Leading with Empathy: The Inspiring Journey of Gil Geron

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Gil Geron, CEO and one of Orca Security’s Co-Founders, is one of the most outstanding and humble executives I've met. From the inception of the company, he and his partners have succeeded in instilling a corporate culture that is both exceptional within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and inherently natural and logical for achieving success in a constantly evolving competitive environment. Only in hindsight did they realize how their leadership approach was a significant factor in the company's ability to transform both investors and clients expectations for cloud security solutions.

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Party of Eight

When Orca Security was founded, it was intriguing to see the investors' reactions when they realized the company had eight co-founders. However, driven by their unwavering commitment to follow their hearts, their extraordinary qualities, boundless creativity, and desire to solve major problems, they led the company to raise $650 million and achieve a valuation of $1.8 billion in just 5.5 years.

Gil shares that a sufficiently big idea was needed to justify such a large and rare partnership in the entrepreneurial world, and indeed, that was the case. The deep trust each partner had in one another allowed them to make "unusual" moves. Their management approach dictates that every decision is made by the relevant professional executive for that decision. Without ego, they respect each expert's decision-making, which has enabled them to address significant issues in the cybersecurity field. To this day, they have maintained this approach, ensuring a healthy balance of power.

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Choosing to Set Ego Aside

The choice is always to put ego aside. There will always be many considerations and opinions, and

"if you don't trust and let go, it won’t work."

For Gil, approaching with patience and unwavering faith in each other allows overcoming difficulties and achieving great things through each person’s strengths.

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An Empathetic Leader

One of the most significant insights Gil has gained over his years as a manager is that when faced with a difficult decision about an employee, partner, or client, one should look at the person in front of them, their journey to their current position, and how they would like to be treated in that situation. Gil provides remarkable management insights for both managers and employees. He believes that true growth occurs when you can step outside the situation and understand the best way to handle it.

“As a manager, I am skilled at recognizing this. Sometimes I need to make decisions on behalf of the other side, even when they don’t see it now as best for them personally,” Gil explains. When the rug is pulled out from under us, this is where the growth mindset comes into play—seeing the opportunity for the next personal and professional leap.

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Managing Amidst Uncertainty

On October 7th, when Gil’s wife called to inform him that war broked, he was in New York. He quickly realized that despite the difficulty of not being in the country and the uncertainty, the only thing he could do was to work. When he returned to Israel, he had to manage a company in distress. Gil’s empathetic approach was uniquely demonstrated at the start of the war when he ensured the recruitment of psychologists, conducted random daily check-ins with employees to make them feel heard and supported.

From our conversation, it was clear how the organizational and managerial infrastructure they built early on influenced their ability to handle unexpected crises like war. This infrastructure enabled them to cope with immense uncertainty through a holistic and comprehensive view of the company and its people.

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Joy of Creation

Ultimately, Gil attributes much of his managerial success to the joy of creation that has driven him strongly from the beginning until today. His passion for pushing boundaries and creating change is his motivation and fuel. For him, creating means making a difference. This approach originated from his Physics degree and his role in the Air Force. Gil invites any entrepreneur with aspirations to achieve great things to imagine a new world with no boundaries, which enables us to see things that do not yet exist in the current reality and drive us forward.

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