Yuval Kalish

Yuval Kalish was appointed the Chairholder of the Chair of Leadership, Networks, and Organizations at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in August 2022. Previously he was Associate Professor of Leadership at Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, where he also served as Academic Director for Kellogg-Recanati and for the Executive MBA program. He completed his PhD (psychology, cum laude) at the University of Melbourne, carrying out his Post-doc at the Hebrew University. He also serves as adjunct professor for the Mandel Institute for Leadership in Jerusalem, and as head of the Leadership module for the Bloomberg-Harvard-Sagol initiative for city mayors.

A scholar and consultant, Prof. Kalish enjoys over 20 years of experience in consulting to organizations and executives in both the private and public sectors. Developing new forms of leadership training more suitable for a rapidly changing world, he successfully translates state-of-the art academic knowledge into award-winning, high-impact leadership training programs, which are helping organizations around the world transform their workforces and develop talent.

In addition to leadership courses and seminars, Prof. Kalish has also taught at (E)MBA level on related topics such as organizational behavior, conflict management and negotiations, group facilitation and consensus building. His research has received multiple international awards and is published in leading journals, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and The Leadership Quarterly.

Yuval Kalish is also the co-founder and chief-scientist at StepAhead, an HR-tech start-up company that supports organizational growth and employee development by enhancing understanding and mastery of organizational networks since 2015.

Areas of interest

• Charisma - What is it, how can we improve it, and what does it mean for minorities?
• A political lens on leadership - How do political skills influence networking and leadership?
• Perceptual accuracy - How does our view of relationships, networks, and stakeholders' motivations affect organizational outcomes?

Education

• Department of Psychology BA(hons) | Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel | 1993 – 1998
• Department of Psychology MA/PhD (cum laude) |University of Melbourne, Australia | 1999 – 2006
• Department of Sociology postdoc | Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel | 2007

Selected awards

• The Faculty of Management Excellence in Teaching Award
• The Tel Aviv University "100 best lecturers" Award
• Most Downloaded Paper Award: “Social Networks”
• I2 Most Cited Paper Award – International Network for Social Network Analysis
• Best Paper Award – Israeli Organizational Behavior Conference
• Fellowship – Institute of Advanced Studies: “Patterns and Process in and between Organizations”