Successful business leaders have traits in common
Adam Bryant is a Pulitzer Prize award-winning journalist at The New York Times who probably is best known for his long-running column â€œCorner Office.â€
Over the years, Bryant discovered that there is a natural curiosity among readers about the people who make it to the top.
Since most of us donâ€™t have the opportunity to share a meal â€” or even have a relaxed conversation â€” with a top CEO, Bryant has given us the perfect substitute.
His insightful book â€œThe Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeedâ€ gives readers the inside scoop on how business leaders think.
Bryant sat down with 74 CEOs, from companies as diverse as Accenture, Best Buy Co. Inc., Yum! Brands Inc. and Zappos.
He focused less on success strategies and more on the following three questions.
â€¢ How do you do what you do?
â€¢ How did you learn to do what you do?
â€¢ What lessons have you learned that you can share with others?
Traits CEOs share
So what do CEOs have in common?
According to Bryant, â€œThey listen, learn, assess whatâ€™s working, whatâ€™s not and why and then make adjustments.
â€œThey are quick studies, and they also tend to be good teachers because they understand the process of learning and can explain what they learned to others.â€
And for anyone anxious to crack the code of how to rise to the top of an American business organization, itâ€™s refreshing to learn that Bryantâ€™s research indicates that the keys to success are not genetic.
Instead, he insists that the necessary traits â€œare developed through attitude, habit and discipline â€” factors that are within everyoneâ€™s control.â€
Many CEOs experienced adversity
One factor that readers might find surprising is that many CEOs developed their strong work ethic because at some point in their early lives, they experienced adversity.
Andrew Cosslett, former CEO of InterContinental Hotels Group, had a rough childhood, living largely on his own from the time he was about 16.
He told Bryant that at an off-site meeting with his top executives he was surprised to learn that â€œof the 10 people in the room, nine of them had had very challenging teenage years, either with broken homes, family divorces, alcoholic parents, brothers or sisters dying.â€
â€œThereâ€™s something about what happened to them as kids that sort of pushed them on. And I think itâ€™s this thing about learning about your own strength that makes you mature more quickly and allows you to progress faster.â€
â€˜Critical behavior interviewingâ€™
William Green, executive chairman of Accenture, considers screening job candidates a core competency and developed a system he calls â€œcritical behavior interviewing.â€
Accenture receives 2 million resumes a year and hires about 50,000 people.
Greenâ€™s interviewing process is based on the premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.
Questions to consider include: What have potential employees learned? What behaviors do they have? Have they shown the ability to step up and make a choice? How have they dealt with the hand in front of them?
And Gary McCullough told Bryant about an important lesson he learned from the woman who operated the coffee cart back in the days when he worked at The Procter & Gamble Co.
He was amazed by her uncanny ability to predict which people would be successful and which ones wouldnâ€™t: â€œIn her mind, everybody was going to drop the ball at some point. If youâ€™re good with people and people like you and you treat them right, they will pick up the ball for you, and theyâ€™re going to run and theyâ€™re going to score a touchdown for you.
â€œBut if they donâ€™t like you, theyâ€™re going to let that ball lie there, and you are going to get in trouble.â€
Book shows CEOsâ€™ secret side
â€œThe Corner Officeâ€ covers the gamut from how to run an effective meeting to dealing with really horrible bosses.
I canâ€™t think of any other affordable resource that allows curious businesspeople to learn CEOsâ€™ secret side.
For example, Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, told Bryant that he has never needed more than five hours of sleep a night, can fall asleep on command wherever he is and never feels jet lagged: â€œFor 99.999 percent of the people on the planet, they actually have a seven-day week.
â€œI have an eight-day week. I literally get an extra day a week. Thatâ€™s a big advantage.â€
How can you not like a well-written book with insider stories like that?