What it takes to be a Good Leader?

Keep Learning & have Empathy

We got this privilege to interview 2 exceptional leaders from different industries as part of our HKU MBA Executive Leadership course, to learn from them about their leadership journey.

Mr. Vikrant Jain, Director of Business Development at Qualcomm

Mr. Chad Manuell, Global Director of Engineering at Trek

Our group project involved the in-depth study of two business leaders from two different organizations through interviews and secondary research. We compared and contrasted these leaders’ leadership styles, leadership effectiveness, and leadership communication. We also had to address any contextual differences in which these business leaders are currently situated.

After interviewing them, these are some key insights and our group’s reflection on what it takes to lead and inspire people around you.

Leadership Style

Vikrant is a relationship-oriented leader, and he does not believe in micromanaging people. Being excited about every new project and finding ways to get your team equally enthusiastic about it is his primary goal as a leader. It’s not always easy, but it is easy to achieve it with the right company culture, process, and tools and with the right people around you. “Inspiring” is a word that defines his leadership.

Chad believes he is a task and relationship-oriented leader who tends to emphasize tasks. He believes that the key to keeping an effective team is to hire people you trust and who are passionate about what is to be done and let them work; that would allow him to work on high-level initiatives and strategies instead. If he were to define leadership in a word, that would be “learner” in his point. In his own words, “if you are not a learner, you are not a good leader.”

Vikrant and Chad have different ways of defining their leadership in the leadership model. There is no perfect leadership model for individuals across varied corporations or groups — however — both reveal the importance of “trust.”

Leadership Communication

As per Vikrant, polite communication is more powerful. He is evolving as a leader daily. He feels that having strong communication, interpersonal relationships with team members, and being open and vulnerable with his team makes him a good leader.

As per Chad, we are all different and unique as human beings. There is communication that works throughout all the generations, and for that Chad would suggest reaching out; eventually, it makes the team closer.

Vikrant and Chad strongly emphasized the power of transparent and clear team communication. Both prefer 1 on 1 talk with team members and provide open channels to talk, over calls, over walks, or even over drinks. Besides, what they keep in mind when talking to their teams is to find ways to make the projects executed. In this way, they respect everyone as a unique human being and mold themselves to be an adaptable leader. With effective communication, they build trust, understand their followers, and provide support, which will help in making the team get closer.

Team Effectiveness

In Vikrant’s opinion, the best way to align everyone towards a common goal is by showing them what is in for them. Having an Open-door policy, making an effort to talk to people, and being a good listener, the team can have the right spirit to be effective. And he said as a leader, he won’t have answers to all the challenges and questions, and that’s where their team has a culture where team members would like to support and help each other get to the next step.

For Chad, one-on-One Meetings with the Managers of each Business unit helps him better make the team effective. We need to make the managers feel passionate about what they are doing and help them when they are faltering. When it comes to decision-making, Chad takes timely decision-making as essential to team effectiveness. He said, “sometimes you’ve have to decide based on maybe 70% of information. It is futile to wait a lengthy period to gather a small percentage of more information, say 2%.”

Ideas on team effectiveness seem to be considered from different angles between Vikrant and Chad. For Vikrant, team effectiveness means collaboration and how team members collaborate and do their best under a common goal. At the same time, Chad thinks that team effectiveness is how the project goes effectively.

Value and Characteristics

Vikrant engages in playing volleyball during his off workdays, practices bachata, and sometimes acts. He did a side role act in the movie ‘Wonder Woman. He said in every situation — whether sports or entertainment or tech I have picked up leadership skills along my way. My leadership style is different in all these situations, and I cross use some skills when needed.

Regarding maintaining enthusiasm in work and growing as a leader, Chad mentioned he always keeps learning, changing, and setting aggressive goals at the beginning of the year, both personal and business. And use scorecards to track back the progress. He also has a leader (CEO) who sets aggressive goals that leads to a lot of learning. According to Chad, “If you are a continuer learner, you will never lose interest in what you are doing.”

Vikrant can be described as a passionate person, which shows so much more about Vikrant than Mr. Vikrant Jain the Director of Business Development. In Business Ethics, we learned the importance of avoiding the Marginal Cost Mistakes, it’s easier to stick to your principles 100% than 98% of the time, and this for Vikrant happens in this dimension: he thrives in his work without sacrificing personal life, and a proof of that is how passionate he’s about dancing and acting.

Chad, on the other hand, is a bit more of an introvert; his hobbies are coaching an HS Baseball Team and fishing. He seems to be very aware of himself and has a continuous growth mindset. These were two different leaders from different backgrounds, living on different sides of the world and working in various industries, yet they had in common was:

1. the clarity of their thoughts;
2. they were well-tempered;
3. soft-spoken, not as aggressive as we thought.

Just because you are leader, you need not have to have the final say on everything, answer all the questions, and be the loudest voice in the room.

Leading in a Diverse Environment

Vikrant is an Indian who studied Engineering in India, moved to UK, and did his MBA in London. Today he leads the UK with diverse staff across all his team. He feels women are underrepresented in some fields (e.g engineering) and would love to see more females in engineering. His advice on working and leading in a diverse environment is:

- Be good at your job

- Show your value to the company

- Be ready to learn and embrace the culture

- Network and Socialize

- Remember, we all are humans in the end, and we all feel and want the same.

Chad is an American citizen who studied Mechanical Engineering in Minnesota, has worked in Wisconsin for over 20 years, and did his MBA in Arizona. Albeit the headquarters setup is remarkably familiar for him, his role goes beyond the headquarters, in all their R&D facilities across the globe, in 6 separate locations: Netherlands, Germany, China, Taiwan, California, Wisconsin. The team composition is also highly diverse: ranging from Electronics and Software to Material Engineering.

He expressed the importance of knowing and learning the different cultures — even Americans have nuances from person to person. When managing global teams, you have to learn the culture and lead people — Dutch people, for instance, are very straightforward, even for Americans. There are a lot of little nuances that, after learning them, will make you better when communicating with other cultures.

Vikrant and Chad face diversity differently, but they both think it is essential to learn about different cultures and be respectful to all.

Advice from Vikrant and Chad

On top of all the sharings — Vikrant and Chad gave us some personal advice on how to become a good leader:

• Push yourself & Challenge yourself
• Don’t be afraid of failing;
• Don’t shy away from grabbing a leadership opportunity because you will figure it all out. It’s a journey; enjoy it and don’t worry about the end game
• Train yourself from the role of project manager — the one with no authority but influence people by communication.
• Keep learning and be empathic

Group Reflection — Leadership

When it comes to running the team, the most impressive mindset is authority is not the most vital factor for a successful team; communication is. Regardless of whether our interviewees have or do not have authority, they run the team with soft skills.

For the team or personal development part — Apart from setting clear goals, inspiring, and learning, we noticed one thing in common that we admire. Although they are so busy with work, they are still passionate about the hobbies that they do pretty well in specific fields, like sports, dancing, and acting. We would be not so greedy to learn from the interviewees about all the good characters we identified in one goal; a single aspect would be a significant step in our leadership journey.
What leadership quality do you want to derive from Vikrant & Chad?

Team Credit: Annie Lu Sian, Ann Yang Anqi, Alci M. González, Livia Liu, Tomo Mikami, Celin Zhu, Baba Kazuhito