Katharina Lange

Katharina Lange is Affiliate Professor of Leadership. She specializes in teaching executives globally about leading self, leading teams, and leading organizations, and in building resilience at the individual, team, and organizational level as well as leading customer-centric organizations. She has a strong track record of designing and directing innovative executive education programs for virtual, face-to-face, and blended learning.

She directs IMD’s custom programs for Mondelez, BAE Systems and E&Y, and co-directs IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) as well as its Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program, which takes a fresh approach to customer centricity, integrating strategic, digital, and leadership angles.

Lange’s teaching on self-leadership focuses on creating better awareness of a leader’s bright and dark sides. In her sessions, executives discover the key values that motivate and inspire them. Just as importantly, they discuss how to integrate their weaknesses with courage and humility into their (professional) lives and learn to speak from the heart.

Her work on leading teams focuses on psychodynamics, analyzing subconscious and conscious drivers, and building resilience, particularly in relation to boards.

Lange’s PhD in pharmacology adds the empirical lens of a natural scientist to her profile and she appreciates insights provided by data and assessments. She has certifications in all major assessment instruments and makes particular use of IMD’s innovative 5s2 model. This model assesses leaders’ ability to redesign their present business model for higher performance while simultaneously adapting and preparing the organization for a successful future. These “dual transformations” require ambidextrous leadership in five behavioral dimensions: leading strategy, execution, stakeholders, people, and self.

Lange has held leadership positions herself, and what she teaches in class has been tested in reality. This ensures the real impact of her sessions. Before joining IMD in 2019, she led the Office of Executive Development at Singapore Management University (SMU). This role gave her valuable insights into leading cross-cultural teams. Previously, she was Program Director and Head of Life Science Industries and Head of Open Enrolment Programs at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. Before embarking on her academic career, she worked for 10 years in senior roles with Arthur Andersen and Deloitte Consulting.

She also serves on the Board of UNICON, the global consortium for university-based executive education. She currently co-chairs its research committee, having previously headed its membership and benchmarking committee.