Separating the best CEOs from the dolts
By Robert Sutton
Published: August 16 2010 22:11 | Last updated: August 16 2010 22:11
Headlines about smart leaders who do dumb things abound. The antics of deposed chief executives Mark Hurd and Tony Hayward are centrestage now, but tales of CEO delusion and detachment are never in short supply.
It still boggles my mind that, in November 2008, General Motors’ then CEO Rick Wagoner testified to the US Congress that virtually all GM’s problems resulted from the financial meltdown – ignoring evidence that GM was among the most calcified companies on the planet. Just ask Ed Whitacre, the outgoing CEO, who has battled to change a culture where the core competence of many leaders was explaining why it was impossible to do anything new.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Yet, when I consider research on the poisonous effects of wielding power, many CEOs get less credit than they deserve for maintaining a firm grip on reality.
After all, the CEO job seems designed to transform even the smartest and most self-aware person into a clueless dolt. For starters, many studies show that giving people power over others turns them into selfish, insensitive jerks who act like the rules are for “the little people”, not them. In one study, when people were given a bit of power, they responded by taking more cookies and chewing with their mouths open.
Research on “the blabbermouth theory of leadership” finds that when people become bosses, they talk more than underlings and interrupt them constantly. I once was at a meeting with a senior executive who never seemed to shut up. After a rare silent moment, he said something like, “It looks like I am listening, I am really not. I am just reloading, thinking of what to say next.”
Other studies show that, to curry favour with the boss, kissing-up is an effective strategy – even patently false flattery works. Conversely, there is the “mum” effect (keeping mum about undesirable messages). Just delivering bad news to your boss can provoke him or her to dislike you. Skilled gatekeepers sometimes magnify this blockage of bad news; one assistant made it difficult for people with bad news to see her boss because she did not like to upset him.
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This is a small sample of forces that cause many CEOs to live in a fool’s paradise. Yet plenty of bosses still have a firm grip on the risks and problems facing their businesses, and their own weaknesses too. Consider five hallmarks of such leaders.
First, they have what psychologist John Meacham calls “the attitude of wisdom” – the courage and confidence to act on what they believe, in concert with the humility and self-doubt to change course when better information comes along. I’ve watched David Kelley, founder and chairman of Ideo, an innovation consultancy with which I regularly collaborate, display such wisdom for years. When something works, he keeps doing it. When it doesn’t, he changes things or stops doing it.
Second, good bosses do not deny or gloss over their own weaknesses. Instead, they bring in team members with complementary skills and keep working to overcome their shortcomings. One Silicon Valley start-up I worked with had a brilliant but socially inept young CEO. He hired an equally young, but socially skilled, executive who coached him for meetings and public appearances. And when things did not go well, the executive skilfully soothed the offended parties.
Third, they devote seemingly compulsive attention to how others respond to their words and expressions. One of my favourite CEOs of all time is AG Lafley, who led Procter & Gamble for more than a decade. Early in his tenure, I spent a couple hours with AG and P&G’s senior team. When others spoke, he listened more intently and responded with more empathy than any leader I have ever seen.
Fourth, they know how to lead and join a good fight. Good bosses “fight as if you are right, and listen as if you are wrong”, as organisational theorist Karl Weick puts it. These are values – not hollow words, but beliefs – people try to live by at both McKinsey and Intel.
Fifth, regardless of how well their company is doing, good leaders keep challenging their assumptions. Consider the decision by Pixar executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter to hire director Brad Bird because – after a string of blockbusters starting with Toy Story – they worried things were going too well. As Mr Bird reported it, they said “Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up.” Mr Bird did as instructed: when he started work on The Incredibles, he staffed it with Pixar’s “black sheep”. It worked: Mr Bird won an Oscar for The Incredibles and it was smash hit.
Deluded, detached, self-aggrandised bosses will always be with us. But the best ones realise they are at risk of such power poisoning and work relentlessly to avoid it.
Robert Sutton is a professor at Stanford University and author of ‘Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to be best ... and learn from the worst’
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