At first glance, Steve Tappin, a young 42-year-old, could be just any other anonymous blond British businessman in a crowd. In fact, even though I have his photograph smiling at me from his new book’s cover, I can’t find him in the lobby of the Taj Palace hotel, bustling with foreigners there for the Global Fund meeting. After 10 minutes of walking up to the wrong men, I was the one finally discovered by Tappin—with no photograph to help in his quest.
He was probably aided by the clueless look on my face, but he’s also got an innate ability to tune in to people. A few minutes of casual chatting and I almost forget I’m there to interview him—I quickly grasp how 150 of the world’s most powerful men and women spilled all sorts of personal and professional secrets to him, even though they knew these would make it to the pages of his book The Secrets of CEOs (co-authored by Andrew Cave).
By the book: Tappin gave up his job as a CEO when he realized he was losing work-life balance. Jayachandran / Mint
Along with writing, Tappin serves as managing partner in the global CEO and Board practice at Heidrick and Struggles, an executive search firm. After a week of meetings in India—just one stop on his global book launch—Tappin is more than happy to head for the Oriental Express bar, where he and his assistant order gin and tonics and toast the last interview of the week.
We settle in and quickly fall into a conversation that jumps from US President-elect Barack Obama’s leadership skills (“corporate leaders can learn from someone like that”) to soccer (“it’s my own form of spirituality”) and the economic crisis (“it’s like a domino effect—or more like a tsunami effect”).
I quickly admit to Tappin that I know next to nothing about the world of business. Books, art, couches? Sure. But Infosys and Wipro? You’re speaking a foreign language to me.
Tappin laughs and says that more than business, he’s interested in leadership skills and how to live a full life—two factors people often fail to consider in business, to their company’s detriment.
“Business schools give people the foundation of management, but they don’t teach anything about leadership,” Tappin says. “We train people to be experts in marketing or accounting or purchasing, but not in leading. In my MBA, the people who did well did average in school, but they were the people’s persons. They were charismatic, fun to be with.”