‘Leadership is more effective when the people who exercise it are unconsciously motivated by social needs – by the good of others – and when they can draw on a wide variety of competencies related to emotionally and socially intelligent behaviour’, said Professor Richard Boyatzis at the academic ceremony to award him an honorary doctorate from Ramon Lull University (URL), at ESADE’s proposal.

In his speech, Boyatzis, a professor in the Departments of Organisational Behaviour, Psychology, and Cognitive Science and the H.R. Horvitz Chair in Family Business at the Case Western Reserve University, made clear that his passions are applied research for solving social challenges and research focused on people: ‘Unlike Ulysses, I am not seeking to return to any Ithaca, but rather new discoveries that can help free people express their dreams, feel passion, a calling, and, through emotional contagion, excite and inspire others.’ In this regard, he stressed that ‘the essence of my work is to study how the quality of relationships, in terms of hope, compassion, mindfulness, playfulness and emotions, affects growth, development, learning and adaptation.’

The future of effective higher education

Professor Boyatzis also noted that, in his view, ‘the future of effective higher education will hinge on programmes with hybrid designs that enable global open access; one of my MOOCs drew more than 720,000 students from 215 countries’.

Joan Manuel Batista-Foguet, a professor in the Department of People Management and Organisation at ESADE and Boyatzis’s sponsor at the award ceremony, stressed Boyatzis’s ‘generous collaboration with ESADE on the launch and consolidation of the leadership development programme LEAD, which has enabled ESADE students to develop extraordinary emotional and social skills’.

Batista-Foguet defined Boyatzis as a visionary because of his ideas. ‘In academia, some scholars have been recognised for having a great idea; Boyatzis is recognised for three great ideas: the multiple levels of personality, the competency-based theory of performance at work, and the intentional change theory’. Boyatzis’s sponsor described him as ‘an innovator for the implementation of his ideas. Boyatzis foresaw early on that training in soft competencies was as important as any other academic subject in business school. Forty years later, the Bologna curricula have proved him right.’

The academic ceremony to name Boyatzis doctor honoris causa of URL was held on ESADE’s Barcelona campus. It was also attended by Eugènia Bieto, director general of ESADE, Josep Maria Garrell, rector of URL, and Anna Berga, secretary general of URL.

Read Dr. Richard Boyatzis's full speech at the Doctor Honoris Causa Investiture Ceremony at ESADE