Leaders never fail because they weren’t smart enough, they fail because they don’t have emotional intelligence. Now, leaders need to lead with their hearts, says Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and former CEO, Medtronic.
George has studied leadership for a long time, and he believes that the baby boomers’ style of leadership is not meeting the current needs of the workforce. “Younger people want to have the chance to show what they can do. It’s about authenticity. People don’t want to work for somebody who is not real, they cannot trust them, they don’t feel like they’re really building a relationship because leadership is all about relationships,” George said in an exclusive conversation with Aabha Bakaya, Senior Editor, Business Today
George, who has been on the boards of Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil (among others), believes that “authentic leadership” can inspire and empower people. He is of the view that there is great income inequality as all the money flows to top management paying the minimum to people at the bottom. George is of the opinion that it should be the other way around. “We should be really there supporting the people doing the work and paying them for it.’
On being asked about great resignation, George said, people are leaving because there is no sense of purpose. They’re leaving because they don’t just want to work for a paycheck or work for earnings per share for the corporation. They want to work for some purpose and meaning and organisations that are giving them that are going to thrive. Like, Starbucks has kind of lost sight, they were the employee-oriented company and they’re trying to get it back. Companies really have to focus on that. Otherwise, they can go out of business, he added.
Another company that was going down the drain was led by former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. With Satya Nadella taking over, he is coming up with the idea of empathy. “He’s out there with his people all the time. He’s an amazing leader and, maybe he is the best leader in the business world today because he has a real sense of his people and real compassion,” George added.
Talking about Indian businessmen, George said, “I think the qualities that people here are raised in India are really positive. I see this in Indian Americans, they never lose their culture as you can see when you go into their home. Like Former Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak, who has turned out to be a fantastic leader.” He is very Indian and follows his culture, unlike others who abandon their cultures. George also referred to Industrialist Ratan Tata, Infosys founder Narayan Murthy, and Laxman Narasimhan, who has taken over Starbucks for now. There are a lot of leaders like this emerging. All these leaders possess great qualities and those qualities have never faded in their organisation culture as well, George added.
George has written two acclamed books: Authentic Leadership and True North, where he talks about the essential traits of a 21st-century leader.
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