you know the CEO transition is by far in a way the toughest transition executive will go through and the role is unlike any [Music] other welcome to meet the leader I'm Linda Lina and I am very excited to welcome you to our New York studios here at the world economic forum for a very special conversation on leadership we have with us today Ty Wiggins he drives the CEO and executive transition practice at consultancy Russell Reynolds what that means is he works with leaders when they make that move from Mere mortal to CEO and you all know that CEO is a tough job is a lonely job and that makes Tai's job all the more important he is part coach part cheerleader heart therapist and allaround sounding board for people who have an outsized impact on economies the climate and people in general he has collected years of insights into a brand new book the new CEO and he is going to give us a backstage pass into his world talking to us about what works and what doesn't in that top rle and the lessons learned that can help all of us better make change happen how are you Ty I'm well Linda thank you for having me I'm excited to get into this why don't we get a little bit into your job which is a fascinating one and so you are meeting these people when pressure is high but also the potential is at its greatest uh what do those conversations look like how do you even get started what does it look like it's a privilege the work that I get to do and and it is you know private confidential conversations with with fantastic people leading organizations it generally starts right at the point of transition and someone goes into transition as soon as they mentally accept the role so at that point they start thinking about the role they start planning so these are conversations that have happen oneon-one uh they start with a refresh around transition challenges you know transitions are tough and sometimes we will remember them more favorably than they were the last time we went through them so there's a there's a Refresh on on what to expect then there's an adjustment around the thinking of how you would start and the preparation in terms of communication early meetings there's a presence piece you know the CEO transition is by far in a way the toughest transition executive will go through and the role is unlike any other so there isn't a Sandbox per se there's no really great training ground so getting them ready for what will be different and what they don't expect is really important and then as the individual starts we're spending regular time talking uh regular Cadence of meetings but a lot of calls in between as things come up and then we work right through until you know they really start to to embed their stamp and and start to make changes in the organization and what don't people really understand about these CEO transitions well I think for the CEOs themselves you if you're a first-time CEO it's it's really the the scope and complexity of the role so in the book we were blessed to have a number of very well-known CEOs talk about their transition and consistent with a lot of them was the role was different than I expected so if you think about Ramon lagu who's the CEO of PepsiCo with PepsiCo 25 plus years running enormous areas of the business had a good line of sight to the CEO for a very long time got to the CEO role and said you know you think you know what it's going to be like and you don't it's it's a massive shift so this aspect of I think I know what to expect and I'm a bit shocked is really really common so I think that's probably the bit that that stands out and then there's just the the sheer weight and enormity of the time pressures how busy they are the adjustment they need to make personally and this concept of being the main attraction you know senior executives are you know they're well known people listen to them they have a voice but when you're the CEO you're it you know everything is is pointed at you and so this a attention on everything that you say everything that you do who you meet with when you when you come when you leave um this is also a bit of a surprise and when you're talking to these these CEOs these new CEOs how do they process this new change what are you seeing in their body language and their behavior how are they different once that sort of that reality really sinks in it's a variety of things you you will see physical change you'll see some some CEOs changing you know aspects of their appearance um you know dressing speaking behaving for the for the role um you'll see them you know suffer a little bit more in terms of fatigue and anxiety and and stress so we do try to balance exercise family through this transition period when they're moving at at Great Pace but it's really the recognition that there's no sort of Gap or break for them there's nothing off the Record and you know there's a number of sort of funny uh sort of stories in the book you one of which was a a CEO who went into work you know early as he did went to the cafeteria and uh to talking to the cafeteria staff and asked what the soup of the day was they said it's a chicken noodle soup and he said quite casually oh that's great I love chicken noodle soup and about 3 months later one of his AIDS came and said listen you I'm getting a lot of requests you need to go down and tell the cafeteria you like something other than chicken noodle soup because they've they've made that same soup for three months and we're sick and tired of it so it's it's an interesting analogy around the things that they say they they turn into actions they turn into projects people go and get this stuff done so that's probably the big adjustment that CEOs have to make and a CEO like like that individual how do they leverage that into other leadership moments later on how does he sort of use that to challenge people well I mean in this case it was great he he went back down to the cafeteria to address the recent glut of chicken noodle sou and make a bit of a joke about it but what he did do was use it with his executive team and the layer of leaders below that any time he felt he was getting excessive head nodding and agreement he would say is this another chicken noodle soup moment are you just agreeing because this is what I'm what I'm saying or is this what you really believe so he was able to use it in in what we would call an anchor to bring forward that conversation and you mentioned that hey this can be a very stressful uh transition because you know there's more attention on them the uh the the type of attention is very very different but what do you think is maybe the biggest driver if you were going to rank sort of the the biggest stressors uh for these folks in their in their early days what what does that look like uh I think it's the it's the scope and the responsibility you know any transition whether you're a CEO or not you you tend to be moving from a situation where you are performing well you've got a good Network you know how to do your role this is one of the reasons you get the new role is that you're doing well and you do almost have to start again so at the time when they're under the most pressure to make decisions to be you know directional and visionary they're sort of the most wobbly um because they've just stepped into that role so I think the toughest aspect of the CEO transition is and it's something that comes up with everyone I work with is finding this balance between listening and learning and acting so they want to do stuff you know these are people that uh they're used to getting things done this is part of their their mantle mantle usually so now they have to actually learn listen understand before they act um but they have this internal drive and sometimes an external drive drive to quickly deliver anybody who is promoted into a leadership role they have to make a shift because as you said what got you into the role is not what's going to help you keep this one uh and what um is maybe the biggest shift for them in trying to get things done how do they have to approach that in a new way uh in the top roll so this is a classic case of of getting things done through other people you know a lot of the change when people come from seite especially and if we think about you know the a common role would be the COO role you know these are people that run around the organization absolutely executing and getting things done they're rolling up their sleeves they're involved they can be you know pushy to a point when they become CEO they now have to get that work done through other people you know the CEO dipping into the operational component can be quite a challenge and this is one of the areas where boards Express early concern uh and I hear this quite a lot which is our CEO is acting like a COO um he she is in the operation in the execution you know in the work and we're worried that they're not looking at the business at the right level only the CEO can really have that perspective of the business longer term and the role of having the vision really sits with them so if they spend too much time sort of down in the Weds uh it can cause concern and in those moments what do you say to them like how do you how do those conversations work so a lot of times it's it's feedback that I get so one of my processes is to do stakeholder feedback really early in the piece so that we can understand how the CEO has landed and to build a a scorecard per se of transition success and in that I'll often hear some of this information if I don't hear it there I'll hear it in the conversations that the CEO is telling me you know what happened this week what were you involved in what meetings were you in what what were the actions after the meetings and how many of those did you own and I'll start to pull them back a little bit and say this sounds very operational this sounds very executional and the response is often um something along the lines of I just need to fix a few more things and then I can be CEO and that's not the that's not the attitude you know there's never a shortage of things to fix it's about really being able to sort of come up and down out of the operations and up to the Strategic level you mentioned that hey you know what there's might be not a a road map there's no manual necessarily to to be a CEO and it's there's really no manual in a lot of ways for a lot of leadership positions sometimes you're promoted into these jobs and the exact way that you need to execute at that time with that team with these projects uh isn't isn't always obvious um what should any leader who's maybe like kind of thinking about what we're talking about what should they be thinking about when they they come into these roles to make sure that they're executing uh in a way that's most effective one of the things that really helps with transition at all levels is Clarity around the transition expectations so when a lot of people move into a role there's a job description or a role description which is very clear but it's also talks about when the person's at full speed so it really talks about what success looks like at 3 months 6 months and 9 months so if you can build some clarity around what your transition Milestones look like you can really accelerate that transition so your comment before about what got you here won't get you there is really appropriate and so when people get under pressure they often revert back to what worked for them before and this is where we see people failing to make the transition and failing to really step up to that role the other thing would be you know some people view the promotion internally or the next step up as a reward for all the good work they've already done sort of the end of the race it's it's not it's the beginning of the race when you get promoted internally it's part performance but a lot around potential so if you step into it with the attitude of this is just me doing a little something's faster and better you'll miss the opportunity and you might actually store your career at that level what are the most important things that somebody can get done in that first 100 days what what should they be 100% focused on it should be 100% focused on assessing and making those early decisions about you know the individuals in the senior leadership team you know it's um it's not necessarily the case that the person's not good that's the person might not be the right fit for that CEO of where the organization needs to go so moving on the team within that first 100 days or starting to move is crucial um building good relationships with the board you need to engage the board fairly quickly and early and spend some time a lot of CEOs will go and spend day or two days with each board member in their early period because they need to understand that person's view on the organization that person's view on their role on the board and the role of the board and they need to lay the groundwork for some of the things that they're thinking about early in the period about where they want to take the organization the next would be really trying to understand the culture you're not going to shift the culture in that period of course but you need to get a good read on the culture and you need to as CEO be really careful about where you get your information because as I said before a lot of people are telling you yes the information is always filtered before it gets to you um people know when you're in the building they're on their best behavior the uniforms on right like you've got to acknowledge all that so are you seeing the surface level culture or do you really understand what's there because if you a CEO decide to take the organization in a different direction and the culture is resistant it it will make it much harder to achieve that and what is the biggest mistake that either a CEO or any kind of leader can make in those those first 100 days I think at the base level you know things that CEOs say early on can can become problematic and become um unfairly attached to them and they have to work quite hard to to change that so you do have to be really careful about what you suggest you know thinking openly ideating on the Fly none of that works when you're CEO because it becomes really fixed I think aside from a particular mistake I think any mistake that results in a loss of Confidence from the board is dangerous you know boards have lots to do but one of their key roles is to hire and fire the CEO so if you lose the confidence in the support of the board early um you know you really really struggle we will sometimes make a sort of off-hand joke that people coming into CEO roles you know the goal here is to be the first time CEO not the onetime CEO so sometimes you do need to earn the right for the second and third year in that first year and the board is critical to that we talked a little bit about you know hey like what really works uh for people who are in these roles um what traits What traits really come to mind uh you sit down with these folks you meet them you talk with them and I imagine that you have a measure right away of oh this will be fine or maybe in some cases okay you know maybe here's something we need to There's an opportunity here that we we can dig in on what are the traits that uh effective CEOs need to have in order to succeed well I think short term and through the transition and certainly something that I look for is is sort of a a gut feel around coachability you know how open is this individual to understand and to learn and to listen and and how fixed are they on those ideas how fixed are the ideas about what they think it's going to be like and and this is you know part of the challenge if you have a firm view of what you plan to do when you get there and you'll often see CEOs making decisions and taking actions really really quickly and then having to walk them back down the track and that can be very detrimental so I think there's a degree of you know a learning mindset it's a a bit of humility as well like it's a humbling time to be CEO as a firsttime CEO or stepping into a new CEO role where you don't have all the context and the information you don't necessarily have the network you often don't have the understanding of how things get done to be as effective as you have just been and what are the traits that know gosh they they could hold somebody back uh that maybe they're not the best fit for uh the the top role what comes to mind for the that those traits well I think from a board's perspective you know not being Visionary enough not being able to see further down the path so one of the shifts that everyone makes is they go up a level but it's more pronounced when you get to the CEO role is your time Horizon so when you're thinking about your role when you're thinking about the business what time Horizon are you using you know when you're at Junior levels you make decisions the impact is a week from now you know Senior Management it might be 6 months from now the CEO could be three five 10 years from now you know when you look at CEOs in their legacy period and they start to get to the point of leaving their organizations you know we can't really judge a lot of their decisions until years after they've gone so the time arised there one of those areas so inability to get to that level as I mentioned before a lack of willingness to step away from the operation ations you know there's a there's a lot of days for CEOs where they spin their wheels and at the end of the day or the end of the week they can't really put their finger on something that they delivered and that can be um difficult so what some will do is go back and solve a problem start a project fix something so that they can get a little bit of a dopamine hit around I actually got something done this week and that's not their job like like addicts bit like atcts action addicts if there's a moment where uh a CEO has dropped the ball and you need to have a conversation with them uh what does that look like how do you how do you tell them uh again benefit of my role sitting on the on the side of the table that I sit I I set this up very early that uh whilst it sometimes will be supportive other times it will be um quite challenging and if I think that they've missed the mark Or that they've made a mistake I'll be very quick to to tell them so if I give you an example I I worked with a CEO for about the last year and he was really dragging his heel on his senior leadership team and so I was able to bring research to the table I kept pointing it out and at one point I said listen I think you're you're now an outlier to be in the role as long as you have been to have not made a change and you've already identified that some of the people you don't think are exactly the right fit for you I think he need to do something and fortunately he did something that week in terms of communicating to the board because the board were just about to come and say we've red flag two of your team and we're worried that you haven't identified it so I will introduce it and that's part of the advisory piece part of my role is to see ahead and to say listen CEOs at this point in the transition are talking about this and you not let's talk about it and in that particular moment how did that leader react and how did you sort of like sort of well how did that person react um he was fine I he didn't love it um but he recognized that where he was dragging his heels and why he was dragging his heels was starting to the performance of the organization and particularly his performance and so what started out as a gentle nudge became quite a hard poke in the side um you need you now need to get moving on this you mentioned that uh you know people are open to feedback but even when people are open to feedback they still have an idea of what they wanted to do and they may be impatient to get it done um and they might still need a recalibration you know uh so how how do you sort of help those folks still sort of realize that you need to make a little tweak here uh how do they make that that that that shift in that mindset shift in a lot of cases I'll use um blinded stories from other clients and other people I've worked with so if I want to shift an individual's thinking around something I can come straight out and say this and this is what I know and this is what I think and this is what you're doing and this is what I think you should do or I can say let me talk let me talk to you about two other CEOs that were in similar stages in different spaces and here's what they did and how it worked out so if I think about another example I had a CEO who was dead set on making changes to her team within the first two weeks and I said you know it's great to go fast and we talk about that in the book you know you need to go fast but this is this is fast you're you're you're an outlier on the wrong end of the scale what's the loss if you wait an extra week or two and I continued to push and I was able to use the example of another CEO who really lost momentum by making a structural announcement too early when the organization responded with how do you know you haven't been here long enough you haven't taken the time you've clearly made this up before you you've decided this before you got here and it took a long time to reverse that so I was able to both use the experience I've had the research that I've got and other people's experiences to say just wait and she did wait and things shifted significantly um so it was a really good decision to wait she went at 6 weeks which is still fantastic in in terms of speed um but she didn't have to unwind it she didn't have to back any of it out when people talk about giving good feedback or hard feedback they always talk about trust and they always talk about hey you got to be a really really good listener but I don't think there's anybody that doesn't think that they're not a great listener and I think there's always something that we can do to improve in your mind what can any leader do to be a little bit better at how they're either building rapport with the people that they need to give feedback to or uh being a little bit of an active more active listener what can they physically tangibly do I think there's I think there's a number of things you know I encourage a lot of the people I work with to take physical notes to go back to taking physical notes um because it slows them down it slows their response it helps them to process uh some structure around the questions that you're going to ask like I'll often roleplay different scenarios with my clients and I'll be able to say listen you just asked five closed questions back toback here's what you're going to hear back you know and you're going to be pleased to hear it because it's confirming the way you've asked the question and you're not going to learn anything I'll push them to explain to me and other people's language what they what they've heard but I think if we take the attitude of you know of being being curious as opposed to being right if we're really mindful of our confirmation bias and this is a big thing in transition when you step into a new role I'm I'm yet to work with a leader who doesn't have moments of have I bitten off more than I can chew is this more than I can cope with so there's a there's a moment there they very excited to hear things or see things that they expected to find it confirms to them that they're the right person that they're up for the challenge that the board made the right decision so you have to be really really careful because you'll go looking for that so checking your confirmation bias and really you know that old adage of of of seeking first to understand rather or you to understand rather than be understood is is really valuable uh have you worked with leaders that may maybe just sort of hit a wall and they didn't quite know which way to turn you know I would refer to it as a bit of a wobble and there's a good story in the book Alan beum who's the CEO of toll you know talked about at 6 months when they thought that the environment the economy was going to change realized that it was just more uphill started to really second guess you know have I got the right strategy in place have I got the right team had a good conversation with the chair which is another sort of key relationship for the CEO and expressed the concerns that he had and the chair was able to say listen that your thinking is spot on your assumptions are valid um you need to trust your gut you need to keep going so it happens a lot and this is why it's important for a lot of CEOs to have some external support because they quickly realize that this type of discussion the I don't quite know what I'm doing here discussion uh is not a comfortable one to have with the chair or the board or your executive team so where are you having those conversations so all CEOs and Senior leaders should have an external network of people that they can talk to and when you talk about that network of people that they can talk to uh one of the things that you mentioned in the book is that it's important that you have people that can challenge you in a constructive way uh tell me about that because I think sometimes people think about people challenging them and they think whoa wait a minute you know uh what does that mean why is that helpful and and what does it actually look like he's going to make the joke in the in the book that when you become CEO your jokes are funnier your stories are more interesting um people will agree with you you'll hear yes to a lot of things that you want to hear yes to you can also move around the organization and get involved in any part of it no one's really going to tell you no so true honest feedback becomes harder and harder to get so it is really important to have people around that not only think differently have a different breadth of experience and who are comfortable to say uh yeah I think he did that wrong and that's a that's a key part of a role like mine if I am not comfortable to say I think you really messed up on that case um then I'm missing the opportunity to really help and so I always find and and the people that I know that work in this space we need to be quite comfortable to be sacked because if we're not and uh then we're not actually giving the right level of advice and again the people that uh that I get to work with that they don't always love it but they love they're getting it so sometimes people people take feedback in different ways so if you have somebody who's challenging on your team challenging your idea uh what is a way for leaders to make sure that they are uh using that that they're using the difficulty in a way that is is helping them the team the company and all the rest of that CEOs especially have to be really in control of their responses so if you have someone in your team who's challenging you need to make sure it's a positive situation I worked with a leader for a number of years and he P his personality was one where he loved a good debate and he would rise to the challenge and it was intellectually stimulating it was energetic him but he was also a fairly big guy and so his ability to dominate the conversation and his internal view was if you're really passionate about your your view you'll you'll fight it out with me and we'll have the right response so that work worked if he came up against another one of him but didn't work with the rest of the team so what he was inadvertently doing was shutting down the challenge and making it a non-safe space so we had to work on some some introductory language how do you set the meeting up how do you B your time how do you manage your response because if you don't get that push back as CEO you you know you can be 5 or 10% off on decisions and they have a massive impact you can't miss that opportunity you need to create the environment where people are to give their View and happy to challenge yours and you can still you know we can still disagree and commit provided we've had good process well let's talk about uh what those elements are what's my little recipe list to have a meeting or an environment where people have what they need to to challenge something in a productive constructive way what what what four or five things need to be in place well I think for CEOs and Senior leaders the first is being really careful not to lead the witness you know we have we used one of the quotes from from Nelson man about you know you know leaders should speak last and it's really really true and we do see the the funny stuff that comes through on of LinkedIn around her the leader goes into the room and says listen we have this problem and I think this is the solution but I'm really interested to hear your view and lo and behold the views come back exactly the same so I think the first is in the setup when you are a COO or a general manager you have an opinion you're encouraged to give it you can deliver at almost any time during the meeting and it it will influence but it won't steer when you're CEO as soon as you give your opinion you've steered the conversation so by setting the conversation up with your context you've started the discussion and you've often ended it so I think the first thing is you need to be really careful about your presence and how you set this up even to the point of setting establishing what the problem is get other people to lead create the space in the meetings for other people to lead that discussion and hold back your um your uh views and opinions I I joke with leaders often that uh they'll say things like oh this person said something and I really disagree but I didn't say anything I said well you you did because our poker faces are Never As Good As we think they are you've let them know so you need to be careful about that um asking more questions is a great one so if the person says something and you disagree before disagree ask another question can you elaborate can you expand can you explain this a little bit more take some notes digest let the person finish these are some of the tactics that that leaders will change and use to make sure that they're getting the information out before they give their view one of the things too you were you were talking about in the book uh you have an example from Hans vestberg right he's the CEO of Verizon who has been on Meet the leader and uh one of the things he talked about was a a a boss contract uh tell me a little bit about what a boss contract is and uh why it's so important how can it be useful so the bus contract that that Hans uses with his executive team is it's a it's a cont contract where the individual gets to set out where their skills are what their capabilities are what their key focuses are what their deliver will be and importantly how they're going to measure their success so it's it's I think it's really valuable because it it it creates Clarity for both sides and it allows the individual to set some of these things because if in hance's View and he he's done some really clever things about making sure his view doesn't dominate his view might be limited compared to the individual so he really wants to understand how they can best use this skills and capabilities and how they can deliver the outcomes and what they should be doing but it also creates a good degree of autonomy you know we know that if the individual comes up with the answer we're more wedded to it we will implement it better we'll execute it better you know we'll drive it home if it's ours if we think we own it so there's a key component about that uh and it also increases the accountability you know here are the things that you said you were going to do so let's get that done and I think it's a really effective way to uh to empower to leader a senior leadership team it makes a lot of sense uh with all of these things we talked about a range of different blind spots that leaders can have whether it's confirmation bias whether it's them sort of trying to uh do the job they had before and try to fix problems that they don't need to be fixing anymore um what is a way that a leader can sort of check themselves and make sure that they are identifying their own blind spots eventually uh hopefully they have a long career as a leader and they'll have to be checking this all around what should they be asking themselves in your mind to make sure that they can identify uh that they have a blind spot well you blind spots are called that for a reason so it is quite hard to um uncover them in isolation so this is where the external network comes in this is where feedback either from the executive team or from the board is quite helpful um asking questions in terms of you know what what is you know I'll give you a good example leaders that go into meetings and come out without great outcomes one of the things I'll tell them is before you go into the meeting write down what you think the other person's agenda is what does success look like for the other people in the room and that alone shifts their perspective a little bit to okay well I actually think they want to know this or they want to understand that so that can sometimes shift their view especially if they this is the sixth meeting of the morning and they're bouncing from meeting to meeting so there are some aspects like that but I think the blind spot spotting is really best done by people external and this is why it's so important to have people outside and if you are coming from a senior executive role into the CEO role then one of the networks you need to build really quickly is other CEOs because if you're a CFO for example you have a great network of CFOs um which will be helpful but now you need to quickly build a network of CEOs people that have shared that experience and shared that understanding to help you well when we started this chat you said hey it's privilege to do your role uh but you also say in the book that it's a privilege in general to lead uh can you talk talk a little bit about that privilege aspect because I think it's really really important I think it can probably also help people as they navigate through tough situations being CEO being any senior leader I think is a privilege is not a right uh yes you've earned the opportunity to do it but if you forget why you're there and who you're there and this concept of servant leadership and that you're here to serve not be served I think it's really really important and again the people that I get to work with and it's probably a factor of number of factors have the humility around this so when you ask them what's the best bit about being CEO and what's the worst bit you'll often hear the same response it's the responsibility I wanted the responsibility to make change I wanted the responsibility to drive the organization and I wanted the responsibility to make decisions but what's hard is the responsibility um another example I use in the book which was was quite interesting was I worked with a what I'd call a reluctant CEO and he was he promoted into the role wasn't really looking to do that it was a it was an unfortunate circumstance and so he was reluctant and we were having this discussion as we started to talk about the responsibilities of the role and I said you know you're responsible for and he finished my sentence he said I know 120,000 people I said no you're responsible for 120,000 families I said it stretches more than that you can't be on the fence here you need to commit you're the right person for the role you need to get this done but you can't can't shy away from this this is not light-hearted so the best bit and the worst bit often is the responsibility so really acknowledging that and staying humble through that I think is crucial anybody who is uh listening or watching this conversation how can that reminder help them as they are helping a team maybe through a rough patch maybe there's something that's just not sort of coming together quite yet they need a little bit more patience a little bit more elbow Grace how can that reminder of this is a privilege how can that help them when some CEOs are going through what I call the crash which is happens at various levels and various amounts for most people you know one of the things I often suggest is for them to to get out of their office and back into the field the depos the factories the you know the regions go back out and sit with people and see the impact that your decisions have see the passion that the people have for the roles remember who you're here serving and who you're working for and and that will often ground them out of this particular issue which is causing them a level of stress and anxiety or that they don't have an answer for and so that the sort of regrounding yourself as to why you're doing this and what's really important uh can really help when it gets tough and at some point it gets tough early on there'll be a challenge there always is uh tell me a little bit more about the crash how do you know you're getting into it and what is it you you know you're getting into it when you start to really second guess um a lot of the things that you thought coming in a lot of the things that you thought in the first couple of months or weeks uh and your own skill set and ability and you start to unpick some of the things that you were you were fairly comfortable with you know so an example of the crash would be somebody goes through the process to make changes to the senior leadership team they get to months six seven eight they've got the right sort of people in place and now they start to second guess if they got the right team you why are we doing this you've gone through this process let's think about what's really going on here um lacks La moments of lack of confidence uh or a significant challenge you know I've worked with CEOs that got to you know sort of four months and something significant happened either legally or with the government or with the en with the economy um that meant that what they thought they were going to be doing for the next six months they can no longer do and so that can knock their confidence as well because they go from a particular situation to another Mark bsub who's the CEO of rpool was really good with this in the book super humble kept saying I know that company feels like mine but I'm just a salaried employee and no CEO is bigger than the board no CEO is bigger than the organization and he was very fixed on my job is to leave the organization in a much better State for the next individual in fact when he got the role he wrote a not quite a Manifesto but certainly a detailed document uh which he called um world for 8.0 to reference the fact he was the8 CEO and a lot of that talked about what happens when he's finished not so much what am I going to do when I get into the chair uh I want to talk a little bit about your background you got started uh in the very beginning as a you're a basketball coach professional basketball coach uh does that how much does that I noticed that in my experience a lot of athletes are very open to coaching because that's just how that is as an athlete that's how you you perform uh does that help you or hurt you in talking to CEOs I I think it's a significant help uh I loved the role of coaching uh I quickly learned that I was a much better Coach than I was player and I think that sort of you know sits well in how in how I sort of structure my work now you know the clients that I work with run much bigger organizations and roles that I've had my ability to transfer a lot of the information that I learned from others into the new CEOs I think is key but the the aspect of coaching that I loved was the the communic component so you know communication is one of those things that you never you're never fully done with it's a it's a continuing you know sort of skill set and I think being able to communicate in a way that really resonates with the individuals is really key and I think this another thing I talk about in the book is one of the challenges that CEOs can have is that if you've come from a particular function you may have run high performance teams for lots of years but they might be very similar so if you're you know not not picking on the CFOs but I use the CFOs if you've been a CFO to go to CEO you've likely run teams of financially thinking people who tend to think differently to say marketing or HR so when you become CEO one of the challenges that you have is that you are now leading a team with very different thinking Styles and views of the world and it's not a natural um sort of not an automatic that you'll be able to lead them effectively so you have to change your communication you have to change your approach to create the environment for each of those individuals to function and for the team to to perform is there something that you do today as a coach uh that you would never have occurred to you to do uh if you hadn't had that background uh as a professional basketball coach one of the lessons I learned really early as a coach uh I was young and I was coaching a women's basketball team at a time when I my understanding of the world was more limited and I learned some really good lessons around um how to motivate how to communicate how to influence and where my other experience were with men's teams it was more it was easier to have one style that generated a result across 80% of the players with the women's team it was very different and I had to tailor it to each individual player and that was a lesson that has stayed with me ever since you just cannot have a one- siiz fits all you know I met with a C last week and I was having I was trying to explain this and he was arguing the point and he has two daughters I said so with your daughters do you parent them the same he said oh no they're totally different I said but same parents same upbringing different approach he said yeah I said it's the same with your executive team you can't take a one siiz fits all you have to adjust you know your power of communication is in the communication being understood not in the fact that you've said it three or four times uh you mentioned that you had to kind of expand your toolkit for motivation what is that toolkit can you give us a sense of what are these maybe different uh opportunities or different ways that people should could think about motivation when it comes to teams and and different individuals well I think there's so many different levs for motivation you know and we tend to rely on the basic ones organizationally around compensation and status and title but there's a lot that that people can really sort of get under in terms of what really drives the right Behavior you know what about it in terms of Praise what about it in terms of reward even in terms of accountability so you know some people flourish when there are tight guard rails you know tell me exactly what success looks like and check in on a regular basis and and some personalities will respond really well to that others that would be awful um so picking the right one is important and I remind leaders at all levels and and and CEOs as well that in some cases we lead others the way we like to be led which works for some people but not all so this is one of the biases that we potentially have so I think you know good communication trying to find out what motivates and what demotivates is really important and and many people will look at sort of senior leader roles and CEO roles as you know you don't need to motivate on a regular basis you know these are fantastically capable people they come with their own sense of motivation but where you can help is get out in front of them and remove the demotivators so make it easy for them to to do well is there a piece of advice that you've always been grateful for um lots of advice but one that sort of sits with me all the time is that if you think you can or you think you can't you're right so how you enter the situation your mindset on approaching tasks and opportunities and I think that you know the confidence around becoming CEO you know you see some very externally confident people that are internally thinking wow what have I gotten myself into so bordering the confidence around good process and you know what you can bring to the role and that you can get help um I think it's really really important and how has that helped you it uh it allows me to check my own thinking um when I get into situations where the noise of the I think you can't is stronger than the well how do you know where's the evidence there where where's the truth in that assumption you know so I think that's it's important you uh were a CEO of a smaller organization so not one of these big multinationals like some some of the folks that you you help with uh and uh how has that sort of informed uh what is the a the thing that you needed to learn that you know was maybe the gap between you and the people you're coaching and also what is the thing that you were able to bring that nobody else was able to bring uh to to these experiences that you have when you're coaching the these leaders U well like you said it was it was a very small organization it was a great learning time um the personal lessons around that for me were twofold one was I was too much in the detail I wanted to get in and solve things and I I could and that was part of the problem uh so that made it easier and I restricted other people's development in that role because I would fix it for them the other aspect was dealing with the board um that was a real surprise for me at that time in terms of how board's thought and acted uh and what they expected from me and how unrelenting they were or say how hard it was to sell them on why this was a good idea um so that was it was a really interesting aspect of that um but I think in terms of the client work I draw almost nothing from that experience and everything from the experiences that I've gleaned working with the others because there at the size and scale of the clients that I work with the moving parts are such that um you know there's just there's different challenges at different levels and sizes of CEOs MH sure and uh a lot of people are going to be watching and listening to this is there a piece of advice a skill that you think gosh every leader could benefit from from X or Y is there something that you you see a trend you or you wish people would upskill in one area and it could be have magnitudes of help uh what's something that anybody uh any leader could improve on right now I I think communication as I mentioned before is one of those if you think you're done at that that's a that's a massive blind spot you you know this is something that you refine constantly and so constantly learning watching other people assessing being critical having yourself recorded and and sort of transcribed I think is a great skill so if you can communicate better and constantly improve that um that will make you a better leader across the board uh the other aspect that I would suggest leaders to do is reflect you know we we're super busy we run from thing to thing often the learning that leaders have through coaching or advisory is in part because they're forced to stop and reflect so if leaders are listing to this and thinking how do I do something small to to improve one would be to take some time each week to reflect on what what's happened what have you learned how would you do that differently what was the other person's impression Etc sure and and how would that help them uh it forces them to stop saying things solely from their point of view absolutely uh we have a a a little bit of a rapid response thing where that I want to kind of get your your your takes on uh just to kind of get your your your quick insights on Sir so I'm going to read you a few things and I want you to fill in the blanks I want you to to finish my sentences for me if you can all right so your biggest work pet peeve is uh Tech that doesn't work the one thing you can't work without coffee the best thing that new leaders can do is share their intent because if you don't tell people why you're doing things all they have to understand is what you've done and they make their own narrative around it all leaders forget I think the what the other person wants and needs at times on your worst day every leader must regulate their emotions perfect emails are always short and the best meetings have this in common uh an agenda and an idea of what success looks like so we leave the room with did we actually do something thank you and thank you very much for coming to the New York office uh we're excited to have you here at the world economic Forum this is one of many episodes to come of Meet the leader so thank you and thanks so much to you for being part of this episode I'm Linda Lina again and for more episodes of Meet the leader go to we. 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