Ratan Tata is one of the most influential leaders India . He was born on 28 December 1937 in Surat. The 81-year-old man began his career in 1961 with the Tata group. He led the company from a $ 1.5 billion market cap to a $ 100 billion market cap with his great leadership. Tata group was founded in 1868 which was headquartered in Mumbai, India. Ratan Tata is the grandson of Jamsetji Tata, who is well known as “The Father of Indian Industry.” He spent around 21 years to lead the Tata Sons from 1991-2012 and he is called a “born leader” for his contributions to the business and industry as a whole. Ratan Naval Tata has also been awarded “PadamVibhushan” and “PadamBhushan” in the year 2008 & 2000 respectively for his contribution towards trade and industry.
Leadership Qualities and Styles of Ratan Tata
He has great leadership qualities and skills from which we can learn how to be a great and influential leader in the future. We will discuss some of his illustrious leadership qualities and skills. We can consider these as lessons from Ratan Tata .
A Visionary Leader: He is a true visionary leader and he knows where he is right and where he wants his company to be. When he joined the company, no one knew this company would run outside of India. But Ratan Tata made it possible with his vision and now half of Tata’s revenue comes from global.
Ability to Motivate Others: He has an eminent quality to inspire and motivate people. He can be able to motivate his employees in order to get the job done effectively and efficiently. He has also made it sure by his leadership quality that employees and management should be stick to the company’s values.
Humility: Ratan Tata has remained a humble man throughout his career. Staying humble made him a great leader and he always put himself grounded. As a result, he could easily serve his organization and its employees according to their interests.
A Man of Values: He believes that a company should be run on principles, not on personalities. Mr. Ratan Tata and his company Tata had some core values which they followed all through their journey. He is also well known for promoting financial transparency and intense vetting for grants for projects which help the needy people. Furthermore, public safety and welfare are some of their core values which they always followed. This leadership quality has made them one of the most trusted groups worldwide.
A Man with Positive Attitude: He always has a positive attitude and he puts a smile on his face in every situation. He always possesses a positive outlook towards any difficult situation. He always tries to be a doer, not a criticizer.
Risk Taker: He always believes in taking the risk. He thinks that life is not lived unless he takes chances and learns how to survive the odds of new challenges. Once he said, “I don’t believe in making the right decisions. I take decisions and make them right.”
A Man with Promise: He is a man of keeping the promise. For example, one of his pet projects Nano was mired in controversy about land acquisition for the factory. After the protest of farmers in Singur, West Bengal, his company had to pull out of the state. But after all these happenings, He kept his promise run this project. Tata was shifted to Gujarat and delivered its promise to build the cheapest car.
Few other leadership traits of Ratan Tata are given below:
- Decision Maker
- Initiator
- A Man of Integrity
- A lifelong learner
His leadership styles helped him to run the business smoothly. Mr. Ratan is an unwearying individual. He never keeps his work undone for tomorrow. He is also capable of bringing tremendous energy in any matter, be it finance, technical stuff or business. He also created a structure in his organization through which his company transfers a huge amount of responsibility from the center to states. As a result, different types of leaders come out from different business environments.
Leadership Skills of Ratan Tata
A Man with Management Skills: Ratan Tata possesses management skills even before he was a leader. He understands very well when changing the management style in order to lead his organization through a certain process. The management style of the whole Tata Group has changed remarkably after Ratan Tata became the leader of the Group. With the help of his management skills, trust has become a huge facet of the Tata group. Ratan Tata approached different managerial skills in a short period of time when quick and informed decisions need to be taken. Being a man of few words, he has the leadership skill to push for bold international deals specifically at the time of global acquisitions of business powerhouses namely Jaguar, Corus and Tetley Tea, etc.
Creative: Ratan Tata is a man with creative skills. As a leader, he has to take a number of decisions and he has to think out of the box. He is creative in investing in different companies to safeguard his investments. Such as he obtained a stake in Snapdeal, a leading e-commerce site, and Chinese giant Xiaomi. With the help of his creativity, he ensures that his investment is safe by investing his money in different projects. Moreover, he used his excellent creativity both in Titan Edge watches which developed the world’s thinnest watch and in Nano which has become the cheapest car in the world.
Expert in Handling Human Relations: Human relations is very important to bring success to the company. Ratan Tata has the skill to handle human relationships in a good manner. He gives great importance to this matter. He is an expert in bringing all the officers of his company together and inspires them to work with unity of command and direction. According to Jaago Re campaign, he included Tata Group’s CEO’s concept of community philanthropy in the workplace as evidence of Tata Group’s steadfast commitment to social service.
In conclusion, few leaders have created deep impacts in India and also globally. Ratan Tata is undoubtedly one of them. He is India’s best brand ambassador who consolidates many qualities that are simple but great and are being ignored by many leaders on the race to the top.
The article explored and analyzed the leadership qualities and skills of Ratan Tata in terms of his business decision making process.
Sadnan is one of the top contributors of The Strategy Watch, he has been actively contributing since 2017 as a Content Analyst; He has finished his graduation from North South University with a dual major in Accounting & Finance. As a contributor, he has written for different topics including Leadership Styles and Qualities, Finance, and Economics. He also has a strong interest in SWOT & PESTLE Analysis and Marketing Strategy.