Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes leaders are turning into event managers. Here's why

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella also stressed that leaders should keep learning soft skills to keep up with the changing times. (File photo)

Satya Nadella believes leaders need to reinvent themselves with the changing times to effectively manage their employees and "for the world to be a better place" even if it requires them to turn into event managers. Speaking about leadership during a chat with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, the Microsoft CEO listed three things that leaders need to focus on.

"I think the world needs today, more than anything else from leaders, are optimism and energy," Nadella said. "It's easy to be down on everything [but] my true measure of any leader is who can come into a situation, bring clarity, generate energy, and solve over-constraint problems. As long as you do those three things, I think the world will be a better place."

The Microsoft boss also stressed that leaders should keep learning soft skills that would help them understand and manage their employees better. Taking an example of how the audience turned up for the chat between the two billionaires, Nadella said leaders should note that "people come for people".

"Think about it... people came here not because you set up a police and mandated it, they came for other people. People come for people, not policy. And I'd like to say that all of us now are event managers; if I say I have a meeting, nobody is going to show up but if I say I have an event, people are going to come. And so you really have to learn, as a leader, new soft skills around how to create occasions, what does it mean to hold an event," he said.

During the chat, Nadella also revealed that Microsoft is grappling with a "productivity paradox" in which most managers reported that employees have been slacking off work while the employees claimed that they have been working too hard.