Laure Helfgott dirige Zenon&Co, une agence de coaching qui aide les organisations et leurs dirigeant(e)s à développer leur créativité et leur résilience pour mieux appréhender le changement. Également professeur à l’ESCP Europe, coach et musicienne, elle partage avec Beeshake son regard sur le leadership, la transformation digitale des entreprises et la musique.

She explains that leaders must learn to be as good at leadership as they are at followership:

Leadership and the digital transformation of companies - Learning or unlearning?

I would say unlearn first. In the era of leadership transformation, there are really things to unlearn in the reflexes. You start by unlearning a number of habits and then learn new ones. More flexible habits, with collaboration and new ways of thinking.

Leadership and digital transformation of companies - Leadership or followership?

Leadership of course. That's what we're aiming for: to be able to get your teams on board. Followership too! There's something extremely powerful in jazz bands, it's this ability when one is doing a solo, that the others are supporting that solo. And the support is as important as the solo, and inspires the solo. So you have to be able to juggle between leadership and followership.

Leadership and digital transformation of companies - Jazz or classical?

My heart is not in it, it's both! In business, I think there is something very inspiring about jazz. In distributed leadership and in the ability to improvise together.

Leadership and digital transformation of companies - Soft skills or hard skills?

There is something at stake at the moment in soft skills, in the ability to interact with others, to create effective team dynamics. This is a real issue, and there have been studies on this by researchers, particularly on entrepreneurship. We see that in certain sectors, the most successful entrepreneurs are those who have the most developed soft skills.

Leadership and digital transformation of companies - Improvisation or process?

Measured improvisation!

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