If you asked me in my teens who my role models were, I would have dropped a few names: Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s most famous game designer; George Lucas, the filmmaker that spawned Star Wars; Akira Toriyama, the artist behind Dragon Ball; and Tom Fulp, founder of Newgrounds.com. But they are not role models; they are inspirations. I enjoyed their works, but I had no information on how they conducted themselves at work or what type of impact they made to their community.

I thought I had to look elsewhere to find role models. I’ve written in the past on two people from the Pittsburgh Steelers organization who were a positive influence on the team: Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene and current head coach Mike Tomlin. But surely the pool of role models can’t be limited to the world of sports, right?

Fortunately there is someone back in the video game industry who fits the niche: the late Satoru Iwata, who served as president of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015. Most knew Iwata as the public face of the company, but stories have spread on the true extent of his contributions. This year I read Ask Iwata, a collection of personal memoirs from Iwata as well as essays written by his peers in remembrance of Nintendo’s president.

Iwata as a Leader

“Whether I was for it or against it didn’t matter. When I’m convinced that I’m the best person for the job, I step up to the plate.” — Satoru Iwata on becoming president of HAL Laboratory when it was in financial trouble

Satoru Iwata started his video game career in the 1980s as a programmer for HAL Laboratory, building rapport using his proficiency with programming. Iwata was promoted to president of HAL in 1993; however, this was no time to celebrate as he inherited the role when the company was 1.5 billion yen in debt. Under Iwata’s leadership, HAL Laboratory paid off that debt in six years.

In 2002, Iwata replaced Hiroshi Yamauchi as president of Nintendo. After poor sales of the Nintendo GameCube, Iwata made the company open to innovation and pushed the company to create products with a wider market appeal. This resulted in the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii, two products that placed themselves on the list of best-selling game consoles and remain so to this date.

Iwata put the company’s needs ahead of his own when Nintendo fell into a downturn. The following generation of consoles, the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, were commercial failures. Rather than lay off vital talent, Iwata agreed to take a pay cut giving the company time to change direction. Nintendo returned to profitability at the end of fiscal year 2015.

Iwata as a Genius

“One way of defining a genius is ‘a person who can endlessly continue doing things that other people might dislike or easily grow tired of and be unable to continue.’” — Iwata on the essence of genius

Even as an executive, Satoru Iwata found opportunities to show off his technical prowess. Iwata programmed the first prototype of Super Smash Bros. by himself, describing the endeavor as “basically the ultimate indie game.” He was also instrumental to the Pokemon franchise, changing the code of the first generation of games to allow for translation to other languages and compressing Pokemon Gold and Silver to include both the Johto and Kanto regions. These contributions helped turn Pokemon into a worldwide phenomenon in the new millennium.

While these feats were impressive, to say that Satoru Iwata can single-handedly save a game paints an incomplete picture. Earlier in the 90s, Mother series creator Shigesato Itoi reached out to Iwata after Mother 2 (known in the US as EarthBound) was stuck in development for four years. Iwata predicted it would take another two years to complete development, but offered to rewrite the game from scratch in order to complete Mother 2’s development in half a year. However, this wasn’t a one-man mission. According to Itoi, “after announcing it would be done in half a year, he didn’t simply shut the door and fix the game himself. Rather, he set up systems so that the entire staff could fix the game together.” Iwata didn’t rely on his own talents alone; he also built tools to help his peers succeed as a team.

Iwata as a Team Player

“Itoi is over ten years older than me, but when I saw how much respect he showed toward people who could do things he didn’t understand, I thought, ‘This guy is cool. I want to be like that.” — Satoru Iwata on Shigesato Itoi

Some business leaders, most notably Apple’s Steve Jobs, built a reputation of abusing employees. By contrast, Satoru Iwata exhibited great empathy toward his staff. After being bullied for having asthma as a child, Iwata pledged to never look down at anyone. Under his philosophy, each employee has distinctive characteristics and they need to work together to take on large projects they cannot complete by themselves.

Another part of Iwata’s success can be attributed to his attentiveness. Ever since he was president of HAL, Iwata interviewed every employee twice a year to identify the problems his employees faced. By keeping an ear on the ground, morale remained high and employees remained motivated to work at the company.

Iwata as a Role Model

“He wasn’t my boss. He was a friend.” — Shigeru Miyamoto on Satoru Iwata

“He wanted to make everyone happy.” — Shigesato Itoi on Satoru Iwata

The quality of one’s leadership can be assessed by looking at one’s impact to an organization. Satoru Iwata was already amazing as an individual contributor, but his leadership skills amplified his ability to change a course of a company. By combining his talent with the strength of others, Iwata brought Nintendo through some of its greatest years. He did so while everyone felt welcomed, knowing that he had always their backs.

When I run an entertainment company, I want to be just like him.