What a ceo needs to know

by Cheryl Powers

Lead, follow or get out of the way. That’s the sentiment I grew up with. My dad was a naval officer in WWII who served at the same time as Ronald Reagan was in the US Army. And my dad knew how to steer a ship. He was kind, consistent, and competent and he taught me a great deal about leadership.

Unfortunately, in today’s business climate I see far too many leaders turning over the helm to employees who haven’t a clue about leadership, budgets, revenue, selling, or management. Unless, of course, you consider how well the employees manage their bosses or how they manage to consistently underperform.

Why this lack of leadership now? Now, more than ever, companies need their leaders to be smart, strong, decisive, out in front. Today’s leaders need to be fearless in managing their businesses and their people. They need to be able to make decisions and get their employees to rally behind those decisions. They need to take massive daily action toward the company’s goals. Today’s leaders and managers must develop the skills necessary to recruit, hire, train, manage, coach, debrief, and partner with their employees in service of increased revenue, customer engagement, and innovation.

Most CEOs I meet with have no idea just how many opportunities they are leaving on the table by forfeiting their duty to set a bold vision, over communicate the details of the mission, and demand accountability to the subset of goals and targets that must be systematically achieved to make the vision a reality. For most, the opportunity can be measured dollars (usually in the range of multi-millions of dollars) and in respect (as in losing the respect of those who matter) from team members, shareholders, and customers.

The funny thing is that when we perform the analysis (request a sample here), calculate the numbers and they see in bold print how much they are losing, it’s as if they knew it in their gut all along but didn’t have a way to address it or approach it. Now that they see the path we have laid out to fix the problems that are keeping them from growing faster or more profitably, most want to right the ship. But wanting it is only a fraction of what it will take to make it happen.

“It’s going to be painful,” I tell them. “It’s going to take hard work, determination, and real accountability. If you’re not willing to do what it takes, let's not move forward together.” There simply is no point in paying us to help you start a job you're not prepared to finish.

Vision takes courage. Execution takes guts. Results take Leadership.

“It’s going to be painful,” I tell them. “It’s going to take hard work, determination, and real accountability. If you’re not willing to do what it takes, let's not move forward together.” There simply is no point in paying us to help you start a job you're not prepared to finish.

These are tough words to hear. They are tough to say but they need to be said. Leading change means taking personal responsibility for making it happen. It means implementing real accountability throughout the company with consequences for inaction. Let’s face it, many companies are like badly behaving teenagers. Chronic bad behavior has its roots in the chronic abdication of responsibility, which fosters a sense of entitlement and breeds a culture of drama and underachievement.

You can fix this. The first part of the solution is taking radical personal responsibility for your part in creating it in the first place and allowing it to be there. If you can have the tough conversation with yourself, forgive yourself completely for not knowing or doing better, and solemnly promise to do better now that you know better then you will be able to have the same tough conversations with your leadership team. You will also be modeling the type of conversations you will expect them to have with their teams going forward.

While some of your people simply will not be able or willing to make the changes necessary, many of them can and will turn their performance around when you provide the help they need and begin to hold them accountable to high performance. And there are high achievers in the workforce looking to go to work for serious leaders who are doing something worthwhile. Great people want to do great things. They want to excel. They want to follow greatness.

As for the underachievers, redeploy them to more suitable roles or as my dad would say, ship them out. I told you it was going to be tough but keeping chronic under-performers is not the answer --- for you or for them. Keeping them in a role that they are not suited for compromises the mission and the integrity of all involved.

Michelangelo said, "the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

Here are some important questions you should be asking. There are many more but these 25 will get you started.

1. How aligned are your leaders around your core mission?

2. What execution skills are lacking in your core management team?

3. Is your pipeline as robust and as full as it should be? Is your pipeline management system useful, effective, milestone-centric, and legacy?

4. Are all of your salespeople capable of selling enough to help you reach goal and grow your company profitably?

5. Who can sell more than they are now?

6. Who will? And - Who wants to sell more but can’t because they don’t have the skills?

7. Can any of your salespeople be performing 2X, 3X, 4X, or 10X better than they are now?

8. What specific weaknesses are keeping your salespeople from reaching their full potential?

9. How much do you and your sales managers regularly discount sales forecasts?

10. How much does a sales call cost you?

11. How much does an underperformed cost you?

12. How aligned is your team around your value proposition?

13. How effective are your managers at driving high performance?

14. How effective are your managers at coaching and developing underachievers?

15. What is the current growth potential of each individual contributor?

16. What is the growth potential of the entire team?

17. What is the current state of your managers' skills?

18. What will it take to increase those skills to the level it needs to be?

19. What has to change before your salespeople consistently sell at higher margins?

20. Do you have the right people, the right managers in the right seats?

21. What is your current action plan to improve revenue performance?

22. Are you spending resources training the wrong people?

23. Are you spending resources training the wrong things?

24. How much time and money does it take to get a new producer in place when you lose one?

25. If your top salesperson resigned today, what steps would you take to replace the revenue?

BONUS QUESTION:

26. Are you ready to pull back the blindfold and get some real answers and a plan of action?

There’s a BIG payoff for winning the battle. You get to keep part of the winnings and you’ll feel great about yourself. And I’ll be here to help you every step of the way.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on growing revenue through leadership. Please leave your comments below or contact me directly at [email protected].

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If you were to narrow down the ideal qualities of a CEO to five items, what would you choose to include? Many would consider leadership, confidence or communication: these are certainly important CEO qualifications. But, do they make a good CEO? Maybe not: for example, according to research published in Harvard Business Review, confidence will make a CEO twice as likely to get hired, but it doesn’t seem to impact how well they do the job.

Conversely, a good CEO is someone who’s capable of juggling several critical duties and also remain trusted and respected decision-makers by others – particularly his or her colleagues and employees. To do this, and sustain it, you need to possess or build those less-than-tangible characteristics.

So, if you intend to become a good CEO, or if you’re trying to get even better at your job as the first in command, develop these five important skills.

Here are 5 qualities of a CEO:

Foresight

Foresight means having critical thinking when it comes to future planning and possibilities. It’s a characteristic that’s useful to all of us in our work and personal lives. But, for CEOs especially, it’s twice as important. You’re dealing with a lot of money, investors and business activities – usually all at once – and you’re also responsible for steering the company in the right direction. Having the ability to forecast what could happen in a few months or even years from now, and prepare for the possible outcomes, is one of the most invaluable characteristics of a CEO.

And of course, sometimes, it’s about making the right decision, even if it’s counterintuitive. For example, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke (recent controversy aside) made a smart move in deciding to consciously slow Shopify’s growth in order to keep it manageable for him.

So, in order to have better foresight:

• Think outside of the box. Sometimes, a solution is unexpected or you can reach a solution in a different way than you anticipated. Don’t rule out any course of action unless it’s truly non-feasible.
• Spend time to weigh the pros and cons of each decision. Speedy decision-making is often praised in the workplace, but what’s more important is to slow down every once in a while and make sure you’ve considered every scenario for the longer-term success of the business.
• Keep abreast of developments. With so many things going on in your company and the market, it’s easy to focus on some areas, and neglect others. Find a system that allows you to monitor various changes and leave some time in your calendar just for reading and learning about various topics and news.

Adaptability

Think of the story of Blockbuster, a once fast-growing, international company worth billions that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010. Despite its CEO John Antioco making some efforts to change the business model and compete with growing threats such as Netflix and Redbox, BlockBuster as a company (and its subsequent leadership) was slow to adapt and never adjusted its established methods of making money.

This isn’t just a lesson in adapting to changing markets or, in this case, the digital revolution. It’s also a matter of adapting to the circumstances around you, i.e. the frustration of board members about declining revenue, the controversies or the conflicts that may appear occasionally, and more. You need to adapt your strategy to ensure buy-in from the right people at the right time. This would be an indication that you possess one of the important qualities of a CEO.

So, to be more adaptable:

• Change mindset. Whenever you face a change, think about any positive aspects first. For example, if your COO suddenly quits, it might be an opportunity for restructuring or bringing someone better along. Keep an open mind and try to see challenges as opportunities.
• Build scenarios and prepare. Related to the ability of foresight, being adaptable is to often anticipate what you’ll need to adapt to. That way you won’t be taken by surprise and make decisions under pressure. Take it from Warren Buffett and spend substantial chunks of time just thinking and preparing. Sometimes, you may find that you’ll have to prepare to resist change in a particular scenario.
• Push yourself to improvise. Some people are naturally adaptable, while others prefer structure and predictability. As a CEO, you’ll definitely deal with change one way or another, so if you don’t feel adaptability comes naturally, push yourself to experiment (e.g. by changing the agenda of a standard meeting, discussing an unexpected business move or taking a calculated risk).

COVID-19 has shifted the way we work – and some of it, permanently. Our New World of Work survey found a great deal of uncertainty about the road ahead, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Learn more in our in-depth report

Reliability

Any good employee, no matter their rank, needs to be reliable. But, we’re all human: we may promise something we can’t deliver, or make the wrong decision in a critical matter. The problem is, when CEOs exhibit these behaviors, even rarely, they risk losing the trust of important people (namely their employees and the board of directors). That’s why a CEO should strive to be reliable all the time. It’s one of the most important qualities of a CEO.

Of course, this might not always happen – even generally popular CEO Elon Musk has drawn fire for possibly breaking laws that protect unions and alienating many of his employees. This may hurt his reliability in the eyes of many people, as he was often considered a leader with a solid public image who cared about his company’s employees.

So, to be reliable:

• Be transparent. Sometimes, you can’t guarantee that something will or will not happen, or that some action will succeed. But, it pays off to be honest about why you made a particular decision or even what you’ll be considering in order to make a decision.
• Prioritize and deliver on commitments. It’s important to accurately estimate the time and resources you have available, as well as the importance of each task. Be honest about when and what you can deliver, and make sure your calendar allows you to carry everything out.
• Think about your words and actions very carefully beforehand. CEOs must be extra careful with what they say or do, since every move you make is likely to be heavily scrutinized by those you depend on most to ensure the success of your organization – your colleagues.

Teamwork

Doing things autonomously is a behavior often associated with people of power, those looking down on everyone else from a watchtower and making decisions on their own. But, in real life, this is seldom the case for a smart CEO – there’s a great number of people whose input you need in order to make proper strategic and people decisions. Most CEOs know how important it is to consult with your C-suite team and even your lower-level employees.

This is one of the qualities of a CEO that involves active listening, posing the right questions and asking for feedback, and often also delegating work to your colleagues. As HR expert Hung Lee recently told us in an interview about CEO recruiting challenges: “We all interact with others in our work and we need to trust them to a certain degree to deliver for us.”

So, to make sure you can take advantage of teamwork:

• Build your team very carefully. To do this, consider building up your recruiting team first to help you find the best colleagues afterwards. Then, look into your network for competent people you trust.
• Listen well. Being a team player requires listening to what others have to say. Spend most of the time in meetings asking for information or feedback. Create plans jointly with your executive team when appropriate.
• Identify the right people to speak to. You’ll probably discuss a merger with the CFO, but shouldn’t you spend an equal amount of time talking about this to your HR manager, too? Make sure you really think about whose input would be useful to you each time.

Need to post jobs to build your executive team? Try out the top executive job boards.

Decency

Last but not least, decency: a trait that can greatly help you be a better CEO. A significant part of a CEO’s job is relationship-building; with shareholders, investors, employees, and the public. It’ll be much easier for others to trust you enough to understand your vision and help you realize it, if you show genuine decency and care toward them.

And that, of course, doesn’t only mean being a good person. It’s about showing compassion and understanding, and also being alert for how different factors impact your employees or the public. What happened with former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is an example to avoid: he was accused of allowing a toxic culture of sexual harassment inside Uber. This cost him his job and cost other people a lot more.

So, to show your decency toward others:

• Put the human factor first. It’s easy to get lost in numbers and the business side of things – you’re accountable for these things after all. But, make sure you always consider the impact on people before you make decisions.
• Ask for feedback. Talk with people about what they think of a situation or how they perceive something (e.g. a comment or a decision you made, or a process you want to implement). Pay attention to what they say and analyze it.
• Look for approaches that work. Sometimes, there’s a way to approach a situation that you haven’t thought of. Search for methods or examples of handling difficult situations such as layoffs and firing employees.

But… what makes a successful CEO is more than a list

Our list of the top qualities of a CEO is by no means exhaustive. Leading an organization is a complex job that demands all kinds of skills. What’s important is to seek out the feedback and advice you need to develop all critical qualities of a CEO.

So, whether you want to be the next Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg is up to you. Learn about how to become a better CEO by studying examples of leadership to emulate and examples to avoid. And remember, the best CEOs are the ones people want to work with. With the five traits featured here, you’re well on your way to inspire and retain your best employees and stakeholders.

A CEO should have a clear direction in which they want to steer their business. Ambition and optimism are good things when grounded in reality, and the head of a company needs to believe in those goals. Being able to inspire others to buy into your vision is an important tool in leadership.

What are the skills required to be a CEO?

Skills needed to be a CEO include sociability, teamwork, learning new things, creativity, time management skills, erudition, and strong communication skills. To find the most talented employees in the coming years, you will need these skills for you and everyone on your team.

What hard skills should CEOs have?

CEOs must communicate with their employees using concise, easy-to-understand language, and they need to know how to foster collaboration and open-mindedness among their subordinates to grow the business.