Page 68 - Forbes India (December 2015)

Forbes IndIa leadershIp serIes

leadIng From the Front

The Makings of a Leader

Three industry stalwarts share their insights on leadership styles,
role models and what it means to lead from the front

By Gunjan jain

eadership, as the American with ‘Leading from the Front’. The Ajay Piramal, the consummate
historian James MacGregor three industry stalwarts interviewed dealmaker, defines leadership as
Burns wrote, is “one of below are those who led from the identifying trends ahead of others and
L the most observed and front, ones who built businesses then having the courage to put your
least understood phenomena on from scratch or dramatically money behind the calls you take. He
earth”. Are good leaders born transformed their inheritances. says maintaining a high emotional
or can they be made? Is there a Adi Godrej was only 21 when he quotient is crucial for any leader.
difference between how Indians entered his family’s business. After Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who
manage organisations versus the way 50 years, if there is anything he has made Biocon a household name
Westerners do? And what about the learnt, he says, it is that leadership and became one of the country’s
vexatious issue of masculine versus is all about teamwork. There are richest women entrepreneurs, says
feminine styles of management— limits to what any individual can most entrepreneurs are good at
who makes for a better leader? do and it is only by getting each leading from the front as that is the
The first instalment in Forbes team member to give her best that only way to get people excited and
India’s series on leadership deals organisational goals can be achieved. prove to them that the idea works.

‘Decisions don’t have to be Popular Always’

Adi Godrej ideas of leadership by then. top may take the trouble to
Chairman, Godrej Group I have always believed that leadership change. What made you do so?
is a question of teamwork. One It was about 20 years ago that we
Q When you joined the company must set one’s objectives for the introduced 360-degree evaluation.
in the 1960s, did you have any next five or 10 years, and then work That is, all our senior people get
ideas of leading and being in backwards with your team on how to evaluated by their seniors, their
charge of the business? achieve it. It is something for which peers and their subordinates. So I
When I joined Godrej more than you need not just IQ, but EQ, too. was also evaluated in this manner,
50 years ago, I was the first in the and it emerged clearly that I was
family with an MBA [from MIT’s Q How do you define EQ? not a good listener and that I could
Sloan School of Management] as Emotional quotient. You need to improve my performance, etc. So
there were no management schools understand people, work with them I decided I would work on it.
in India then. I did not take charge closely, listen to them and observe
of anything. I was too young—only their ideas. You may decide not Q You are constantly improving
21 years old—to take charge at that to accept every idea that comes yourself, you keep yourself
time. But I gave many ideas, provided your way, but you need to listen. updated about a range of
several inputs, and my father and issues. People speak of how
uncles gave me a great deal of latitude. Q In an interview some years the depth of your knowledge
ago, you said you had become sets you apart as a leader.
Q Given your education, you less autocratic and a better To keep on learning is really
must have already had many listener. Very few people at the important. People think that once

68 | FORBES INDIA DECEMBER 11, 2015