The suggestions continue to surface that it takes a different sort of person, with a different sort of personality, to take the top job. It’s easy to understand why: they just seem so plausible to so many of us.
The WSJ recently published another such presentation of the issue, by a guest author for Carol Hymowitz‘s In the Lead column. The argument in this one is that the CEO‘s job requires extra-organizational duties and skills that just don’t appeal to more “retiring” types. The number one job has figurehead characteristics that call for a more gregarious, political personality. Many senior executives would rather just focus on the work, and leave the limelight to those who thrive in, and even relish, it.
But does one really need this sort of “star” quality to be the CEO? Does the lack of it disqualify one for that job? When the situation is presented this way, with its presumptions woven into the argument so seamlessly, it appears as though it could hardly be otherwise. But, as with so many questions, it is when things seem indisputably obvious that we should make a special effort to make sure they are in fact so, and if so, why.
There are, indeed, distinct differences between the requirements of an executive – that is, a senior manager whose duties extend into the strategic level – and those of managers in the ranks, executing the work of the organization. But these, in the main, do not call for different personalities – just different preparation and additional training. When this is provided, the leap can be made by anyone who is mission-focused and reasonably competent.
But is there really such a boundary between the CEO and all others? And, is it one so striking that it bars all those lacking the posited special personality characteristics from passing through?
I don’t think so. Managers at all levels do what needs to be done. Moreover, a key duty of a manager at any level is determining what that is. Perhaps that issue – the question of what is really required of the CEO – needs to be scrutinized with greater skepticism, before we allow ourselves to be swept along by the assumptions inherent in the argument made in the reference WSJ piece.
What do you think?
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Today’s tip: Speaking of qualifications for leadership positions, take a moment to read this post by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership. You will learn what such positions – and preparation for assuming and competently performing them – really entail.
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4 Comments
Jim,
I have to wonder about the personal bias of the writer of articles such as this.
Middle School history classes would show the leadership of a wide ranging list of people from the introversions of an Abraham Lincoln and the to the extroversion of Ronald Reagan in America; the brashness of a Bernard Montgomery and the quiet, deliberate focus of a Mother Teresa (who clearly demonstrated top-level organizational leadership AND remained in the trenches); and what about the multiple failures and resurrections of Winston Churchill? Finally, would it be accurate to say that Mahatma Gandhi possessed extraordinary organizational skills and a quest for the spotlight?
The examples above are presented simply because they represent a well-known cross section of leaders.
Let’s look at successful CEO’s: Does anyone wake up in the morning and see Ingvar Kamprad’s photo splashed across the European WSJ? As founder and head of IKEA, he is below the radar in just about every way. Most CEO’s I know grew up in their respective companies, learned the business inside and out, and reached a point where it made sense for them to run the business if they were the right person for the moment.
“The right person at the right moment” would seem a more plausible definition of who will be an effective CEO rather than a list of all-purpose characteristics for all occasions.
I have to agree with Steve. The Servant Leader is often ‘below the radar’ and may be far more successful than the ‘look at me’, gregarious type of figurehead CEO.
Steve,
Ah, but middle school – that was so long ago! But those examples offer, as you say, demonstrate a broad cross-section of successful leaders, with a wide range of leadership styles, and a complex and in many ways irreconcilable mix of personalities. So what, exactly, is the secret ingredient, and why, in the face of the evidence, do we persist in finding it in one’s personality?
I think it’s because, as you suggest, there is an agenda among both certain types of CEOs and their consultants to promote the image of the leader as a great personage – larger than life.
This is attractive on the face of it to many of us – a great, epic story, it strikes chords rooted deep in our cultural history when things really were apportioned among the great leaders and the rest of us, and it enables prototypes and marketers of this style of leadership to exploit the dynamics thus set off to engage in an orgy of self-aggrandizement that seems inexhaustible.
But, as you, of course, also say, some of the best CEOs are so precisely because they avoid this sort of behavior, and do the job.
In addressing that, you touch on a peculiar weakness in this columnist’s argument: If the retiring types worked their way up to the threshold of CEOdom from within by excelling at the work, where did the extrovert stars come from? They weren’t fairydusted into the scenario, they worked their way up, too, using in appropriate measure, the various types of natural and attained skill sets they brought to the effort.
I think your conclusion is right. But we both know there are those who persist in believing that there is some seemingly ineffable, but possibly discoverable and exploitable, difference that distinguishes those who actually do make it.
Is it that they’re the “right person at the right moment,” as you say? That’s what I think. I keep trying to see if there is anything behind the arguments of those who insist otherwise, but, nothing yet.
Hello Doyle,
That’s right, isn’t it, that the servant leader model is inherently inconsistent with that proposed by this guest columnist. But it has produced some of the most effective and influential bosses around. Any great organization whose boss’s name you don’t know stands a good chance of being an example of this.
Thanks so much for your visit and your participation!
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