Global Leadership Lessons from Unilever's Kees Kruythoff

Kruythoff described himself as a bit arrogant when he first applied to work at Unilever in the 1990s. He had a vision of where he wanted to go in his career and was forthright in sharing those aspirations with his interviewers. "I told them I wanted to work four years in marketing, then two years in sales and then I would go abroad and work in places like China, South Africa, Indonesia or Brazil," Kruythoff said during a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture. "'I will tell [them] what I want from this company,"' I told myself when I went in there. I was nave, I admit."

The Unilever executives, though, liked what they saw in Kruythoff and hired him in February 1993 ... READ MORE

Released Knowledge@Wharton - April 2012