Fons is a Dutch organizational theorist and founder and director of intercultural management consultancy Trompenaars Hampden-Turner.
He is recognized around the world for his work as a consultant, trainer, motivational speaker and author of various books on all subjects of culture and business.
He has spent over 30 years helping Fortune 500 leaders build meaningful connections to manage and solve their business and cultural dilemmas to increase global effectiveness and performance, particularly in the areas of leadership, innovation, globalization, intercultural understanding and managing culture change by reconciling differences (ethnic, gender or generation based, professional, organizational etc).
Update
In October 2023, The World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) awarded its prestigious George Petitpas Award to Fons Trompenaars - one of the world’s most influential management thinkers in a ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal.
Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business was announced by Thinkers50 in its 2024 top ten Management Classics Booklist.
Do you know that “Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business” is now at its 4th edition? Or that Fons even wrote “Did the Pedestrian die?”
Fons is the recipient of the George Petitpas Award 2023.
Fons ranked in the Thinkers50 to be one of the most influential management thinkers alive 5 times and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and Michael Porter.
The AHRI Cross Cultural Management Award, with support from Fons Trompenaars, acknowledges excellence in fostering cross-cultural inclusion and implementing effective management strategies.
Co-Director at the Servant-Leadership Centre for Research and Education (SLCRE) at the Free University of Amsterdam. He led several researches to validate servant leadership, seen as a way to enable others to perform better, as the most effective in multicultural-environments, where the majority of the current culturally biased leadership models are proven to be slightly ineffective.
Fons holds several positions in many well reputed Universities and Management research centers, such as:
- Professor of International Management at the Free University of Amsterdam
- Member of Advisory Board Webster University Leiden;
- Distinguished Advisor of Centre for TransCultural Studies at Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore;
- International Director at the International Society for Organisational Development;
- Faculty Member at the Global Institute for Leadership Development (GILD);
- Judge of the Fons Trompenaars award for Innovation and Creativity at the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI).
Fons wrote over 100 articles and 25 books in the last 40 years.
“The essence of humor is when two opposite logics both turn logical and it makes you laugh. That’s why humor is a serious play”
Neben seinem beeindruckenden Hintergrund und Fachwissen zeichnet sich Fons durch seine Fähigkeit aus, das Publikum zu inspirieren, zu motivieren, zu engagieren und zu unterhalten.
Er inspiriert
durch seine einzigartige Vision der Realität: nichts ist unmöglich, keine Herausforderung ist zu schwer, um erreicht zu werden, wenn wir die Dilemmata erkennen, die in uns leben, sowohl als Menschen als auch als Organisationen.
Er motiviert
indem wir einen Weg aufzeigen, wie wir Standpunkte miteinander verbinden und unsere Dilemmas in Einklang bringen können. Eine Denkweise, die Hoffnung auf eine bessere Zukunft macht, in der die Gegensätze der Vielfalt miteinander tanzen und neue Werte schaffen.
Er engagiert sich
Menschen, indem sie kontinuierlich in den Dialog einbezogen werden, entweder mit offenen Fragen oder interaktiven Tools wie Fragebögen und Webapps
Finally, last but not least, he entertains
das Publikum mit seinen humorvollen und witzigen Beispielen aus dem wirklichen Leben und dem Geschäftsleben, die er in über 30 Jahren auf seinen Reisen um die Welt auf den Wellen der Kultur gesammelt hat.
Fons’ expertise allows him to cover a wide range of topics. The majority of his keynotes include a preliminary assessment of the client’s needs and the audience profiling via one of the many webtools available in the THT toolbox. This allows Fons to tailor his presentation and make it even more impactful. Below you can find some of the topics Fons can cover, but there is much more, just contact us to get your personalized keynote.
Here are some of his most successful topics:
- Servant leadership in turbulent times
- Approaches to cultural diversity: global, multilocal, international or trans-national?
- Managing culture change: from Covid19 to D&I dilemmas
- Creating a culture of innovation
