What business leaders can learn from Ukraine’s Zelensky

In the ear­ly days of the war in Ukraine, US TV described pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky as “Churchill with a social media account”. Since the fight­ing began at the end of Feb­ru­ary, he has won praise and plau­dits around the world for his speech­es to his peo­ple and par­lia­men­tary address­es.

The com­ic actor-turned-politi­cian made his name in Ser­vant of the Peo­ple, a satire series he cre­at­ed and starred in as a high school teacher who is unwit­ting­ly cho­sen to lead the coun­try. Four years after the first episode aired in 2015, life imi­tat­ed art and he was pro­pelled to the pres­i­den­cy. 

While Zelen­sky has a team of writ­ers behind him who help craft his speech­es, it’s his deliv­ery and authen­tic­i­ty that res­onates. There are clear lessons in his lead­er­ship style. Here are four qual­i­ties Zelen­sky has shown that busi­ness­es can learn from. 

Adaptability

Speak­ing to Time mag­a­zine in April, Zelen­sky said he had to make “fast deci­sions” to pro­tect him­self and his fam­i­ly on the first day of the inva­sion. The mil­i­tary had informed him that Russ­ian troops had para­chut­ed into Kyiv to kill or cap­ture them.

“Being con­ver­sa­tive, rusty, and unwill­ing to take cal­cu­lat­ed risks, means los­ing. Zelen­sky is the oppo­site of that,” says Maksym Liashko, CEO of Pari­match Tech, which has a large pres­ence in Ukraine. The glob­al mar­ket­ing solu­tions com­pa­ny for the enter­tain­ment and gam­ing indus­try has donat­ed 60m hryv­nia (about £1.65m) to sup­port the war effort. 

“Mak­ing fast deci­sions and being able to adjust to the sit­u­a­tion as it unfolds has helped Ukraine to stay ahead of the ene­my on the bat­tle­field.”

The same applies in busi­ness set­tings. To be inno­v­a­tive, lead­ers must think quick­ly, adapt­ing to chang­ing needs.

“One of our core prin­ci­ples woven into the cor­po­rate DNA since our first day is adapt­abil­i­ty,” says Liashko. “If you can analyse the mar­ket sit­u­a­tion fast and assess the poten­tial ways to move for­ward with pre­ci­sion, you will stay ahead of the com­peti­tors and come out on top.”

Empathy

Pub­lic con­fi­dence in politi­cians has arguably nev­er been so low, but Zelen­sky has won peo­ple over and gal­vanised for­eign sup­port with his empa­thy and vis­i­bil­i­ty. 

“For me, the stand-out les­son from his lead­er­ship is his laser focus on both pro­tect­ing his peo­ple and advo­cat­ing for his coun­try on the inter­na­tion­al stage,” says Pip Hul­bert, UK CEO at Wun­der­man Thomp­son. 

To take one exam­ple, Zelen­sky reject­ed Pres­i­dent Biden’s offer to evac­u­ate him out of Ukraine, say­ing he need­ed “ammu­ni­tion, not a ride”, and vowed to stay behind to join the fight. 

“As busi­ness lead­ers, the choic­es we make may not be life and death, but it’s essen­tial to lead with vision, advo­cat­ing for both the suc­cess of your busi­ness and the peo­ple who work for it,” Hul­bert adds. 

“The stakes may be low­er for us, but we’d do well to learn from Zelensky’s exam­ple. Vis­i­bil­i­ty and empa­thy build trust that deci­sions are being made with the inter­ests of your team at the core.”

Trust

Zelensky’s emo­tion­al appeals have hit home, be it his night­ly address­es or speech­es to the US Con­gress or oth­er law­mak­ers. They’ve also helped him and his gov­ern­ment to build trust.

“He is after all very com­fort­able in front of the cam­era and knows how to get his mes­sage across,” argues Dominik Lip­nic­ki, founder and direc­tor of Your Mort­gage Deci­sions. “There isn’t a ‘do as I say and not as I do’ con­flict in the mes­sag­ing. He is able to com­mu­ni­cate at all lev­els. This is a skill that is impor­tant for lead­ers in busi­ness as well as pol­i­tics.”

Liashko com­mends Zelenksy’s abil­i­ty to ensure that he has a team of trust­wor­thy peo­ple around him, such as the com­man­der-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, Valerii Zaluzh­ny, who has been respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing out com­plex oper­a­tions. Hav­ing reli­able peo­ple by your side is a must when deal­ing with a large machine, whether that’s a for­eign invad­er or mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, says Liashko.  

Lip­nic­ki agrees. “Zelen­sky has clear­ly sur­round­ed him­self with peo­ple who are just as com­mit­ted as he is to get­ting the job done,” he says.

Sim­i­lar­ly, busi­ness lead­ers need to hone the art of del­e­ga­tion and be able to trust their employ­ees to make dif­fi­cult deci­sions. Giv­ing them the author­i­ty or pow­er to act helps devel­op their capa­bil­i­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties.

“It’s when every minor deci­sion ends up being micro­man­aged by a sin­gle per­son that the prob­lems inevitably hap­pen,” says Liashko, not­ing that micro­man­age­ment is inef­fec­tive and can lead to morale and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty drop­ping off. 

“What we can learn from Zelen­sky is that hav­ing an aim is very impor­tant, but unless you’re able to take peo­ple along with you on what will be a very test­ing jour­ney, this tar­get will be hard to hit,” says Lip­nic­ki.

Conviction 

Zelensky’s courage and resilience have helped Ukraini­ans believe that vic­to­ry is an even­tu­al­i­ty. 

“We became vis­i­ble, we are ask­ing ques­tions that get answered by the world. Thanks to that con­fi­dent approach Ukraine is already [clos­er to] join­ing the Euro­pean Union,” says Liashko.

The Ukrain­ian government’s pre­ci­sion and bold­ness in deal­ing with an array of mil­i­tary, eco­nom­ic, diplo­mat­ic and infra­struc­ture chal­lenges has been inspir­ing, Liashko says. Zelen­sky knows there will be plen­ty of dif­fi­cult days ahead, but his con­vic­tion has helped the peo­ple of Ukraine to believe. 

Zelen­sky told CNN last month: “The only belief there is belief in our­selves, in our peo­ple, belief in our armed forces, and the belief that coun­tries are going to sup­port us not just with their words but with their actions.” 

The biggest take­away here, accord­ing to Liashko, is that busi­ness lead­ers shouldn’t be afraid to be bold and ask dif­fi­cult ques­tions, regard­less of how chal­leng­ing the answer may be. “Every­thing is pos­si­ble if you approach it with pas­sion and con­vic­tion.”