Martin Gutmann is an author, speaker, and scholar interested in how the past can illuminate today's most pressing challenges. He is a professor at the Lucerne School of Business, a lecturer at ETH Zurich, and the best-selling author of The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help Us Rethink Leadership.
Born in Sweden, Martin has also lived and worked in Japan, the US, Canada, Mauritius, Germany, and Switzerland. From 2016 to 2020, he was the founding Managing Director of the Swiss School of Public Governance, where he launched a programme for future global public sector leaders. He's also one of PepTalk's top exclusive speakers.
His writing and thought leadership have reached over 60 million people through pieces in top business magazines, such as Forbes, Big Think, Fast Company, and Minute Hack, and appearances on well-known management podcasts, such as Phronesis, The Leadership Podcast, and We Are Human Leaders.
Martin delivers story-driven talks centred on vibrant cases anchored in modern organisational psychology and management science evidence with actionable takeaways. His recent TED Talk, “Are We Celebrating the Wrong Leaders?”, has had over 1 million views.
As a writer, he is best known for his book The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help Us Rethink Leadership, which challenges the "Action Fallacy", our mistaken belief that great leadership requires a propensity for action. Adam Grant, organisational psychologist and thought leader, calls it: “A provocative look at what history really teaches us about effective leadership. This book will challenge you to rethink some of your core assumptions about what it takes to align people around common goals.”
Martin holds a Ph.D. in history from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, an Executive MBA from IE Business School in Spain, and higher education teacher’s training from Harvard University and ETH Zurich. Contact the PepTalk team today for Martin's fee information and a speaker availability check.
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