Login

Hi! I am Dr Darja Kragt.

Leadership Scientist and Founder of The Leading Lab

I strongly believe that everyone already is a leader and my work as a practitioner and a researcher has been dedicated to helping leaders of all shapes and sizes to be better, do better and get better.

Join me and a vibrant community of leaders on this journey.
Linked_in

#LeadershipThatWorks

I am passionate about sharing interesting and practical research insight about leadership and psychology.
Here is a selection of recent posts other leaders found of most value.
Follow Darja on LinkedIn

Leadership ≠ Workplace

We automatically tend to think about leadership as something that belongs in the workplace.

But most of us have had an experience with leadership long before first leadership position! 

Children as young as 5 understand leadership! Pretty sure, my 3yo does too.

To enhance your own development as a leader, you can strategically use experiences in these other life domains. 

For example, reflect on what you can learn about leading from your role as a parent.

A key component here is sense-making, or actively processing your experiences, lessons learnt, and application in a similar situation, but different context.

What have been your best leadership lessons outside the workplace?

The one leadership competency that will get you promoted...

and two that will not!

According to our research, recently published in Frontiers Psychology, together with David Day, only one competency - managing stress - was positively related to chances of promotion among high potential executives who took part in an intensive leadership development program sponsored by their organization.

Surprisingly (or maybe not) valuing diversity and negotiating were negatively related to chances of promotion. We speculate that this might be due to differences in espoused vs enacted organisational values.

Which leadership competencies does your organization value?

Yes, becoming a leader changes who you are.

We have long believed that someone's personality is set and does not change during the lifetime.

We now know this is not true with a mounting evidence from psychology research. Long term unemployment and a choice of occupation are some examples of workplace factors that have an impact on personality.

And leadership as well!

A new research study found that becoming a leader made an individual more conscientious, that is, organised, orderly, and attentive to detail.

The study also found that theae changes are due to increasing demands of the job, which requires leaders to be on top of their responsibilities. Hence, more conscientiousness.

I think this has fascinating implications for leadership development. And offers another evidence as to how demanding leadership roles really are.

What do you think? Have you noticed any changes in your personality after taking on a leadership role?

About Darja

I am a leadership consultant and founder of The Leading Lab. I specialise in helping leaders to uncover the hidden beliefs that hold them back from being influential and high-performing leaders. I am hugely passionate about translating scientific research into actionable solutions.

I live in Perth (Western Australia) with my partner, two small sons, and a small dog, Peggy. All of them constantly challenge my leadership ability!

I have delivered dozens of evidence-based leadership training and development programs for clients in private and public sector.

I have completed my PhD at the University of Western Australia Business School and have two Master’s degrees in International Business and Business Research from Maastricht University. 

My dissertation, ‘Leadership Development: An Identity Based Perspective’, investigated the role of identity in leadership development and my research has been published in numerous highly ranked, peer-reviewed journals.

Frequently Asked Questions

You’ve got questions. I’ve got answers.

Where can I find out more about your research?

Great question! In over 10 years as an academic, I have published close to 20 articles, book chapters and other sources. My areas of research are leadership, leadership development, volunteering, and retirement.
The best way to find all my publications is by visiting my Google Scholar profile page. 
Some of my publications are freely available to anyone, some are hiding behind a pay-wall. If you are really keen to read something I have published, but cannot access it - feel free to email me and request a copy!

Can you tell me more about your qualifications?

Are you a leadership trainer? Or OD practitioner?

I actually do both.
I see leadership development as absolutely integral part of organizational development. We know that 90% of change initiatives and success on those change initiatives actually depends on leaders. On top of that, we of course know that leadership is so crucial to culture, So you can change culture all you want, but if you're not changing leaders
you're not changing values that leaders have, the culture is not going to change.
This is why I see leadership development as really important part of OD.
To see a video, where I explain more about this, click here