Leaders on the making of a good leader

Sharing his views on what leadership and sustainability mean in the true sense, R Gopalakrishna, executive director, Tata Sons Ltd, said, "A company's culture is more of biology than physics and chemistry. We need to purify the soul constantly to produce something sustainable and long-lasting. We need to ensure that we are ecologically adaptive, encourage entrepreneurship, and that there is a high degree of care for human beings and their dignity and also a fair degree of financial prudence."

Gopalakrishna was speaking at the session on 'Achieving and sustaining high-performance' organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Saturday.

R Seshasayee, managing director, Ashok Leyland, said, "India today is in a stage of transition wherein there are sparks of big achievements. We need to just realise that innovation is the keyword for sustaining these achievements."

He added, "Also celebrating mistakes while trying to improve on them is something that we need to work on."

Emphasising on highlighting the role of people in an organisation's success rather than assets, Vivek Gupta, managing director, A T Kearney India, said that assets are something that can be bought so the focus should be on developing the right management team.