About Ngao Motsei

Hello, I'm Dr Ngao Motsei

I like living in the world of "and", not "either / or", making my Portfolio Career entirely by design. I am a Leadership Consultant, Professor of Practice, author, board director, and advocate for young African women, and I hold each identity not as a separate role but as an expression of a single, unified purpose, rehumanising the workplace, one leader at a time.

Dr Ngao Motsei portrait
I have always believed that organisations are made magnificent by the people in them. My work is to protect that magnificence and to help restore it where it has been lost.

A career that has never followed a straight line, and that has always been the point.

For over 25 years, I have worked at the intersection of leadership, human behaviour, and organisational culture across HR, strategy, consulting, academia, and governance. My career has never followed a straight line, and that has always been the point.

What has remained constant is a conviction that organisations are fundamentally human and that, when the humanity is stripped out, performance suffers, people suffer, and the soul of a business dims. My work began in Human Resources and Leadership Consulting, where I saw firsthand how abrasive leadership and unchecked power dynamics eroded the very cultures organisations claimed to build.

Over the past decade, that conviction has sharpened into specialisation. I now focus squarely on leadership effectiveness, psychological safety, and civility in the workplace, not as soft ideals, but as strategic imperatives that determine whether organisations can attract, retain, and get the best out of their people.

The Pracademic.

I am intentional about my dual identity: I am both a practitioner with decades of executive-level experience, and an academic with the research rigour to ground that experience in evidence. It is from this intersection, the ‘pracademic’, that my most distinctive contributions emerge.

As Professor of Practice in Leadership and Civility at Work at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), I combine academic depth with practical leadership experience at the executive level. My teaching and consulting roles are inseparable in that what I facilitate in executive programmes, I test in boardrooms, and what I encounter in organisations, I bring back into the classroom.

My scholarship and teaching emphasise contextual and adaptive leadership, psychological safety, the role of strategy, and how boards shape sustainable organisational performance. I employ evidence-based frameworks, case-driven learning, and reflection to help leaders translate insight into applied behaviour.

GIBS Masterclass

Increasing Psychological Safety, The Leader's Toolkit

Lead Faculty & Integrator on the Global Executive Development Programme (GEDP), GIBS's flagship executive offering.

Visit GIBS Business School

Contribution Portfolio.

Beyond my professional and academic roles, I contribute deliberately and consistently to causes that align with my values, supporting young women, advancing ethical governance, and building more equitable workplaces.

  1. 01.

    Traversing Liminality

    As one of the organisation's inaugural coaches, now strategic partner, I contribute as needed, to helping the organisation meet its purpose and goals.

  2. 02.

    International Association of Workplace Bullying and Harassment (IAWBH)

    Former Board Member, and current member.

  3. 03.

    Zuri Ladies Golf Club

    I was part of a ladies golf club that contributed to the betterment of learners through the game of golf.

  4. 04.

    Supervision of MBA Students

    Supervision of MBA students at GIBS.