George Kohlrieser
Leaders are trained to deliver results but rarely to handle the moment a conversation turns adversarial. When pressure rises, most default to control or avoidance, and the real issue stays buried until it damages trust or performance. The hardest leadership problems are emotional before they are strategic, and few leaders have a reliable method for the emotional part.
George Kohlrieser draws on his work as a veteran hostage negotiator and clinical psychologist to teach senior leaders how to build trust, confront conflict directly and stay in command of themselves under extreme pressure, work he has refined as Distinguished Professor of Leadership at IMD.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with George Kohlrieser
- He turns a literal high-stakes discipline into a leadership method. The negotiation techniques he teaches carry a documented 95% resolution rate in real hostage situations, and he shows leaders how the same bonding and dialogue skills resolve conflict in a boardroom.
- He gives leaders the “secure base” model: a tested account, grounded in attachment theory and neuroscience, of how a leader can provide both safety and challenge so that teams take risks instead of protecting themselves.
- He teaches the specific act most leaders avoid: naming a difficult issue out loud. His “put the fish on the table” approach gives executives a repeatable way to surface conflict before it rots a team from the inside.
- His authority is built on two decades of senior-executive teaching at IMD, where he created and still directs its flagship High Performance Leadership programme, not on a single book or talk.
- He works on the leader’s internal state first. His doctoral research on physiological recovery after high-stress events underpins practical methods for staying composed when a situation is escalating.
Biography highlights
- Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at IMD, Lausanne, and creator and director of its High Performance Leadership and Advanced High Performance Leadership programmes.
- Author of the international bestseller Hostage at the Table, winner of Best Business Book in France and Best Management Book in Germany, with a revised second edition published in 2025.
- Co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership, part of the Warren Bennis leadership series and named among Soundview’s best business books of 2013.
- Organizational and clinical psychologist with a doctorate from Ohio State University; veteran police psychologist and hostage negotiator taken hostage four times in the course of his work.
- Has trained the FBI, the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s Departments, and police academies in France, the Netherlands and Germany in crisis negotiation.
- Has worked with leaders in over 100 countries for clients including Cisco, Coca-Cola, IBM, Roche, Santander, Toyota and UBS; featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times and Forbes.
Biography
Most leadership advice about conflict tells people to manage it. Kohlrieser’s career began somewhere far less comfortable: as a police psychologist and hostage negotiator who was himself taken hostage four times, once in a hospital emergency room and three times in homes during domestic violence calls. He came out of each by building a bond with the person holding him. That experience became the foundation of his work.
At IMD in Lausanne, where he is Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, he turned it into method. He created and still directs the school’s High Performance Leadership programme, an intensive course for senior executives, and built his teaching on a counterintuitive claim: hostage negotiators succeed roughly 95% of the time not by force but by forming a genuine connection with someone they have every reason to despise. The same capability, he argues, separates leaders who can challenge their teams from those who only pressure them.
His books gave the method its structure. Hostage at the Table applies negotiation psychology to ordinary business conflict and won best-book awards in France and Germany. Care to Dare set out the “secure base” idea, drawn from attachment theory and neuroscience: a leader who provides both care and challenge frees people to take risks rather than protect themselves. The practical core is an act most executives dodge, what he calls putting the fish on the table, naming a difficult issue openly so it can be cleaned rather than left to rot.
What gives the work its weight is the evidence behind the soft language. His doctoral research measured how law enforcement leaders physically recover after high-stress events, and that grounding in self-mastery runs through everything he teaches. He has trained the FBI and police academies across Europe, and advised leaders at Cisco, IBM, Roche and UBS in more than 100 countries, but the through-line is consistent: the hardest part of leadership is emotional, and it can be learned.
Key speaking topics
- Conflict management and resolution
- Negotiation and influence under pressure
- Secure base leadership and trust
- High performance leadership and teams
- Self-mastery and composure in high-stress situations
- Leading through change and uncertainty
- Dialogue and high-impact communication
Ideal for
- C-suite and senior executives responsible for leading teams through high-stakes or adversarial situations
- Leadership development and HPL-style executive programmes
- Boards and senior teams facing entrenched internal conflict or stalled negotiations
- CHROs and people leaders building trust and psychological safety as a performance lever
Audience outcomes
- A working method for surfacing and resolving conflict instead of avoiding it
- Negotiation and bonding techniques drawn from real hostage situations, adapted for business relationships
- A clear model for becoming a “secure base” who combines care and challenge to lift team performance
- Practical ways to stay composed and make sound decisions when a situation is escalating
- A sharper read on how trust, emotion and dialogue drive results their teams will not deliver otherwise
Talks
A session on how leaders draw out exceptional performance by combining high challenge with genuine support.
Key takeaways:
- How secure base leadership lifts performance without relying on fear or pressure
- Why bonding and trust are the precondition for productive challenge
- How to give teams the safety they need to take real risks
A talk on how leaders shape outcomes through deliberate dialogue rather than authority.
Key takeaways:
- The role of language and dialogue in moving people toward agreement
- Negotiation techniques drawn from high-stakes hostage situations
- How to influence adversarial or emotional stakeholders authentically
A session on confronting difficult issues directly and resolving them through structured dialogue.
Key takeaways:
- How to “put the fish on the table” and name conflict before it festers
- The bonding cycle and its role in resolving disputes
- How to keep negotiations from deteriorating under emotional pressure