IT'S LONELY AT THE TOP

Over the weekend, I was at a cousin’s wedding in Chennai. This was a typical two session south Indian wedding (Reception in the evening, with the main wedding the next day morning), with a focus on the rituals and of course, an overdose of some great south Indian food.

During the reception, I noticed someone who looked like the CEO of one of India’s top 5 IT services companies (over $4 billion in revenues). I asked a few people sitting around me if my guess was right. After some “Ifs” and “Buts”, everyone seemed to agree that he was indeed the CEO of this large company. Quick checks with some people in the know at the wedding confirmed that he was a cousin of the groom’s mother.

We then noticed a lot of people whispering about this person. But to my surprise, no one really bothered to approach him and talk to him. This person was sitting quietly with 3-4 other elderly gentlemen. Well, the CEO then went on to have dinner and left quietly. Everyone was commenting on how simple the guy was despite being a very powerful corporate CEO with a personal net worth of probably over INR 2000 Crores (approx. USD 0.5 billion).

We land up at the wedding the next day morning and well, the CEO was there. Again, sitting quietly next to the same 3-4 elderly gentlemen. After spending about 3 hours watching the wedding, the person had lunch and left.

In all, this person had spent around 6 hours at the wedding – though he occasionally looked at his phone and typed some messages, he seemed quite free and spent his time watching the wedding and enjoying the food.

Two things really surprised me about this whole episode:
1) Probably over 50% of the wedding attendees recognized who this person was, but no one could muster enough courage to say hello to him (though a number of them, including me, really wanted to). Infact, there were 2 guests who were employees in that company and even they couldn’t muster enough courage to say hello to their CEO in such an informal non-threatening family setting.
2) Another thing that surprised me was that even relatives were not approaching him (other than a few folks here and there saying a quick hello) and he didn’t seem to be really having a conversation with anyone at a wedding with over 800 guests. If the family was close enough to him, for him to spend over 6 hours of his weekend in a city that is not where he lives (so add about 8-10 hours for the travel), I would have expected him to be an important member of the family. So this lack of socializing really puzzled me.

As I drove back to Bangalore, I thought about the whole episode and it struck me that here was a person, who a lot of people wanted to speak with, take pictures with, but were just not able to muster the will to actually do it.

Looking at it from this individual’s perspective, why was he not connecting or even making an attempt to connect with others at the wedding? To be fair to him, given his exceptionally busy work life as a CEO, he probably wanted to simply unwind at the wedding and not interact with others – but as the dialogue in the movie Spiderman goes, “With Great Power comes Great Responsibility”. I don’t believe that people in very powerful roles can afford/desire to unwind in a public setting. People in such powerful roles need to make an extra effort to connect with people, otherwise they may end up in a lonely place with a lot of sycophants around them. Because of how successful they are, they must know that everyone wants to connect with them, but are unable to do so or feel awkward doing so. So the onus is on the individual to make it easier for people to connect with them. If employees who work for him (in a services company that is pretty much about people), are unable to come up to him and say “hello” during a non-threatening, family event, is the leader really connecting with his people or simply going through the motions? I am sure the company spends considerable effort and money in conducting employee surveys to identify areas that matter to the employees – For this leader, an informal chat with a few of his employees present at the wedding, who are now part of his extended family, would have given so much more insight than any employee survey or an employee focus group could ever provide.

I believe that for companies to remain unassailable and to continue being a great company, their leaders absolutely need to connect with all their stakeholders in the true sense – customers, investors and their employees, and it is the leaders who need to make the bigger effort to connect with them at every possible opportunity to ensure that they are grounded and make decisions that truly matter to the stakeholders.