Hubert Joly - HEC Paris Graduation Day - June 2019

Hubert Joly is the CEO and Chairman of Best Buy and signed an agreement on July 4, 2018 creating HEC’s first-ever personally endowed Chair, devoted to purposeful leadership.

"I believe that leadership is about purposeful, authentic, human service. Specifically, I believe that the leaders of tomorrow need to embrace five Be’s:

• Be a purposeful leader, meaning, be clear about your purpose and how it connects with the organization you are working for. A key question I now ask in recruiting interviews is about what drives the person I am interviewing. And I pay more attention to this than their technical expertise in recruiting or promotion decisions.

• Be clear about who you serve. I have told our leaders at Best Buy: “If you believe you are serving yourself, or your boss, or me as the CEO of the company, it is your choice, it is OK. But you do not need to work here, you should be promoted to customer!!!”. I added: “On the other hand, if you believe that you are here to serve people on the front line, then we are good!!”

• Be clear about your role as a leader. It is not to be smarter than anyone else. It is not to make sure everyone knows how smart you are. It is to create an environment in which others can be successful. This one took me years to understand. It took me to work with an executive coach to overcome this quirk. I now believe that IQ is way overrated vs. EQ. And, I believe that a big responsibility we have as a leader is to create energy. I note that people at Best Buy pay much less attention to what I say compared to how I make them feel.

• Be a values-driven leader. Integrity is the cornerstone to everything. You lose everything if you move away from it.

• Be an authentic leader. Be yourself, your full self. Do not be afraid to be vulnerable. It is OK to say I do not know. It is OK to fail. It is OK to have things you need to learn. In fact, a key thing I have learned is to deal with feedback. I used to struggle with feedback, usually looking for who had said something negative about me and what was wrong with them. My executive coach Marshall Goldsmith introduced me to the notion of feed forward. With his help, every year I decided 2-3 things I want to get better at. And then I ask for the help of my team to get better in the chosen areas. A very upbeat and positive process which stems in part from accepting my imperfections."

Know more about HEC Purposeful Leadership Chair:
https://www.hec.edu/en/faculty-research/centers/society-organizations-center/so-challenges/developing-purposeful-leadership

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