1: McKinsey consultants asked a CEO how much time he spent managing other people’s egos.
Probably 20 to 30 percent of the time, he answered.
Then, they asked him what percent of time people spent managing his ego.
Silence.
“Beyond the anecdote,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence, “the research is clear: When CEOs are asked if they act as a role model for desired behavior changes, a full 86 percent say yes, whereas only 53 percent of their direct reports concur.”
This week, we’ve been exploring how the best CEOs take meaningful action to strengthen workplace culture, often in the face of resistance.
What is one of the most powerful ways to achieve this end?
The best CEOs realize they can and must change themselves.
“Virtually everyone to whom we spoke was surprised by how much their role modeling mattered,” the authors write.
“When you’re CEO,” says DBS‘s Piyush Gupta, “you’ve got to realize that every time you say or do something, it’s got a massive consequential effect. The whole company pivots.”
How does this insight translate into action?
First, the best CEOs understand that what they say matters. They are deliberate about what they say and guard against sending “unintended messages through half-baked ideas or comments,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write.
Second, they embrace that they are the ultimate role model: “I have a responsibility to personally change, which is also what I’m asking all other employees to do,” the authors observe.
2: Example in action: Brad Smith, former CEO of Intuit.
“We had to shift our mindsets,” Brad says, “to treat success and failure the same way—as an opportunity to learn.”
What did this mean for him? “I began to very publicly talk about mistakes I’d made,” he recalls.
“I began to publish my performance reviews on the glass window of my office. I even sent emails out to all employees saying, ‘Here is my written performance review from the board. These are the three things I’m working on, and I need your help. So when I’m visiting your office, if you see me do this, please correct me.”
Brad’s willingness to be open and vulnerable set an example for other leaders, who then began to share their performance reviews.
What happened next? “Throughout the organization, people began to admit mistakes or say, ‘Here is what I’m working on.’ It created this culture of continuous improvement where we were willing to give each other feedback—not in the form of criticism, but to constructively work on things we knew weren’t good enough. It encouraged people to run experiments and admit they didn’t work.”
3: Another example in action: Microsoft‘s Satya Nadella.
Just eight months into his tenure as CEO, Satya stepped in it.
During the Q&A session following a keynote speech at a women in tech event, he was asked how he would advise women looking for a pay raise who weren’t comfortable asking for one.
He advised patience and “knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write.
Uh oh.
“His comments went viral,” the authors share, “provoking outrage. He was mocked publicly, charged with being ignorant of well-documented gender pay gaps, and questioned about his stated commitment to diversity.
Satya didn’t sit back and wait for the furor to settle. He didn’t defend his statement. Instead, he emailed all team members, saying, “I answered that question completely wrong.”
He then “proceeded to change himself by exploring his own biases and asked his executive team to do the same,” the authors write.
Reflecting on what happened, Satya recalls, “I was determined to use the incident to demonstrate what a growth mindset looks like under pressure.”
By modeling the change he sought across the organization, he earned the respect of his colleagues. Head of Human Resources (HR) Kathleen Hogan recalls: “I became more committed to Satya, not less. He didn’t blame anybody. He owned it. He came out to the entire company and he said, ‘We’re going to learn and we’re going to get a lot smarter.'”
Final point: “It took a lot of effort for me to recognize that I, as the chief executive, am entirely responsible for the culture of the organization,” John Akehurst, former CEO of Woodside Petroleum, recounts, “I had an amazing insight into how dysfunctional my behavior was [and] what an impact it had on other people.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I surprised by how much my role modeling matters? Where is my behavior getting in the way?
Action: Journal about my answers to these questions.
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