Anand Narasimhan
Anand Narasimhan is the Shell Professor of Leadership and Governance. His work explores how top team and board dynamics influence organizational transformation. He collaborates with directors and senior leaders to strengthen their leadership presence and support them in creating a positive impact on their stakeholders.
Anand’s teaching, consulting, and research emphasize the critical role of context in top leadership. He highlights how successful individuals often overestimate their own abilities while undervaluing the contributions of team members, institutional structures, and social dynamics. His research demonstrates that effective leaders must be attuned to both conscious and unconscious cues to shape alignment mechanisms that drive large-scale transformation.
As a leader, how aware are you of the reality below the table – your followers’ hidden fears, longstanding worries, a sense of false confidence or over-optimism?
Anand’s research on unconscious leadership dynamics and organizational transformation has been published in Harvard Business Review (Fixing a Self-Sabotaging Team, 2023; What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management, 2017). He has published in top organizational, sociological, and psychological journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Science, Annual Review of Sociology, and Personnel Psychology. He has served on the editorial boards of Organization Studies and Human Relations. He is a winner of multiple awards for his academic and case writing work.
Anand has led programs on board and top leadership effectiveness for clients from a wide range of industries. He is Director of IMD’s open-enrolment Team Dynamics for Boards program. He served on IMD’s Executive Committee as Dean of Research (2010-2024) and as Dean of Faculty (2014-2021). He is also a board member of the International School of Lausanne and was a Trustee of The Case Centre (2011-2024). Anand is a qualified mindfulness teacher with a master’s degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy from the University of Oxford.
Before joining IMD in 2007 Anand served on the faculty of London Business School and Imperial College.
Risto Siilasma decides to dedicate his first board meeting as chairman to proposing a set of “golden rules” for board behavior. Will the board approve his proposal?
The board agrees to abide by a new set of behavioral rules. In the subsequent meeting there is a clear breach of the new rules by a board member being aggressive towards a senior executive. What sh...
