Goldman Sachs Talks

Nitin Nohria, The Responsibility of Leadership

Effective leaders must exercise both leadership and management skills to create real change in any organization, according to Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. Here, Nohria discusses that distinction, the role institutions must play in embracing diversity and “enabling human possibility,” and the important opportunity the business community has to generate prosperity and break the global cycle of poverty.

On management versus leadership: “We underestimate the importance of management. [You need] a general management perspective, which is to really know what it means to assemble all of the parts... but then you must have leadership, you must know how to inspire people, you must have a sense of the future.”

On the benefits of capitalism: “The single most important form of dignity that you can give a human being is for them to feel economically self-reliant…There is only one way to do that, and that is business.”