1: The best CEOs understand that they must have a “hands-on” connection with each individual on their leadership team, McKinsey consultants Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
“You invest time and energy with each, recognizing they’re all individuals,” comments Michael Fisher, CEO of the nonprofit Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “Their needs are going to be different, and their strengths and gaps are going to be different.
“You applaud and cheer them on where they have those strengths and put them in situations where they can most effectively use them,” he says. “But also give feedback along the way, on some sort of regular cycle—’Here are some things you can do better,’ or, ‘Here are things we can work on together.’ ”
Westpac CEO Gail Kelly describes how she built relationships with the members of her team: “I would ring all of my team at least once a week, most likely later in the afternoons or very early mornings, on the way home or the way to work. I’d encourage them to ring me, too.
“I built a relationship where their first thought when I’d call wasn’t, ‘What does she want?’ but rather, ‘It’s going to be a chat.’
“My tack was ‘I’ve noticed this…’ or ‘I’m a bit concerned about what I’m seeing here…’ or ‘By the way, I’ve heard this.’ But it may also be, ‘Tell me about,’ or, ‘What’s on your mind,’ or, ‘Gosh, that’s exciting.’
“My job was to make people be the best that they can be,” Gail reflects. “To do that, I needed to know them, to understand their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses, what they were worrying about.”
Adidas’s Herbert Hainer also emphasizes one-on-one conversations with his team members. “The top team needs the CEO’s time for operational judgment and personal matters,” he says. “Sometimes they just want to talk to you and tell you how good they feel or how challenging times seem.
“If you have enough time for your people and you show you care about them,” he says, “they pay it back twice and maybe three times. Everyone looks up to you, even if you don’t realize it.”
2: The best CEOs understand they must also maintain their ability to make difficult decisions.
“If you get too close to everybody,” comments DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, “then you wind up not making tough choices and compromising for mediocrity. People need to respect that, finally, you are the boss.”
Cincinnati Children’s Michael Fisher agrees: “You also must recognize that you are their boss. While there’s a level of collegiality and familiarity, at the end of the day, your first responsibility is to the institution and making a functional top team.”
Adidas’s Kasper Rørsted puts it this way: “At work, I want to be friendly, but I don’t want to make friends Eventually, I have to be able to make unbiased decisions.”
3: The best CEOs embrace the importance of regular feedback tailored to the individual.
“With some people you can say, for example, ‘You might want to listen more in these meetings instead of always being the first to offer your opinion and not giving others airtime,'” Michael from Cincinnati Children shares.
“With others you’ll need to be more direct: ‘You just have to quiet for the first hour of the meeting. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.'”
“Grade behaviors first—and after that, grade results,” says Dupont CEO Ed Breen.
JPMC CEO Jamie Dimon explains, “You have to acknowledge that failure is okay. There are good mistakes: You argued for it, you thought it through, you talked to the right people, and you were wrong. So, you have to allow failure.
He continues: “We don’t just look at the profit-and-loss statement. Instead we ask, did you work hard? Did you hire people? Did you train people? Did you do the right thing for the client? Did you help other people? Did you build systems? When we asked you to do something like recruiting, did you help us?”
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Reflection: How strong are my relationships with people on my team? Is there an opportunity for me to be more proactive with these individuals?
Action: Run an experiment for the next two weeks where I prioritize one-on-one time with each member of my team.