Alexander the Great, The New Russian Business Elite, Leadership by Terror, The Global Executive Leadership Inventory, The Leader on the Couch, Coach and Couch, The Family Business on the Couch, Sex, Money, Happiness, and Death: The Quest for Authenticity, Reflections on Leadership and Character, Reflections on Leadership and Career, Reflections on Organizations, The Coaching Kaleidoscope, The Hedgehog Effect: The Secrets of High Performance Teams, Mindful Leadership Coaching: Journeys into the Interior, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: Executive Coaching Challenges and Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom: How to Make Sure Your Organization Lives Happily Ever After, Riding the Leadership Roller Coaster: A Psychological Observer’s Guide and Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership: Leadership Pathology of Everyday Life and the eBook, Journeys into Coronavirus Land: Lessons from a Pandemic.
In addition, Kets de Vries has published more than 400 academic papers as chapters in books and as articles (including digital). He has also written approximately 100 case studies, including seven that received the Best Case of the Year award. He is a regular writer for various magazines. Furthermore, his work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Business Week, The Economist, The Financial Times and The Harvard Business Review. His books and articles have been translated into more than thirty languages. He writes regular blogs (mini-articles) for the Harvard Business Review and INSEAD Knowledge. He is a member of seventeen editorial boards and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management. He is also a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO), which has honored him as a lifetime distinguished member. Kets de Vries is also the first non-US recipient of International Leadership Association Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to leadership research and development (being considered one of the world’s founding professionals in the development of leadership as a field and discipline). In addition, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Germany for his advancement of executive education. The American Psychological Association has honored him with the “Harry and Miriam Levinson Award” for his contributions to Organizational Consultation. Furthermore, he is the recipient of the “Freud Memorial Award” for his work to further the interface between management and psychoanalysis. In addition, he has also received the “Vision of Excellence Award” from the Harvard Institute of Coaching. Kets de Vries is the first beneficiary of INSEAD’s Dominique Héau Award for “Inspiring Educational Excellence.” He is also the recipient of two honorary doctorates. The Dutch government has made him an Officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau.
Kets de Vries works as a consultant on organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management for companies worldwide. As an educator and consultant, he has worked in more than forty countries. In his role as a consultant, he is also the founder-chairman of the Kets de Vries Institute (KDVI), a boutique strategic leadership development consulting firm.
Kets de Vries was the first fly fisherman in Outer Mongolia (at the time, becoming the world record holder of the Siberian hucho taimen). He is a member of New York’s Explorers Club. In his spare time, he can be found in the rainforests or savannas of Central and Southern Africa, the Siberian taiga, the Ussuri Krai, Kamchatka, the Pamir and Altai Mountains, Arnhemland, or within the Arctic Circle. Websites: www.ketsdevries.com and www.kdvi.com