CEO Red Bull shares leadership lessons

November 30, 2021: Mr. Adnan Ahmed, Visiting Faculty, School of Business Studies, organized a guest speaker session for Sales Management MBA students. Mr. Taimour Afaq, CEO, Red Bull was the guest speaker, who shared his selling experiences with the students. Mr. Afaq has an18-year association with leading organizations including, ICI, Pepsi, Mondelez and Kraft Heinz. He has been the CEO, Red Bull for the past 3 years.

Shedding light on the qualities of an effective sales leader, Mr. Afaq highlighted that a sales leader needs to have the ability to inspire and motivate his team. "In Red Bull, they turn the organizational structure upside down in all of their presentations to emphasize that the top leadership teams need to facilitate the people who are actually working to achieve the organizations objectives", said Mr. Afaq. He shared his own leadership mantra and spoke about his leadership principles; Inspire, Empathize, Park your ego at home, Be coachable and Be here now. The latter stresses on developing listening skills and giving attention to people when you are communicating with them. He also highlighted the need for feedback for leaders, but also cautioned on how feedback is to be given to your managers. He underlined the importance of learning from anyone, irrespective of the hierarchical ladder.

The guest speaker enlightened the class about the success his company had achieved in Pakistan over the years. Moreover, he shed light on how the role of a modern-day chief executive had evolved to be that of a facilitator for the various functions in the organization. Mr. Afaq spoke about the huge potential that Pakistani market holds which is yet to be realized by companies. Additionally, he underscored the emerging and untapped rural market of Pakistan which can't be ignored in terms of their sales potential.

The session concluded with an interactive Q&A session.