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Marc Le Menestrel: Accross Borders

As a world athlete in rock-climbing, a negotiator in the oil industry, an academic scholar researching the mathematical foundations of human choice, or a teacher about values in business decision-making, I have continuously crossed borders to live my dreams and accomplish myself.

Along the years, I became a specialist of the role of ethical values in business decision-making and I have been teaching and coaching executives across a wide range of critical topics.

Among my preferred assignments, I recall teaching about business influence on the science and politics of climate change, teaching ethics to tobacco companies, preparing bankers to ethical issues in anticipation of the 2008 financial crisis, teaching ethics to senior executives from the nuclear energy industry before and after Fukushima, teaching about ethical risks to a large company leader in military intelligence, or teaching about corruption to Chinese senior executives.

Along the years, my own development taught me to be less and less judgmental, giving increasing space to the participants and their values, while feeling less the need to impose my own values on others. In this manner, I reduced the rate of reactance behaviors. Still, I was in need of a more direct relation with the positive self in each participant. This pushed me to creating sessions where dreams would be the vehicle to a fuller process and content of decision-making.

I began to design, propose and deliver dreaming sessions with boards of companies. Their success lead INSEAD to invite me to propose Dreaming and Visioning sessions for their Advanced Management Program. I then developed more advanced sessions, about sustainability, high-performance, fear or failure. I believe that the power of dreams to enrich decison-making comes from the ability to connect both the emotional and spiritual dimensions with the decision.

By emotions, I mean that a good decision is one that is genuinely reflecting the values of the decision-maker. He or she can feel how much these are the true reasons of the decision. Even if compromises are necessary, there is more clarity about the values among which this compromise is to be found. By spiritual, I mean a dimension of our being that lies beyond what we think and what we feel. Even if this can be religious for some, this is not necessary as a sense of the sacred can be found in each of us. I understand that using the word "spiritual" can be risky, in particular because of the possibility to abuse it in a way or another. Sometimes, I have participants who interpret this dimension as imaginiation, intuition or subconscious. With the methods I use, this is appropriate in the sense that the dreaming approach does not convey a particular set of beliefs or dogmas. It is merely a process by which we can enrich our decision-making with who we are.

In my teaching, my intention is to help participants and companies to be more aware of their own values and to better align their decisions with these values. I like in particular when we succeed in combining performance and meaning.

The main institutions and clients for which I have worked:

AREVA
Bank of America
Barcelona School of Economics
Barcelona School of Management
Beckaert
Booz Allen & Hamilton
Cambridge University, Judge Business School
Cambridge University, Prince of Wales Leadership Sustainability Program
CEDEP
COWI A/S
Daimler
Edelman
INSEAD Advanced Management Program
INSEAD MBA Program
International Masters Program in Practicing Management
L’Oréal
Oliver Wyman
Philip Morris
Renmin University of China, Chinese Masters in Practicing Management
Renmin University of China, International MBA Program
Royal Bank of Scotland
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Antai College of Economics & Management, MBA Program
THNK, The Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership
Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Two recent articles featuring Dreaming sessions to enrich decision-making:

Dream your way to success, by Grace Segran, INSEAD Knowledge

How seeing the big picture could bring success, fulfillment, By Rose Hoare, CNN

More information on my academic webpages:

Website at UPF

Website at INSEAD

More information on my climbing records (on Wikipedia and in French)