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Céline Schillinger

Author of Dare to Un-lead,
The Art of Relational Leadership
in a Fragmented World

Engagement Leadership, Transformation, Change, Innovation
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Céline Schillinger
Founder and CEO, We Need Social

Céline Schillinger is an award-winning French entrepreneur, change practitioner, and consultant. She has over 30 years of field experience, working with both small and global organizations across several continents. A solid track record on transformation informs Céline’s vision of change, engagement, and leadership. A blogger since 2013 and a TEDx speaker, she was knighted by the French government for her workplace change efforts. Lessons from her journey in change are captured in Céline’s first book: Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World which received the 2022 Porchlight Leadership & Strategy Book of the Year and The Internet Time Alliance Award.

“Sweeping and intelligent, this book is an extraordinary contribution, deeply researched and penetratingly insightful. Céline Schillinger puts broad societal trends into historical perspective to explain the present moment.  She explains what’s at stake for the world and why it’s urgent that we act now.”

Amy Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School and best-selling author of The Fearless Organization and Teaming.

“With Dare to Un-Lead, Céline Schillinger masterfully captures the essence of the leadership revolution to come in a post-knowledge, post-disruption economy.”

Brice Challamel, Vice-President, Technology, Innovation & Transformation at Moderna

  • Winner of the Porchlight Leadership & Strategy Book of the Year (2022)
  • Winner of The Internet Time Alliance Award (2022)

Talk Topics and Themes

Celine’s presentations challenge conventional wisdom by offering a modern, human-centric approach to leadership and collective performance in a complex, fragmented world.

  • Relational Leadership & The Art of Un-Leading: She empowers audiences to move beyond outdated, top-down leadership models. Her talks reveal how to foster a collective leadership capacity throughout an organization, creating a more sustainable and effective way to achieve shared goals.
  • Mobilization & Network-Based Influence: Drawing from her extensive experience across continents and cultures, she provides a roadmap for mobilizing people to embrace change. Her talks explain how to leverage internal networks to build momentum, overcome resistance, and achieve large-scale transformation.
  • Productive Conversations & Resonance in the Workplace: She emphasizes the critical role of meaningful dialogue and connection. Her talks provide actionable strategies for fostering productive conversations and building organizational resonance by leveraging innovative tools like artificial intelligence, data visualization, internal podcasts, and corporate radio.
  • Collective Performance: Celine’s core message is about unlocking collective performance. She demonstrates how a focus on relational leadership and human connection can transform organizations into resilient, high-performing networks that are capable of navigating complexity and driving value.

Celine is a great storyteller. She brings concepts to life with a multitude of real-life stories and concrete examples, as well as her engaging personality. She inspires audiences of all kinds to embrace change and take action together.

What got us here will not get us there. The context in which we now live, trade, and work in the 21st century has little in common with that of Frederick Taylor or Henry Ford. What is revered as leadership today is often nothing more than a destructive set of obsolete behaviors that harm individuals and societies, and that must be reinvented. Dare to Un-Lead explores the opportunities we have to collectively transform leadership from a top-down hierarchical hegemony to one that is based on empowering people to lead together through the concepts of liberty, equality and community. Change agent Celine Schillinger combines her personal experience in working with others to enact digital-enabled, people-focused collective work practices with a deep analysis of leadership―studied through multiple lenses and timely sources of knowledge―to provide readers with original insights into why these practices work. The result is a series of evidence-based pathways for reinventing collective performance across organizations in a post-pandemic world. From large corporations to small businesses, the lessons learned in this landmark book, implemented individually and collectively over time, will make our workplaces more equal, our jobs more gratifying, and our economies more profitable. And that will make the world a better place.

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Céline Schillinger