Michael Stanford

Background

About Michael Stanford

I've been working in leadership development for over thirty years, first as a designer of leadership development initiatives and consultant to organisations about their leadership development work, and then as a deliverer of developmental experiences for executives, their teams and their organisations. I'm currently the third chapter of my leadership developmental career. My first chapter unfolded over almost twenty years at IMD, the Swiss-based business school, where I served initially as a researcher, then as the head of IMD's custom program portfolio, and finally as a member of the Institute's Management Team. My second chapter took the form of a five-year tenure at Korn Ferry, where I led the Transformational Leadership Practice in EMEA. During my time at Korn Ferry I sharpened my focus on the developmental possibilities of leadership transitions, both for individual executives and for teams. My current chapter began in January 2021, when I founded Summit Leadership as a leadership development boutique for leaders in transition. Summit draws from my recently completed doctoral work, the first exploration of how clinical concepts in post-trauma growth, existential psychology, evolutionary psychology, depth psychology and narrative therapy can help leaders use their leadership transitions as profoundly rich developmental opportunities. My dissertation is titled Storied Transitions: post-trauma growth and narrative imagination in leadership development. I'm currently drafting two books on leadership transitions so that I can bring post-transition growth concepts to a wider audience of executives and leadership development practitioners.