Gianpiero Petriglieri is a global authority on leadership, known for humanizing the practice of leading in times of complexity and change. He helps leaders connect authentically, embrace purpose, and build cultures rooted in trust and care. At Oslo Business Forum, Gianpiero invited leaders to retire outdated models and embrace a radical proposition: leadership is a kind of love.
People often ask Gianpiero what it means to be a leadership professor. After all, it’s not something we study; it’s something we do.
“I spend my entire professional life walking into rooms with people who are already doing what I’m supposed to teach,” he said. “The best thing I can do is remind you of the simple tools about leading that sometimes we forget because we’re busy or under pressure.”
When We Long for Leadership
One of the most common questions about leadership is “How do we find or become good leaders?” Gianpiero knows that identifying a good leader can be as hard as locating your car keys—they’re never there when you need them
But, he emphasized, there are moments when we’re not just looking for good leadership, we’re longing for it. These are the moments when our circumstances challenge our current ways of adapting. It’s where we encounter gaps in the fabric of our existence: between experience and understanding, feelings and wishes, principles and practices.
In those moments, we find ourselves caught between the past and the future. This is when we look for leaders to help us answer the question, “Now what?”
Gianpiero Petriglieri: INSEAD Professor and global authority on leadership and learning in the workplace.
Defensive or Developmental?
At this juncture, people can go different ways:
- The Defensive Path: The intense desire to get out of a crisis.
- The Developmental Path: The realization that we need to make a big shift.
The developmental path is more generous, more grounded, and more connected.
As a leader, you must ask yourself: “How do I make sure we take the developmental path more often than the defensive one?”
The Answer Is in Your Experience
Gianpiero asked leaders at Oslo Business Forum to think of an instance in which they witnessed good leadership. Often, when people are asked to identify how they knew it was good, they describe an instinct: “I just felt something click.”
When we interrogate that intuition, we realize that leadership isn’t tangible. We were exhausted, and we became excited. We were bored, and we became energized. In other words: we felt something, so we did something.
We were moved both emotionally and physically.
Leadership Doesn’t Exist
If you believe in leadership, Gianpiero said, “it means you are trying to convince me there are things that are intangible that make a difference in people’s lives. Like love.”
Most of us don’t believe in love because we read a study about oxytocin in the blood. We believe in love because we know someone we love and who loves us back. And we know it not because they say it, but because they show it.
In most cultures, love is considered a kind of irrationality. When we experience behavior that transcends the laws of economic transactions, we either call it crazy or we call it love.
Gianpiero argues that leadership is the same. It doesn’t exist except as a conceptual idea. We have never seen leadership—we have seen leaders. Remember that intuition.
The Dominant Model of Leadership
Gianpiero had leaders recall their example of good leadership. “If I had asked you about leadership in general, you would have gone straight to a model,” he said.
The dominant model of leadership is a slightly toxic combination of two ingredients: position and possession. Gianpiero rejects this assumption and instead sees leadership as a combination of virtue and tools.
Most models explain leadership by describing the necessary elements of vision, strategy, and persistence. When you unpack this model, you see that vision gives people hope, strategy gives people faith, and persistence gives them trust. But, Gianpiero said, there’s a glitch in this model: it’s always looking backwards.
“There are a lot of people who have brilliant ideas, plans, or consistency, but something needs to happen before we call an idea a vision or a plan a strategy,” Gianpiero said. “I need to believe that you can.”
Make Me Feel Safe and Free
When we reflect on good leadership, we immediately see how the dominant model is flawed. Why? Because it’s evident that leadership is not a position or a possession—it is a relationship.
When people consider the best leader they’ve ever had, they often recall a relationship that made them feel safe and free at the same time. Committed but not captive.
In the best relationships—where love is involved—an interesting experience emerges. Standing next to this leader makes us feel more like ourselves. Gianpiero’s radical proposition is that leadership is a kind of love. It’s within people and between people, and its job is to move us forward.
Leadership is a Kind of Love
Once we understand leadership as a kind of love, it becomes easy to see which relationships are better than others.
Gianpiero revealed three basic leadership equations:
Hope > Fear
Work you show > Work you ask
Freedom > demands
"There are only two ways to move people: with faith or with force."
A good leader is someone who inspires hope over fear, shows rather than tells, and allows freedom rather than making demands. It is someone we trust because they have demonstrated a growing capacity for care.
How to Develop Better Leaders
Gianpiero believes that true leadership development is a relationship that expands your capacity for care. We all must challenge the stigma that care is soft. Reject the notion that tactical, analytical skills reign supreme.
He cautioned leaders, though, to remember that passion is not enough for effective leadership. Passion is notoriously inconsistent. It can be irrational and compulsive. Good leadership requires discipline and commitment to the leadership equations.
“When you allow people to feel safe and free, you can enjoy your passion while also cultivating courage and commitment.”
How to Become a Better Leader
Gianpiero claims that learning to become a better leader is the same as learning to become a better lover. The answer is not in technique. Rather, it’s about mastering a certain combination of patience and pressure for a specific context. It’s about being less anxious and possessive and more patient and generous.
When trying to lead better, ask:
“What/who do I care about?”
Not “How do I get attention?”
“How do I show I care?”
Not “How do I gain influence?”
“Who do I reassure and free up?”
Not “How do I overcome resistance?”
At the end of the day, leadership is about how we touch, hold, and move people. Our work as leaders is made up of choices and gestures, and we must consider how they reflect our values. When we make people feel safer and freer, then attention, influence, and agreement will come.
Retire the Dominant Model of Leadership
The world is changing, and we all want to make sense of it. But first, we must recognize what may be standing in the way. We cannot change the world unless we prepare.
“Retire the dominant model of leadership,” said Gianpiero. “Put in its place the more human idea that leadership is a kind of love. It will help you follow better leaders and become a better leader yourself.”
Key Points
Questions to Consider
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