What makes a leader great?: Interview with Manfred Kets de Vries

Manfred Kets de Vries holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair in Human Resource Management and is Clinical Professor of Management and Leadership at the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD). Furthermore, he is the Director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center. He is also Program Director of INSEAD’s top management program: “The Challenge of Leadership: Developing your Emotional Intelligence”. He has lectured at management institutions worldwide, and has acted as a consultant in organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management for leading US, Canadian, European, African and Asian companies. Manfred Kets de Vries brings a different view to the much‐studied subjects of leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. Bringing to bear his knowledge and experience of economics, management, and psychoanalysis, Kets de Vries scrutinizes the interface between international management, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and dynamic psychiatry. In this interview, he discusses his latest publication Are leaders born or are they made? The case of Alexander the Great and the implications his findings have for the modern business leader.