Leadership Award
Roselinde Torres
Senior Partner
The Boston Consulting Group
As a Senior Partner in the People and Organization practice of The Boston Consulting Group, Roselinde Torres once learned a very valuable lesson about people and organizations.
"I worked with a client CEO who was willing to change everything and everyone except himself. It was frustrating and discouraging at times," Torres says. "I was reminded that in a consulting relationship, the best you can deliver is your 50 percent—you can support, confront, and enable clients, but in the end the decision and effort to change must come from them. The art is in increasing their confidence to take that risk."
Torres knows a thing or two about taking risks. Before joining BCG, she stepped away from her regular work for a year to travel the world and study leaders in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.
"Professionally, I learned how a leadership approach is very contextual and gleaned many successful leadership practices. Personally, I learned how to be a more empathetic leader—how to connect more deeply by seeing a situation from another's point of view—which has helped me engender followership based on a reciprocal influence network," she says.
The journey had a profound influence on her professional career and her personal life, she says. "Perhaps more as a cumulative achievement, I feel great pride in the number of colleagues and clients who have fulfilled more of their potential as a result of my advice, expertise, and coaching," Torres says. "They, in turn, have shaped who I am as a practitioner and person."
Torres says she believes that female consultants should take risks to share their point of view. "Wisdom is not always a product of age or tenure or gender," she says. "A brilliant insight or thoughtful question may unlock many paths for a struggling client."
Her consulting career came about more by accident than design, she says, but it quickly became a passion she pursued. She got involved in consulting while working at Johnson & Johnson where she led several internal consulting units. "I decided to move into consulting full time to work with a wider range of leaders across various industries," Torres says.
Torres has advised over 200 CEOs as well as numerous senior executives and boards on issues of executive leadership, talent management, organization design, culture change and large-scale transformation. She currently serves as the firm's global head of Leadership and was named a BCG Fellow to encourage pioneering thought leadership. She also has served as a member of the Americas Leadership Team.
As for the award itself, Torres says she's "honored and humbled" by the recognition. "More than anyone, they know the reality—the successes and failures—of being a leader in the consulting profession," Torres says. And humbled because she does not consider herself a "finished" product. "I have more to learn, more to dream, and more to do with people I haven't even met yet."
What do you enjoy most about the work that you do?
"Three things top my list: Solving thorny organizational and people issues; partnering with interesting and brilliant colleagues and clients; and creating innovative offers and capabilities. Engagements that score high on each of these dimensions are my favorites."
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