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.
Fons Trompenaars received his MA in Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1979 and his PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 for the thesis The Organization of Meaning and the Meaning of Organization.
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).
Fons has translated his approach into innovative, practical and profitable results in all areas of international business.
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.
Keynotes
As well as consulting, Leadership and Development programs and training/consultative workshops (see Solutions) with his team, Fons provides keynote deliveries in the following areas:
Synergizing Futures or Unifying Vision
- • Leading Through Disruption’s Next Wave
- • Generating Value Together
- • Reimagine HR
- • The Future of Work
- • Adapting to a Changing Landscape
- • Strategies for Building Sustainable Wealth
- • Shaping the Future for Tomorrow
- • Building a Better Future
- • Thriving in Turbulent Times
DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging)
- • Celebrating Differences and Building Bridges
- • Harmony & Belonging
Glocalization
- • Beyond Borders
- • Exploring Global Perspectives
- • Culture Change:
- • Breaking Barriers and Empowering Change
- • Cultural Diversity
Leadership
- • Leadership and Management
- • Leadership in Turbulent Times
- • Regenerative Business:
- • Resilient Growth
• Embracing Change & Transformation
- • Resilience & Reinvention
Innovation
- • Digital workplace maturity
- • Digital Transformation
- • Innovation and Disruption
- • Innovations and Solutions for the Future
- • Innovations and Trends
- • Digital Disruption
Better Ways of Working
- • Transformative Intelligence, Value, Skills
- • Making a Difference in the World
- • Navigating a Changing Landscape
- • Building Connections in a Crowded World
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”
Besides his impressive background and expertise,what makes Fons special is the ability to inspire, motivate, engage and entertain the audience.
He inspires
through his unique vision on the reality: nothing is impossible, no challenges are too hard to be achieved if we recognize the dilemmas living inside us, both as human beings and organizations.
He motivates
by showing the way to connect viewpoints and reconcile our dilemmas. A mindset that provides hope for a better future, where the opposite of diversity dance together and produce new value.
He engages
people by continously involving them in the dialogue, either with open-ended question or interactive tools such as questionnaires and webapps
Finally, last but not least, he entertains
the audience with his humourous and funny real life/business examples, taken from over 30 years of travelling around the world riding the waves of culture.
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
