Netflix founder Reed Hastings on the most important leadership quality for building a company

“You have to be authentic. You've got no hope if you try to pretend to be Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates… And you've got to really get comfortable with yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. People are inspired by authenticity and I'm just surprised how many people feel like they're acting or try to act.”

He continues:

“If you have a desire for the company to be great, and your own role in that is secondary - and you authentically express that - you will be greatly accepted. That's all it takes… if everybody knows and you act in the notion of what's good for the company, they will see that and people will follow you and they won't be cynical. It's when you hide things, it's when you pretend that you lose trust very quickly.”

Full video: Kleiner Perkins “Reed Hastings: Building an Iconic Company“ (Sep 2015)