The Stéphane Lelong Institute

 

 

Understanding how leaders develop their leadership and improve their decisions in complex environments

 

The Stéphane Lelong Institute is a platform dedicated to research, teaching, and dialogue with leaders around a central question:

 

How do individuals develop their leadership through experience?

 

The work developed within the Institute focuses on the processes through which leaders learn from their professional situations, develop their leadership, and improve their decision-making capacity in contexts characterized by uncertainty and complexity.

 

 

 

An Approach Based on Experience

 

In complex environments, leaders are not only faced with problems to solve, but with situations they need to understand, interpret, and address through action.

 

The Institute focuses on the mechanisms through which leaders:

• analyze their experience
• construct an understanding of situations
• learn from their decisions
• develop their leadership
• strengthen their capacity to act

 

Experience thus appears as a potential source of development, provided that it is interpreted and transformed into learning.

 

 

 

Positioning

 

The Institute’s work is situated at the intersection of several domains:

• leadership development
• learning from experience
• reflective processes in managerial practices
• decision-making in complex contexts

 

It is based on the idea that leadership does not develop solely through the accumulation of experiences, but through the capacity to learn from them.

 

This perspective places experience, learning, and leadership development at the heart of the research program.

 

 

 

A Platform Between Research, Teaching, and Practice

 

The Institute develops an integrated approach bringing together:

• academic research
• teaching and pedagogical innovation
• dialogue with leaders
• Executive Education

 

This articulation unfolds in particular through the Reflective Leadership Research Initiative, which constitutes the core of the research program developed within the Institute.

 

The ambition is to foster a continuous circulation between knowledge production, pedagogical development, and real leadership situations.

 

 

 

Research Program

 

The work focuses in particular on:

• leadership development
• Reflective Leadership Capacity
• learning from experience
• decision-making in complex contexts
• leadership development practices and programs

 

It aims to better understand the processes through which individuals transform experience into learning, leadership development, and capacity for action.

 

 

 

Contribution

 

One of the major contributions of the work developed within the Institute is to explore the role of reflective capacities in leadership development.

 

This perspective aims to better understand why some people learn more from their experience than others, and how this capacity contributes to leadership development and improved decision-making in complex contexts.

 

It is part of an approach that seeks to connect theoretical conceptualization, empirical research, and pedagogical applications.

 

 

 

Vision

 

The Institute aims to be a space for research, teaching, and dialogue dedicated to leadership development.

 

It seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which experience becomes a source of:

• learning
• leadership development
• improved decision-making
• transformation of practices

 

in environments characterized by complexity and uncertainty.

 

This ambition is based on a continuous articulation between knowledge production, pedagogical innovation, and dialogue with practitioners.

 

Through this approach, the Institute aims to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which leaders develop their leadership through experience.