ENGG7902 Leadership Essay: Challenges and Strategies of Sundar Pichai

This essay presents a leadership case study on Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google. It examines the challenges he faced, such as navigating congressional inquiries and initial objections within Google. The essay highlights his leadership strategies, including his focus on employee success, collaborative culture, and emphasis on continuous learning and innovation. It discusses how Pichai's leadership lessons, such as valuing others' success and fostering a culture of learning, can be applied to future work situations. The analysis also references relevant leadership theories like the Great Man Theory and explores the importance of humility, teamwork, and acknowledging contributions to motivate and develop individuals, particularly the youth. The essay emphasizes the importance of respecting cultural elements and adapting to a changing world.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Essay on leadership of Sundar Pichai
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Main challenges in the path of leadership
Testification before Congress was one of the potential challenge for Sundar Pichai
regarding his character. However, his cool nature helped him to deal with the external
interrogations in an efficient and effective manner. Inadequacies and compromises filled the
early life of Sundar, which was reflected from the living in a two room apartment (Ahmed
2018). In the initial stages of joining Google, he encountered objections from the then CEO,
which acted as an obstacle in exercising his thoughts. However, adamancy, dedication,
commitment helped him to execute the thoughts into actions. Pichai also observed that
rewards and recognition for the lucrative efforts are the means for attracting more and more
clients for emerging as a People’s Leader.
Leadership strategies
“Practice what you preach” seems absolutely perfect for the enigmatic personality,
Sundar Pichai. His leadership strategy has been demarcated as, ‘To not only see your own
success, but to focus on the success of others.” In stating this, Pichai focuses on the exposure
of leadership approach towards making others successful. Pendergraft (2019) states that the
essential attributes in this case is guidance and assistance, which would enable the individuals
to fulfil the identified and specified goals. Pichai also believed in the creation of a
collaborative and supportive working culture, where the individuals can showcase their
talents.
Application of the leadership lessons in future
Sundar Pichai is of the view that an individual should not forget the roots. This is an
important issue in terms of respecting the cultural elements. Apart from this, he beliefs that
others’ success is the keystone for achieving success. In this, he emphasized on training
others as a leader. He stated the more selfish, more is the chance of not being approached by

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others. Here, McCord, Young and Weisdorn (2017) is of the view that the theories of Great
Man Theory and Trait attains a positive connotation, as developing others enhances the
personality. If the individuals develop others, their skills, abilities and competencies are
revised, which drives them towards personal development.
Pichai also stresses on the development of the youths through the upgradation of the
skills of creativity and innovation. He is of the view that indulging the youths in the tasks
involving risks is beneficial for them in terms of expanding the thinking skills and judgmental
capabilities. Acknowledging the efforts of the youths is one of the other lessons, which
Sundar Pichai provides. Frangos (2018) opines that this acknowledgement would motivate
them to maintain consistency in the exposure of better performance and achieve the identified
and specified goals.
Humble nature of Pichai is an inspiration for the youths to create positive image in the
minds of the seniors and the managers in the future workplaces. According to him,
inquisitiveness to learn new things would help them to enhance the preconceived skills,
expertise and knowledge. Along with this, he also stressed on teamwork, which if adopted,
would be assistance in terms of removing the knowledge gaps and other incompetencies
(Pendergraft 2019).

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References
Ahmed, A.D., 2018. Leading In A Changing World. Leadership, 10, p.10.
Frangos, C., 2018. Crack the C-Suite Code: How Successful Leaders Make It to the Top.
Wharton Digital Press.
McCord, L.B., Young, T. and Weisdorn, G., 2017. Think “It’s Unethical But Legal”?
Executive Pay in the Crosshairs. International Journal of the Academic Business
World, 11(2).
Pendergraft, G., 2019. Controversy over gender differences and free speech at google. SAGE
Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals.