Dirk Verburg

‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology’.

With this quote from Edward O. Wilson 1929 Matt Nixon answered my question if our requirements about leadership have changed in the last decades. 

Matt Nixon has more than 30 years of experience as a management consultant and HR executive, working with CEOs and senior leaders around the world. An Oxford classics graduate, he was a partner in Towers Perrin in Chicago and London, and subsequently held the positions of Global Head of Organization Effectiveness for Royal Dutch Shell, and Managing Director, Group Head of Talent for Barclays, before returning to the consulting industry.

Nowadays Matt works as a partner in a specialized consulting boutique where he coaches and advises CEOs and other senior leaders during career transitions and other periods of change and transition.

Matt has written and taught extensively on hubris in executives.

If you are interested in this topic, you can watch our conversation on
YouTube.

You can also listen to it Apple Podcasts or Spotify

During our conversation, Matt and I discussed the following topics:

• Have the demands on senior leaders changed in the past couple of decades?
• How can senior leaders stay relevant and deal with the changing nature of their roles?
• What makes a successful executive an effective supervisory board member?
• The reputational life-cycle Matt describes in his book ‘Pariahs – Hubris, Reputation and Organizational Crises’
• How top leaders could prevent their organization from landing in the Hubris state
• Should leaders who find themselves in the middle of a corporate scandal stay or go?
• Should companies take a stand on political issues (e.g. Human rights, Immigration, Ukraine)
• Should coaches proactively force issues on their senior clients?