Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens and I'm Jan Black. Have you ever wondered what it takes to become the CEO of a major corporation and what can we all learn from the top CEOs about running smaller businesses

or better managing our own lives? We'll explore those questions with our guest on this episode,

Carolyn Dewar, who is a senior partner at the McKinsey and Company consulting firm. She coaches

many Fortune 100 CEOs to maximize their effectiveness in the role. And she's also the co-author of the new book, CEO Excellence, the six mindsets that

distinguish the best leaders from the rest.

Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me.

Tell us what a CEO really does.

I mean, I think that's kind of a mysterious title sometimes.

Absolutely. And that was part of our impetus for writing the book and doing the research.

There are sort of these mythical roles, right, that have so much power and what actually is the job anyway.

You know, we had a chance to talk to about 70 of the

world's best CEOs. And this was one of the questions we asked, right? What is the job? And as we

stepped back, they all had different ways of saying it, but they all really came down to six

elements of the role. And some are familiar for any leader and some are unique, right?

So the six elements were they have to set a bold direction, right?

Really set the vision for where the company is going.

They have to manage the organization and make sure that the culture and the organization's

structure and talent are set up for success.

They have to work through their team.

So their top team is really the way that they get a lot of things done.

They need to manage their board.

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