Sir George Buckley, known internationally for leadership in business and academics, generously provided comments on both our books. He currently serves as chancellor at the University of Huddersfield, where he earned his first degree in engineering. On his return in 2020, he shared some of his views on leadership. Here’s our favorite part.
We’ve got the Sir George Buckley Leadership Center here, which was officially launched last year, and it’ll see the development of our future leaders. What key characteristics do you think make an excellent leader?
“Courage, charisma, knowledge, wisdom, communications capability, that ability to inspire people who are not inspired or get them to lift their performance, it might not necessarily be military, but in all kinds of ways, in all walks of life in industry, leaders are the people that always seem to have that hard to define capability of doing what’s right at the right time and leading is a privilege and a responsibility and an obligation.
So if you have the privilege of leading a group of people, you have the obligation to do your level best to help them in all walks, whether it’s getting resources for them, helping with the objectives. And you have another obligation, which is to come across partly as an oracle. When you have a conversation with someone like the one we’re having today, in all great conversations sometimes you get to be a teacher and sometimes you get to be a student. And they’re the very best interactions you can have with people because again, life, companies, educational institutes, you know, the women’s institutes or whatever it would be, it’s always about people. It’s always about people.”
Watch the whole interview here.