A Leicestershire entrepreneur has been named one of the UK’s top business leaders in a prestigious annual list honouring kindness in leadership.
Dr Nik Kotecha OBE DL, who is the founder and former chairman of Loughborough-based Morningside Pharmaceuticals, has been included in the UK’s Top 50 Kindness & Leadership Leading Lights.
The annual list honours leaders from the public and private sectors, as well as academia, who are using the power of kindness to make a transformative impact in business and to empower change.
Speaking about the importance of kindness to effective leadership, Dr Kotecha said: “I’m truly humbled to make this list and to be among some of the UK’s leading lights when it comes to putting kindness at the heart of corporate governance.
“Giving back to communities in the UK and globally has always been at the core of my own personal mission, when establishing new business ventures. As an entrepreneur and business leader over the past 35 years I have also ensured this ethos has been central to my companies’ mission and values, which in turn brings about important non-financial benefits for the business, our people and society as a whole.”
For Dr Kotecha, establishing a culture of kindness, is key to business success. He said: “The culture of a business always comes from the top, and must be lived and breathed every day by an organisation’s leadership.
“It’s important that businesses separate kindness and community related activities from commercial targets. Often these activities bring about great benefits, which support commercial activities in terms of motivating teams, as well as aiding employee recruitment and retention.”
In addition to pioneering ethical leadership within entrepreneurship, Dr Kotecha is also chair of the East Midlands CBI, a Department for International Trade Export Champion; and a Board Member for the Midlands Engine Council, the Centre for Social Justice, the British Asian Trust and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP).
In 2017 he also established his family’s charitable foundation, which through providing grant funding to charities around the world, has directly saved more than 150,000 lives and significantly improved almost 400,000 in the UK and globally.
Speaking about the importance of making the list to the work of his foundation, Dr Kotecha added: “When we setup the Randal Charitable Foundation we had a vision for its work to be a vehicle for leading the way on delivering transformative lasting change for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in UK & global societies.”
The goal of the Kindness & Leadership Top 50 is to challenge the global leadership conversation by placing a spotlight on trailblazers who are using the power of kindness to make an impact in business and to empower positive change.
The 2022 judging panel was made up of international business leaders and was chaired by HRH Princess Badiya Bint El Hassan of Jordan. New and previous listees include chairman of the Midlands Engine and Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, Sir John Peace, as well as Ruw Abeyratne, director of Health Equality and Inclusion at University Hospitals of Leicester, and Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever.
Talking about why the Kindness & Leadership Top 50 Leading Lights is so important to transformational leadership, its founder Pinky Lilani CBE DL, added: “These phenomenal leaders are driving transformative change within their businesses, communities and on a global scale, making a remarkable impact by harnessing the power of kindness in their leadership.
“We have been blown away by the nominations we have received and it is clear that even in the toughest times, kindness is the currency that empowers, enabling individuals to reach their full potential and, ultimately, reflecting in business success, too.”
