Saying “everyone sucks” is not leadership

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Corp., speaks at a Bloomberg event on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, January 21, 2020.

Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is not the type of manager to brag and take down rivals. It’s been more measured since he took over from the more outspoken Steve Ballmer seven years ago, forming alliances with challengers like Red Hat and Salesforce, and even making it possible for people to use Amazon’s Alexa assistant in Windows operating systems.

On Thursday, he voiced his more peaceful approach when former Microsoft CEO Jeff Raikes asked him what leadership advice he provides within the company.

“Just saying, ‘Well, my team is great and everyone else is worthless,’ that’s not leadership,” said Nadella during a performance at the economic summit hosted by Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research. “In a world of multiple stakeholders and multiple components, you need to bring people together from across your company and beyond.”

In addition to standing out from Ballmer, who criticized efforts from rivals like Apple and Google, Nadella also stands out from his peers at other major technology companies, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff.

Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 while co-founder Bill Gates was still in charge. But Nadella is also different from Gates. In a ask-me-everything session on Reddit in 2013, he wrote that “seriously Bing is the better product right now,” despite Google having the market share in web searches.

In contrast, Nadella’s Microsoft has become more tolerant of other forces in the business world. While open-source software was seen as competition in the past, Microsoft bought open-source code storage service GitHub in 2018 for $ 7.5 billion, and the company incorporated the open-source operating system Linux into Windows.

When Nadella differentiates from rivals, he is less outspoken about it. For example, he said at a Microsoft’s Ignite conference on Tuesday that “no customer wants to depend on a provider that sells him technology on the one hand and competes with them on the other” – likely a reference to Amazon, which has competed. with some of its cloud customers.

Here are some of the other leadership points that Nadella mentioned during the virtual event:

  • “Leaders have the innate ability to deal with situations that are uncertain and ambiguous and create clarity … leaders are not people who get into confusion and create more confusion. They are actually creating clarity, which is kind of a thing that leaders absolutely must hold themselves accountable. “
  • “Leaders create energy. You know when you meet someone who’s a leader because you walk out and say, ‘Wow, I want to be in the parade. I want to be part of that team.’”
  • “Leaders don’t say, ‘Give me the perfect pitch to perform.’ I can’t say, “Make me wait until the pandemic is over to show my leadership skills.” In many cases you have to take on a problem that is too limited and not limit yourself anymore, and more specifically let go of the team that you lead, so that they can continue to achieve things. ”

Nadella said no one will be perfect. But he does wonder if he’s better than yesterday.

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