Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Really, the how you think about leadership started very early for me.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was the Dubai of the times, super rich country.

In Paris, they had an expression, to be rich like an Argentine, and most Europeans were emigrating to Argentina to make it.

Through a series of bad leadership choices,

we managed to almost devolve.

I remember vividly being eight years old and holding the equivalent of a $20 or 20 pound note and suddenly being told it's now worth two cents.

In the next three or four weeks, again, I was only eight, we had four presidents rotating, one after the other.

That and the combination that Buenos Aires was still a big, big center for psychoanalytic therapy

I always tell the story.

I grew up in an area of Buenos Aires called Vila Freud, which boasts still today the highest concentration of psychoanalysts per capita in the world.

So I kind of was predetermined to study the psychology of leadership.

So that's on a theoretical level.

Many, many, many years later, I had the opportunity to finish my studies, get a scholarship, and leave Argentina.

Instead of kind of trying to make it better, I got a scholarship to go to the UK, to London,

Deciding to leave was the redefining moment.

And I always tell people, including my students, if you look at the population of the world, only 6% of people work in a country other than the one they were born.

Guess what?

They tend to be more open-minded, more curious, more resilient, more hardworking.

I'm not bragging about myself, but you have to adapt.

And in the beginning, it was super hard.