Gyöngyi Kállai

Organizational Consulting and Coaching for Change

Dr. Gyöngyi Kállai as a strategic organisational consultant and coach, contributes to leaders’ successes in transforming their organisations by harnessing organisational, team, and individual energies and capabilities. “If you do what your heart and mind tell you, you act on wisdom” is her credo. Another conviction of hers is that, “if…within the context of the highly complex and constantly changing environment of the 21st century, “..you do not like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less”. Consulting and coaching organizational, team and individual level transformational change is Gyöngyi’s core expertise and passion. Gyöngyi offers 30 years of cross-industrial and crosscultural experience in leadership development, executive coaching, change leadership, organizational design and development, HR strategy development, performance- and career management, mergers and integrations. Gyöngyi considers “cultural literacy” / cross-cultural leadership as a core competency of today’s leaders, and she offers her insights in living and working as an expatriate executive in the UK, Netherlands, France, and having consulted and coached clients around the world from more than 30 countries.

As an internal consultant she worked for the Prince of Wales Trust U.K., Livewire U.K. and Hungary, I.M.C., and the Unilever Group across Europe: Bestfoods France, Algida, HPC, Lipton IC, Amora-Maille, Strategic HR Group,U.K. As of 2005 she worked as an external consultant and coach for Unilever Europe, Novartis Group, Corvinus School of Management, I.T.D Hungary, Rittal Group, SONY Europe, SONY Global HR Group U.K., The Conference Board Europe, Johnson and Johnson Group, Mercer Intl., Sara Lee, Lanxess Corporation, TMF Group Hungary, Liberty Global Intl., Avers FIBER, GoodMills, Formatex, Merck Group, Vincotech (a Co. of Mitsubishi Electric), Computax, Limitless Leadership, Hilti and, on a pro-bono basis, for the National Talent Development Program of Hungary, the B.J. Hospital Szekszárd, and three regional “Family and Child Protection” centers in Hungary.

As a fellow faculty member, course-leader and senior lecturer of the Faculty of Education and Psychology of Eötvös Loránd University, she is a passionate researcher of “flow in the workplace”, and teaches Positive Organizational Psychology, Flow in the Workplace, and Leadership. Gyöngyi developed the “Fit to Flow” toolkit to assess and develop flow-conducive personality-, and organizational factors, a toolkit that helps leaders and practitioners develop “flow rich” workplaces.

Line management/Leadership experience

Gyöngyi has 30 years’ of management-, and 25+ years of leadership experience cross-industry and cross-geography. She held management and leadership positions within Schlumberger (sector: engineering), I.M.C.(sector: executive education and consultancy) and the Unilever Group (sector: FMCG) in the UK, Holland, Hungary and France. As a senior HR Executive (VP HR for Unilever Europe and Global Programme Director of the Unilever Academy) and a member of the Board of Directors, she contributed to the development and implementation of business and HR strategies and organizational capability building in regional (Europe) and global contexts within Unilever, until she set up her own consultancy in 2005.

Educational Background

Gyöngyi earned her first degree (BA with honours) in Economics and Innovation Management at the College for Foreign Trade and the University of Economics, Budapest. She also studied innovation management and business consulting at Rutgers University, USA, and completed the International HR Executive Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Gyöngyi earned her Master of Sciences degree at HEC - Oxford University (a joint MSc program) in Consulting and Coaching for Change, and holds a PhD degree (awarded Summa Cum Laude) in Sociology/Social Psychology from Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest. Gyöngyi is a certified user of a range of instruments (such as e.g. HOGANs, FEBI, TKI). She is also a qualified Autogenic Training/Relaxation Trainer. Gyöngyi works in English and Hungarian. She also speaks French and Spanish.