Director: Dr. Radana Dvorak

Can one person can change the whole culture of one of the largest companies in the world and bring it back from being a ‘sinking ship’? That’s what Saya Nadella did when he took over as the new CEO of Microsoft. Microsoft had become a toxic company with a high senior staff turnover. In 2012 an article appeared titled “Microsoft once ruled the world. So what went wrong?”, summarizing that it was “suffering a slow death by committee as bureaucracy stifles the company’s core creativity”; the cliché comes to mind, “bad leaders means bad business”. Having a vast task placed upon him to change the company culture and re-boot Microsoft, what did Nadella do when he first arrived? Well, surprisingly, he gave all senior executives a book and required them to read it. The book is ‘Nonviolent Communication’ by Marshall B. Rosenberg, a psychologist who studies empathy and emotional intelligence (EQ). The front cover strapline nicely summarizes the book: “Words matter. Find a common ground with anyone, anywhere, at any time, both personally and professionally.” The book dives into four fundamental tenets of EQ: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-management, (3) social awareness, and (4) relationship management. Nadella found that leadership at Microsoft fell short of empathy and being aware of others. Several of my colleagues that left Microsoft under the previous CEO highlighted precisely that issue. Today, Microsoft is known as one of the companies everyone wants to work for. People stay in their job longer than most competitors, and among the many awards received, it was the 2021 winner for diversity and women in leadership. For all our aspiring student future leaders, I highly recommend “EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide to Emotional Intelligence” by Justin Bariso.