Adrian Zwingli is a self-professed entrepreneur and as well as founder and chairman of SwissQ, a Zurich-based tech company. Adrian has done a number of programs at IMD including High Performance Leadership, Advanced High Performance Leadership and High Performance Boards.
Starting with IMD’s High Performance Leadership program led by George Kohlrieser, psychologist and veteran hostage negotiator, Adrian has benefited greatly from learning about himself, his past and his leadership style.
“I love the HPL model of first understanding where you come from and how to lead yourself before being able to lead others and I want to use it to make the world a better place,” says Adrian.
To find a way to do that Adrian has set up a peer-to-peer coaching group that meets in Zurich, Switzerland, four times a year to focus on and reinforce the learnings from High Performance Leadership (HPL).
“HPL is truly life-changing for both your professional and personal lives. But change is not a one-time thing. Sometimes after a while you can get back into a routine and not use powerful learning over time as much as you should,” says Adrian.
The purpose behind setting up an HPL group was to keep the momentum going from the program and to ensure that it has lasting impact.
For Adrian having impact starts with ones’ self. “One of the things I took away from HPL is that impact starts with looking at what you can do in any given situation.”
“At other schools I learned about processes but at IMD, I learned how to lead myself. I appreciate that IMD is all about impact, and our HPL group keeps the impact going.”
George Kohlrieser himself can often be found at the events and so can several of the coaches from HPL.
A number of the participants of the HPL coaching group also had some positive words to say about the initiative.
Max Yuksel, Director of Procurement at Hoffman-La Roche, said: “I expected the program to provide direct access to a qualified IMD coach for real-time feedback, an interactive learning experience, and be a good sounding board for each participant”.
“It went beyond my expectations for sure,” said Max. “The coaches, like Sunita Sehmi, are genuinely interested in every group member’s unique background and helping build trust within the group, which is the foundation for success with the HPL concepts”
Pieter Gillegot-Vergauwen, Vice President, Product Management Maps, at TomTom said: “To me the benefits were the different perspectives that the group coaching provided. Everybody in the group had a very different background and professional experiences. This provided for extra depth in the feedback the group was able to give. It also gave it an extra sense of legitimacy.”
Ebtihal Al-Shehab, Group leader, Performance Enhancement Program, at Kuwait Petroleum, said the coaching group helped her understand herself, her coaching style and prepared her action plan for way forward. “In addition to the coaching sessions the presentations were inspiring and got me into a real positive mindset,” she said.
Find out more about the impact of High Performance Leadership.
