André Lacroix, Global CEO, Intertek
Empathy is one of the most crucial skills for leaders, but it has taken a new meaning and priority in recent years. Far from the soft approach, empathy has the potential to drive significant business results. For decades, it has been considered that empathy is favourable for people working in an organisation, but recent research underlines its importance in everything, starting from innovation to retention. A leader in any organisation is required to have a fine blend of all skills to create engagement within the organisation, happiness, and performance among the employees, and empathy tops the chart of things leaders should get right.
Keeping the same in view, André Lacroix, Global CEO, Intertek released the soft copy of his book, ‘Leadership with Soul,’ during his visit to India. The event was held on October 14 at The Oberoi, Gurugram. The global launch of the book is scheduled to be held on October 25th 2022.
It is worth mentioning that the book is published under Eska publishing house. It focuses on 10 humanist principles behind his long, diverse, and outstanding leadership career. In addition, the book briefly elaborates on the value of emotional intelligence, planning, motivation, customer intimacy, innovative future, how to master complexity, strategy, laser-focused execution, better branding glo-cally and sustainable performance for all.
In the book, Lacroix distils his insights, wisdom, and experience gained over more than three decades of leading major global organisations such as Ernst & Young, Colgate Palmolive, Burger King, PepsiCo, Euro Disney, Reckitt Benckiser, Inchcape, and now Intertek. He uses his universal humanist principles developed over a long leadership career to enlighten the readers and inspire a global organisation to outperform the competition, create a truly customer-centric organisation, and how businesses can build a sustainable legacy for the generations to come.
In Leadership with Soul, Lacroix writes, “It’s time for a change. Those of us who are leaders of large or small companies, private or public enterprises, big or small business units, profit or non-profit organisations have an essential role to play in building back a better society. Around 3.3 billion people across the world work every day. We, corporate leaders, have a huge responsibility to make the workplace a better, safer and more sustainable environment for every one of them.”
He further says in the book, “I call my unique leadership approach ‘Leadership with Soul’. It is humanist. It is fair. It works. It is industry and scale-agnostic, equally appropriate for a global corporation as a small one-site hotel, a local government body, or a charitable association. And I believe it is what the world needs right now and into the future as we build back a better society. Leadership with Soul will provide any leader with a systemic end-to-end approach that will unleash the full potential of any organisation and deliver sustainable results for all stakeholders with a highly engaged workforce.”
The book launch comes at a time when industries across the sector are either introducing new policies or re-shaping the existing ones to create an empathetic environment. In addition to this, some firms are even organising session that focuses on training management or leadership about various methods they can express empathy during multiple scenarios.