4 Behaviors of Top-Performing CEOs

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elena Botelho, partner at leadership advisory firm ghSmart, talks about the disconnect between the stereotype of the CEO and what research shows actually leads to high performance at that level. She says the image of the charismatic, tall male with a top university degree who’s a strategic visionary and makes great decisions under pressure is a pervasive one. However, research shows that four behaviors more consistently lead to high performance in the corner office: 1) deciding with speed and conviction 2) engaging for impact 3) adapting proactively 4) delivering reliably. Botelho is the co-author of the article “What Sets Successful CEOs Apart” in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Closer Podcast brings you the inside story of deals changing the world, told by the people who know how it all went down.
0:09.0	Understand the human motivations behind groundbreaking business decisions with host Amy Keene.
0:14.6	Listen to The Closer, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBO Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael.
0:33.6	Charismatic, two meters tall, a degree from a top university, a strategic,
0:40.0	visionary, white and male. His career went straight to the top thanks to his ability to make decisions under pressure. Perfect ones.
0:49.0	That's the stereotype of the ideal CEO. It's one that investors and boards seem to reflexively turn to as they
0:56.4	bring on new chief executives to turn floundering companies around or just lead strong companies
1:02.1	through changing times. But there's a disconnect here.
1:05.2	Our guest today has for 10 years conducted research on CEO performance.
1:10.1	Dubbed the CEO Genome Project, it illuminates the real behaviors that separate
1:15.8	high-performing chief executives from disappointing ones. Simply put, this
1:20.3	stereotype is wrong. Joining me now is Elena Botello, a partner at G.H. Smart, a consulting firm.
1:27.0	She's the co-author of the article What Set Successful CEOs Apart.
1:32.0	It's in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.
1:35.6	Elena, thanks for talking with the HBR IdeaCast.
1:38.0	Sarah, thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure. So what's wrong with that stereotype? Well first of all I think what's wrong with it is
1:45.8	probably your audience right now is feeling an old time low because even me just
1:52.1	listening to you kind of my blood pressure is up, my motivation is down,
1:56.0	it's kind of a scary picture.
1:58.0	Like who could measure up to this standard, right?
2:00.0	And in fact what we found doing our research, actually nobody does and nobody has to.
2:05.2	You know in our practice we've been advising CEOs for 22 years and I kept getting stumbling
	...

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