My first boss was a bully. Just before I started working for him, a rumor circulated that he’d once thrown a desk out the window. Maybe the story was apocryphal, but it didn’t feel that way to those of us under his thumb. He would yell and curse. We were all afraid of him. As unpleasant as it was, though, I have to admit that the fear was a powerful motivator.
But there are other, better ways to get a team to perform. In today’s business world, bullying tactics are increasingly backfiring (case in point: Travis Kalanick at Uber). Meanwhile, a new breed of CEOs is rising, defined less by “command and control” and more by “inspire and empower.”
No leader better epitomizes this approach, and its potential for outsize success, than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Following the notoriously combative Steve Ballmer, Nadella has dramatically revived Microsoft’s reputation and its relevance by emphasizing collaboration and what he calls a “learn-it-all” culture versus the company’s historical know-it-all one. As senior editor Harry McCracken explains in “Microsoft Rewrites the Code,” the results have been eye-popping: more than $250 billion in market value gains in less than four years—a feat that, quantitatively, puts Nadella in the pantheon of Bezos–Cook–Page–Zuckerberg.
Empathy and soft skills have often been derided in the cutthroat bureaucracies of corporate America. “Suck it up” has been the edict to aspiring masters of the universe; generosity of spirit and openness have often taken a backseat to aggressiveness and subterfuge. Which is what makes Nadella’s ascension so refreshing. His playbook includes these five lessons:
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