13Oct2025
Gianpiero Petriglieri, Professor of Leadership at INSEAD, brought a deeply human and refreshing perspective to Nordic Business Forum 2025 through his VIP keynote. In a time when leadership is often associated with performance, strategy, and results, Gianpiero posed a radical idea: what if leadership is not about influence or vision but about love?
Through wit, storytelling, and sharp insight, Gianpiero peeled back the layers of what we think leadership is and asked us to reconsider what makes it meaningful, memorable, and effective.
Rethinking Leadership: Not a Role, but a Relationship
Gianpiero opened with a confession: “I have nothing to teach you.” For a leadership professor, it was an unexpected start.
His point was clear. Leadership isn’t something you study or teach. It’s something you feel. It happens in the moment, and you know it when you see it. Or rather, when you feel it.
Leadership, he argued, is not a position or a set of skills. It is a relationship, and a very specific kind: one where people feel both safe and free.
“Leadership is a love. Just like parenting. Just like friendship. Just like romance.”
The Problem With the Dominant Model
We are all familiar with what Gianpiero calls the “dominant model” of leadership. It’s built on three pillars:
- A vision that inspires hope
- A strategy that gives direction
- Persistence that builds trust
This model is neat, logical, and backwards-looking. It’s how we explain success after it’s already happened. But real leadership, he argued, moves forward. And before any vision becomes shared, before any plan becomes action, people need to believe you care.
According to Gianpiero, leadership starts with care. It’s not just interpersonal warmth, but commitment. It’s showing up, especially when things are uncertain or uncomfortable. It’s offering hope when fear is loud, and connection when people feel lost. In a world that often rewards control, distance, or dominance, it takes real courage to lead with care.
“Caring is a lot harder than calculating.”
Leadership Is a Felt Experience
When asked to describe a moment of real leadership, most people don’t mention titles, competencies, or KPIs. They describe a feeling: “We were confused, then became clear. We were worried, then became calm. We felt something, and we did something.”
That’s the kind of leadership that doesn’t come from authority. It comes from attention, intention, and emotional clarity.
Gianpiero reminded us that this is the same way we recognize love. Not from definitions or theories, but from lived moments. When someone does something for you that you didn’t expect, and maybe didn’t even deserve, you know it’s love.
Leadership works the same way. It’s not declared. It’s demonstrated. Leadership is not seduction. It’s surrender.
So how do we find, develop, and become better leaders? According to Gianpiero, we start by retiring the idea that leadership is about getting people to do what we want. We spend too much time asking: How do I get their attention? How do I influence them? How do I overcome resistance?
“That’s not leadership. That’s seduction,” Gianpiero noted. Real leadership begins when we ask, Who do I care about? What cause am I truly committed to? How can I demonstrate this through my actions, not just my words?
We often focus on passion when developing leaders, but passion is unreliable. What matters more is consistent commitment to what and who you care about. And that kind of commitment isn’t flashy. It’s not performative. It’s real, and it’s often quiet.
“You are never a leader. You are always someone’s leader, for a certain cause, for a certain goal.”
And once you’re clear on that, it’s not about trying to win people over. It’s about offering yourself to the work and the people who matter.
Why This Message Matters Now
Gianpiero pointed out that we’re living in what he calls an “existential juncture”, a time when the past no longer makes sense, and the future feels uncertain. In these moments, we long for leadership. Not just any leadership, but the kind that helps us feel safe enough to act, and free enough to grow.
And we don’t get there with force. We get there with faith: faith that the person we’re following actually sees us, cares about us, and is committed to building something that includes us.
Because in the end, as Gianpiero reminded us, leadership is not about changing the world alone. It’s about changing your world, so you can help shape the world.
Gianpiero Petriglieri’s Keynote Visual Summary by Linda Saukko-Rauta
Key Points and Questions for Reflection
Key Points:
- Leadership is a kind of love, not a technique or title.
- Great leaders make others feel safe and free—not controlled or confined.
- We follow people who show they care, not just those who command.
- The dominant leadership model (vision-strategy-persistence) overlooks the human factor of emotional connection.
- Developing better leaders means expanding our capacity for care, not just refining our performance.
Questions for Reflection:
- What do you genuinely care about as a leader?
- How do your actions show that care to others?
- Who in your organization feels both safe and free around you? Who doesn’t?
- Are you trying to lead through seduction or surrender?
- How can you deepen your capacity for attention, generosity, and presence?
