Herminia Ibarra. Professor, author and speaker.

A world authority on leadership, management practice and gender policy

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties for more than 25 years. She teaches executives and MBA students on human resource strategy to transform organisations, women in leadership and senior executive programmes.

Herminia’s books and articles are founded on rigorous research and pose some of the most important business questions of our time: how do I reinvent my career? How does a woman succeed in management? Should thought or action inspire a good leader? And what will leadership look like in the age of AI?

Books

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader book by Herminia Ibarra

In this unconventional book, Herminia provides the first practical guide on how to change when you also need to lead. Defying standard leadership development guidance, which encourages deep self-reflection into strengths and weaknesses, this book shows that the most effective way to change is through action, not analysis, and by learning from experience, not introspection.

Working Identity book by Herminia Ibarra

Nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we’re doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. In this powerful book, Herminia presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned from ‘career experts’.

Latest articles

Herminia writes for the leading academic journals, business publications, and international news media, on leadership and organisational transformation.

Career sponsorship is a two-way street

13 February 2023

Sponsorship is a vital mechanism for advancing the careers of junior employees. But it’s not just a one-way relationship in which everything flows from the sponsor to the sponsee. What sponsees bring to the relationship, in fact, is just as important — if not more important — than what sponsors do. This article describes six of the most important attributes of successful sponsees.

What great sponsors do differently

19 January 2023

Sponsorship initiatives are increasingly popular today, but few sponsors are given any guidance about how best to work with the people they’ve been asked to work with, and as a result the relationships often don’t develop as productively as they should. Aspiring sponsors need more practical guidance. In this article, drawing on their long experience with sponsorship, the authors describe six important steps all sponsors should take.

How to do sponsorship right

15 November 2022

Mentorship isn’t enough. To develop productive career relationships, you’ve got to be authentic.

Professor

Herminia is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and has served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties. In 2019 she was awarded the LBS Excellence in Teaching prize and Thinkers 50 ranks her among the world’s top management thinkers.

Author

Herminia’s books, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and Working Identity are bestsellers in their field. Both will be updated by Harvard Business Press for their second editions in 2023. Her articles are published in leading academic journals, business publications, and international news media. She is a bestselling case author, as ranked by the Case Center.

Speaker

Herminia speaks internationally on leadership and transformation for organisations, and at conferences that include TEDx, WIRED Smarter and the World Business Forum.

The authenticity paradox

TEDx, London Business School

What will leadership look like in the age of AI?

WIRED Smarter