13 Habits of Exceptionally Likable People

Image credit: Christopher Martin | Flickr

 

Travis Bradberry

Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and President at TalentSmart

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, being likable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).

In a study conducted at UCLA, subjects rated over 500 adjectives based on their perceived significance to likeability. The top-rated adjectives had nothing to do with being gregarious, intelligent, or attractive (innate characteristics). Instead, the top adjectives were sincerity, transparency, and capacity for understanding (another person).

These adjectives, and others like them, describe people who are skilled in the social side of emotional intelligence. TalentSmart research data from more than a million people shows that people who possess these skills aren’t just highly likable, they outperform those who don’t by a large margin.

We did some digging to uncover the key behaviors that emotionally intelligent people engage in that make them so likable. Here are 13 of the best: 

1. They Ask Questions
The biggest mistake people make when it comes to listening is they’re so focused on what they’re going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what’s being said. The words come through loud and clear, but the meaning is lost.

A simple way to avoid this is to ask a lot of questions. People like to know you’re listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows that not only are you listening, you also care about what they’re saying. You’ll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking questions. 

2. They Put Away Their Phones
Nothing will turn someone off to you like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all of your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them. 

3. They Are Genuine
Being genuine and honest is essential to being likable. No one likes a fake. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them. It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel.

Likable people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. By concentrating on what drives you and makes you happy as an individual, you become a much more interesting person than if you attempt to win people over by making choices that you think will make them like you. 

4. They Don’t Pass Judgment
If you want to be likable you must be open-minded. Being open-minded makes you approachable and interesting to others. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who has already formed an opinion and is not willing to listen.

Having an open mind is crucial in the workplace where approachability means access to new ideas and help. To eliminate preconceived notions and judgment, you need to see the world through other people’s eyes. This doesn’t require you believe what they believe or condone their behavior, it simply means you quit passing judgment long enough to truly understand what makes them tick. Only then can you let them be who they are. 

5. They Don’t Seek Attention
People are averse to those who are desperate for attention. You don’t need to develop a big, extroverted personality to be likable. Simply being friendly and considerate is all you need to win people over. When you speak in a friendly, confident, and concise manner, you will notice that people are much more attentive and persuadable than if you try to show them you’re important. People catch on to your attitude quickly and are more attracted to the right attitude than what—or how many people—you know.

When you’re being given attention, such as when you’re being recognized for an accomplishment, shift the focus to all the people who worked hard to help you get there. This may sound cliché, but if it’s genuine, the fact that you pay attention to others and appreciate their help will show that you’re appreciative and humble—two adjectives that are closely tied to likeability. 

6. They Are Consistent
Few things make you more unlikable than when you’re all over the place. When people approach you, they like to know whom they’re dealing with and what sort of response they can expect. To be consistent you must be reliable, and you must ensure that even when your mood goes up and down it doesn’t affect how you treat other people. 

7. They Use Positive Body Language
Becoming cognizant of your gestures, expressions, and tone of voice (and making certain they’re positive) will draw people to you like ants to a picnic. Using an enthusiastic tone, uncrossing your arms, maintaining eye contact, and leaning towards the person who’s speaking are all forms of positive body language that high-EQ people use to draw others in. Positive body language can make all the difference in a conversation.

It’s true that how you say something can be more important than what you say. 

8. They Leave a Strong First Impression
Research shows most people decide whether or not they like you within the first seven seconds of meeting you. They then spend the rest of the conversation internally justifying their initial reaction. This may sound terrifying, but by knowing this you can take advantage of it to make huge gains in your likeability. First impressions are tied intimately to positive body language. Strong posture, a firm handshake, smiling, and opening your shoulders to the person you are talking to will help ensure that your first impression is a good one. 

9. They Greet People by Name
Your name is an essential part of your identity, and it feels terrific when people use it. Likable people make certain they use others’ names every time they see them. You shouldn’t use someone’s name only when you greet him. Research shows that people feel validated when the person they’re speaking with refers to them by name during a conversation.

If you’re great with faces but have trouble with names, have some fun with it and make remembering people’s names a brain exercise. When you meet someone, don’t be afraid to ask her name a second time if you forget it right after you hear it. You’ll need to keep her name handy if you’re going to remember it the next time you see her. 

10. They Smile
People naturally (and unconsciously) mirror the body language of the person they’re talking to. If you want people to like you, smile at them during a conversation and they will unconsciously return the favor and feel good as a result. 

11. They Know When To Open Up
Be careful to avoid sharing personal problems and confessions too quickly, as this will get you labeled a complainer. Likable people let the other person guide when it’s the right time for them to open up. 

12. They Know Who To Touch (and They Touch Them)
When you touch someone during a conversation, you release oxytocin in their brain, a neurotransmitter that makes their brain associate you with trust and a slew of other positive feelings. A simple touch on the shoulder, a hug, or a friendly handshake is all it takes to release oxytocin. Of course, you have to touch the right person in the right way to release oxytocin, as unwanted or inappropriate touching has the opposite effect. Just remember, relationships are built not just from words, but also from general feelings about each other. Touching someone appropriately is a great way to show you care. 

13. They Balance Passion and Fun
People gravitate toward those who are passionate. That said, it’s easy for passionate people to come across as too serious or uninterested because they tend to get absorbed in their work. Likable people balance their passion with the ability to have fun. At work they are serious, yet friendly. They still get things done because they are socially effective in short amounts of time and they capitalize on valuable social moments. They minimize small talk and gossip and instead focus on having meaningful interactions with their coworkers. They remember what you said to them yesterday or last week, which shows that you’re just as important to them as their work. 

Bringing It All Together
Likable people are invaluable and unique. They network with ease, promote harmony in the workplace, bring out the best in everyone around them, and generally seem to have the most fun. Add these skills to your repertoire and watch your likeability soar!

9 Problems with 360 Multi-Rater Assessments

Jim Clemmer

Leadership/culture development speaker, workshop/retreat facilitator, team builder, executive coach, and author

Feedback is critical to leadership effectiveness and development. That’s why 360 Multi-Rater Assessments are used by over 90% of Fortune 500 companies. But many organizations are now experiencing these problems:

1. Focusing on a leader’s weaknesses and skill gaps — many participants find the 360 process negative and punishing. Some executives are now banning 360s from their organizations because of the pain and suffering they can cause. Pre and post-tests prove that “Building Leadership Strengths is 2 – 3 Times More Effective Than Fixing Weaknesses“.
2. Survey questions lack validity — Many competency models and 360 survey questions have little to no research on whether they are connected to performance outcomes. For example, charisma, time management, managerial courage, and executive presence are examples of dozens of competencies we’ve researched that don’t predict or correlate to levels of employee engagement, safety, turnover, patient satisfaction, or quality.
3. Rating scales create false positives — standard “Agree/Disagree” scales often create a tight banding of data that make it difficult to differentiate between competent, strength, or profound strength.
4. Providing normative averages — showing leaders 75th and 90th percentile norms and how building their strengths can significantly elevate their performance and encourages greater developmental effort.
5. Lack of personal connection to employee engagement — employee engagement surveys show generally how engaged or satisfied employees are with the organization. Leaders need to see specifically how their behaviors impact their direct reports.
6. Not all competencies are equal for every leader — traditional leadership or competency models use a one-size-fits-all approach (some try tailoring to multiple organizational levels). What’s missing is multi-rater feedback on which competencies matter most for that leader in that role.
7. Written comments reinforce fixing weaknesses — most participants skim the responses to the question asking for a list of strengths and dwell (even fixate) on the list of their weaknesses or improvement suggestions. All a leader really needs to know is whether a weakness is significant or a “fatal flaw” that needs immediate attention.
8. No insights on how to build strengths — traditional improvement plans flowing from 360s are focused on fixing weaknesses using a linear approach. What’s missing is a research-based map showing how extraordinary leaders build a competency or strength from good to great.
9. Too complex or too simple — some very lengthy 360 assessments can take 30 – 60 minutes or more to complete. Reports are overly complex and confusing to interpret. At the other extreme, too few competencies and survey questions restrict the range of personally relevant and validated strengths leaders can leverage.

About Jim Clemmer:

For over three decades, Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, management team retreats, seven bestselling books, articles, and blog have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The Clemmer Group is the Canadian strategic partner of Zenger Folkman, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations.

Are Your Employees Connected To A Common Good?

They should be. A new study reveals the value in unifying around goodness.

What do you think your employees really have in common?

If you're honest with yourself, the answer is likely that it’s not much beyond an interest in your company. That shouldn't come as a surprise since employees come from all walks of life. It's important to have diverse thinking and interests, but shared values and a common purpose are also a must to foster a cohesive community of people within the walls of an organization. Walk from the finance department to the marketing department, from sourcing to engineering and more, and you'll see the differences that exist. Even within a small company, departments can divide the whole if not anchored in the organization’s common purpose and operating values.

As a result of globalization, many companies have employees located in different cities, states, and even countries, allowing cultural differences to be magnified. Even as remote workspaces and mobile technologies allow for more physical separation, society as a whole is searching for ways to create unity around common and shared passions. A study released in 2013 shows that 37% of consumers and employees want to feel the unity that stems from local causes, 35% want to feel it nationally, and 28% globally. Humanity has a shared desire to unite our communities, our countries, and the people inside of companies.

Common good makes for good business.
Companies with a social conscience that act, innovate, and mobilize around social needs are no longer unique revolutionaries--they are part of the new normal. When executed well, the power of engaging employees in and around a common cause that's connected to the core business is a very powerful force for good for both the business and the world at large. We work alongside major corporations, social entrepreneurs, and nonprofits, and there is absolutely no shortage of inventive approaches to engaging in the common good. Ingenuity that connects the resources of a corporation to solutions that deliver an impact are plentiful, but at times we see corporations struggle around ways to clearly articulate a strategy that makes sense to stakeholders and key players.

Common good gives profits a greater purpose.
As part of our strategic work, I recently met the founders of Profits4Purpose, a technology business that helps companies create a united and simple giving platform. Their solution is built on the belief that there is power in connecting relationships and sharing experiences, and by empowering individuals through their platform, they help companies increase their social impact on the world. Profits4Purpose started their business to accelerate and simplify the process for businesses that want to engage their employees in social good.

Profits4Purpose uses a "match.com" model in which they connect employee interests with needs and opportunities in communities. They also empower employees to create personal-interest groups that others can join. The platform enables companies to create a customized workplace giving destination, providing employees with personalized giving schedules (and personalized trust funds). They also provide tools that match employee interests and skills with local nonprofits and streamline all grant, sponsorship, and donation requests. Users receive access to a dashboard with thousands of volunteer opportunities, the ability to create personal giving foundations, and activity walls displaying the impact being made in real time--all delivered with a simple approach to creating relational and innovative common wealth.

Recently, Staples partnered with Profits4Purpose to offer their employees a voice as to where corporate donations are shared. Through their platform, Staples employees see their impact on a local and global level. In a company that is 100,000 strong, the unified voice rings loudly. 

Mobilize your employees for the common good.
If you look at the world of business today, it seems that most organizations fall into one of the following groups: those that have seamlessly connected their business to a common good and a dedicated cause, such as Warby Parker, FEED, Toms Shoes, and Krochet Kids. And companies like Target, Whole Foods, and Southwest Airlines that have a foundation or a focus on social good that is directly linked back to the communities they serve. Then there are other companies that are actively giving back and helping to make a difference in the world--but are not inventive in how they connect their common good to their internal culture or consumer community.

Regardless of which group your company falls into, there's always an opportunity to connect and engage employees at a deeper level to ensure that the pursuit of the common good is driving common wealth. 

Connecting to the common good makes common sense.
It's clear that today’s emerging workforce wants to make more than a living, they want to make a difference--and this is especially true for employees between the ages of 20 and 35, who will contribute to the common good with or without the support of their employers. A technology platform like Profits4Purpose can help ensure that employees get the support they need from their employers to help make a positive impact on the world. 

Shawn Parr

Shawn Parr is the Guvner & CEO of Bulldog Drummond, an innovation and design consultancy headquartered in San Diego whose clients and partners have included Starbucks, Diageo, Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, Adidas, MTV, Nestle, Pinkberry, American Eagle Outfitters, Ideo, Sony, Virgin, Disney, Nike, Mattel, Heineken, Annie’s Homegrown, Kashi, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, CleanWell, The Honest Kitchen, and World Vision.

Never Give Up!

TED Talks: “Start With Why?”

By Jamie Hughes, an Account Manager at Speakers Corner

TED Talks have gradually become a fruitful new resource for entrepreneurs, marketeers and financiers. Many have benefited from discovering inspirational talks from various speakers. Here is a TED talk that will inspire you to make important changes for your business:

Simon Sinek’s ‘Start With Why?’
 
Simon is an entrepreneur and author and is best known for his work on ‘start with why’, a project compiled of books, courses and webinars aimed at inspiring leadership in business. Sinek’s 2014 talk argues that the world’s most successful companies approach their business plans and marketing campaigns with the same question: “Why?” By including examples such as Martin Luther King to Apple, Sinek is able to identify a formula for inspirational leadership both in business and politics and believes a company’s mission statement needs to be clearly defined by “why the business exists”. This message is cemented throughout his talk when he uses phrases such as: “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” and urges listeners to think about the core purpose of their business or project.

His speaker style is slow and considered, although emphasis is given to phrases like the above. Sinek’s discussions begins to feel like a mantra and by the end of the talk it’s difficult to forget his message.

9 Habits That Lead to Terrible Decisions

Several years ago we came up with a great idea for a new leadership-development offering we thought would be valuable to everyone. We had research demonstrating that when people embarked on a self-development program, their success increased dramatically when they received follow-up encouragement.  We developed a software application to offer that sort of encouragement. People could enter their development goals, and the software would send them reminders every week or month asking how they were doing, to motivate them to keep on going. We invested a lot of time and money in this product.

But it turned out that people did not like receiving the e-mails and found them more annoying than motivating. Some of our users came up with a name for this type of software. They called it “nagware.” Needless to say, this product never reached the potential we had envisioned.  Thinking about the decisions we had made to create this disappointing result led us to ask the question, “What causes well-meaning people to make poor decisions?”

Some possibilities came immediately to mind – people make poor decisions when under severe time pressure or when they don’t have access to all the important information (unless they are explaining the decision to their boss, and then it is often someone else’s fault).

But we wanted a more objective answer. In an effort to understand the root cause of poor decision making, we looked at 360-feedback data from more than 50,000 leaders and compared the behavior of those who were perceived to be making poor decisions with that of the people perceived to be making very good decisions. We did a factor analysis of the behaviors that made the most statistical difference between the best and worst decision makers. Nine factors emerged as the most common paths to poor decision making. Here they are in order from most to least significant.

1. Laziness. This showed up as a failure to check facts, to take the initiative, to confirm assumptions, or to gather additional input. Basically, such people were perceived to be sloppy in their work and unwilling to put themselves out. They relied on past experience and expected results simply to be an extrapolation of the past.
2. Not anticipating unexpected events. It is discouraging to consistently consider the possibility of negative events in our lives, and so most people assume the worst will not happen. Unfortunately, bad things happen fairly often. People die, get divorced, and have accidents. Markets crash, house prices go down, and friends are unreliable. There is excellent research demonstrating that if people just take the time to consider what might go wrong, they are actually very good at anticipating problems. But many people just get so excited about a decision they are making that they never take the time to do that simple due-diligence.
3. Indecisiveness. At the other end of the scale, when faced with a complex decision that will be based on constantly changing data, it’s easy to continue to study the data, ask for one more report, or perform yet one more analysis before a decision gets made. When the reports and the analysis take much longer than expected, poor decision makers delay, and the opportunity is missed. It takes courage to look at the data, consider the consequences responsibly, and then move forward. Oftentimes indecision is worse than making the wrong decision. Those most paralyzed by fear are the ones who believe that one mistake will ruin their careers and so avoid any risk at all.
4. Remaining locked in the past. Some people make poor decisions because they’re using the same old data or processes they always have. Such people get used to approaches that worked in the past and tend not to look for approaches that will work better. Better the devil they know. But, too often, when a decision is destined to go wrong, it’s because the old process is based on assumptions that are no longer true. Poor decision makers fail to keep those base assumptions in mind when applying the tried and true.
5. Having no strategic alignment. Bad decisions sometimes stem from a failure to connect the problem to the overall strategy. In the absence of a clear strategy that provides context, many solutions appear to make sense. When tightly linked to a clear strategy, the better solutions quickly begin to rise to the top.
6. Over-dependence. Some decisions are never made because one person is waiting for another, who in turn is waiting for someone else’s decision or input. Effective decision makers find a way to act independently when necessary.
7. Isolation. Some of those leaders are waiting for input because they’ve not taken steps to get it in a timely manner or have not established the relationships that would enable them to draw on other people’s expertise when they need to. All our research (and many others’) on effective decision making recognizes that involving others with the relevant knowledge, experience, and expertise improves the quality of the decision. This is not news. So the question is why. Sometimes people lack the necessary networking skills to access the right information. Other times, we’ve found, people do not involve others because they want the credit for a decision. Unfortunately they get to take the blame for the bad decisions, as well.
8. Lack of technical depth. Organizations today are very complex, and even the best leaders do not have enough technical depth to fully understand multifaceted issues. But when decision makers rely on others’ knowledge and expertise without any perspective of their own, they have a difficult time integrating that information to make effective decisions. And when they lack even basic knowledge and expertise, they have no way to tell if a decision is brilliant or terrible. We continue to find that the best executives have deep expertise. And when they still don’t have the technical depth to understand the implications of the decisions they face, they make it their business to find the talent they need to help them.
9. Failure to communicate the what, where, when, and how associated with their decisions. Some good decisions become bad decisions because people don’t understand – or even know about — them. Communicating a decision, its rational and implications, is critical to the successful implementation of a decision.

Waiting too long for others’ input. Failing to get the right input at the right time. Failing to understand that input through insufficient skills. Failing to understand when something that worked in the past will not work now. Failing to know when to make a decision without all the right information and when to wait for more advice. It’s no wonder good people make bad decisions. The path to good decision making is narrow, and it’s far from straight. But keeping in mind the pitfalls can make any leader a more effective decision maker.

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Jack Zenger is the CEO of Zenger/Folkman, a leadership development consultancy. He is a co-author of the October 2011 HBR article Making Yourself Indispensable.Connect with Jack at twitter.com/jhzenger.

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Joseph Folkman is the president of Zenger/Folkman, a leadership development consultancy. He is a co-author of the October 2011 HBR article “Making Yourself Indispensable. Connect with Joe at twitter.com/joefolkman.

50 Quotes on Leadership Every Entrepreneur Should Follow

John Rampton

Contributor

Entrepreneur and Connector

 

Every entrepreneur knows that the success of their business ultimately rests on their shoulders. Yes, the product you build and the team you hire are important, but your ability to lead is what carries your company.

With that kind of pressure, it’s easy to feel stressed, lonely and overwhelmed at times. Every great leader has faced a challenge that defined their greatness, which is why we often turn to their advice when needed.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or team leader, here are 50 inspirational quotes on leadership for when you need a little pep talk.

1. "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." – Rosalynn Carter
2. “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” - Lao Tzu
3. "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse." -  Adlai E. Stevenson II
4. "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." – Colin Powell
5. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” - Max DePree
6. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." – John Quincy Adams
7. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
8. "A leader...is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind." - Nelson Mandela
9. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” - Aristotle
10. "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
11. "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." – Bill Gates
12. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit." - John Maxwell
13. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.” - Brian Tracy
14. "The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic." – George Orwell
15. “I start each day by telling myself what a positive influence I am on this world.” - Peter Daisyme
16. “Earn your leadership every day." - Michael Jordan
17. "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." – Jack Welch
18. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” - Peter Drucker
19. "My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better." - Steve Jobs
20. "The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader." – Albert Einstein
21. “Great leaders find ways to connect with their people and help them fulfill their potential.” - Steven J. Stowell
22. "To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way." - Pat Riley
23. "If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk." – Benjamin Hooks
24. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” - Jim Rohn
25. "A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." - Max Lucado
26. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
27. "It is absolutely necessary...for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders." - George Washington
28. "Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work." - Vince Lombardi
29. “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.”  - Stephen King
30. "A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."- J.P. Morgan
31. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.” - Chinese Proverb
32. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
33. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”  - Andrew Carnegie
34. "Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar." - Orrin Woodward
35. "Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob." – Oscar Wilde
36. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” - Sam Walton
37. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” -  Albert Schweitzer
38. “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” - Dolly Parton
39. “I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.” - Warren Bennis
40. “In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.” -  Henry W. Longfellow
41. “It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)” - Latin Proverb
42. “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” -  Thomas Carlyle
43. “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.” - Ovid
44. “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader” - Henry Ford
45. “Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty, and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.” - Noah Porter
46. "Don't blow off another's candle for it won't make yours shine brighter." Jaachynma N.E. Agu
47. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”  - Herbert Swope
48. “He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.”  - Solon
49. “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” - Maya Angelou
50. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt
Bonus:
“Screw it, let’s just do it.” - Richard Branson

 

CEOs Need Mentors Too

In 2010, when David Nish was promoted from CFO to CEO at Standard Life, he knew the scale of the challenge his company faced. The 185-year-old giant had just embarked on a sweeping transformation from an insurer to a long-term savings and investment company. Nish also knew that as the person leading the change, he would be tested by decisions and management situations he hadn’t encountered in the past. Certain that he could benefit from the perspective of someone who had been down similar roads before, Nish turned to a somewhat unusual adviser: Niall FitzGerald, a former chairman of Unilever.

The mentoring relationship they subsequently established is illustrative of those we have studied in our research—a two-year inquiry into an emerging way in which new CEOs in large organizations gain access to seasoned counsel and feedback. We found dozens of executives who were accelerating their learning by engaging the services of high-profile veteran leaders from outside their companies. To learn more about this growing but as yet undocumented phenomenon, we interviewed 15 chairman mentors and 25 protégés—CEOs, CEO designates, and CFOs. (Chairman Mentors International facilitated access to many of the study participants.)

On the basis of what we heard, we are convinced that more CEOs should connect with mentors rather than assume that theirs is a burden to be shouldered alone. But we also discovered aspects of such arrangements that make them trickier than the mentoring that takes place at lower organizational levels. At the CEO level, special considerations must go into making a match between mentor and mentee, structuring their sessions to deliver the intended benefits, and prioritizing the process so that it isn’t crowded out by other demands. By sharing what we’ve learned about these issues, we hope to pave the way for more use of this highly efficient learning model.

Lonely Learning at the Top

Down in the ranks, mentoring has become very popular in modern companies; many of them set up formal arrangements whereby “old hands” help novices learn the ropes. In this way they facilitate the acculturation, performance, and career progress of new entrants, high potentials, and minority populations who lack enough obvious role models. These efforts resemble the age-old practice of apprenticeship: observation of the master, execution with supervision and feedback, gradual accretion of tacit knowledge, and eventual attainment of mastery. The investments tend to pay off well. Research on junior to midlevel professionals shows that such programs enable them to advance more quickly, earn higher salaries, and gain more satisfaction in their jobs and lives than people without mentors do. For employers, the benefits are not only higher performance but also greater success in attracting, developing, and retaining talent.

Most CEOs of large organizations have had the benefit of mentoring—and other developmental activities such as stretch job assignments and leadership programs—during their careers. But their arrival at the top suddenly narrows the available and appropriate options. Gavin Patterson, who was promoted to chief executive of the telecommunications giant BT Group in 2013, told us that his company would have been “happy to send me to a top management program at Harvard,” but he couldn’t afford to be absent so long. “If you are one of the top 10 people in the business,” he noted, “the possibility of being away for three months is practically zero.”

Yet CEOs must keep raising their game—and having their thinking usefully challenged—for the good of their organizations. They must routinely make decisions concerning matters they’ve never before tackled. When have they ever had to spearhead a takeover—or defend against one? Resolve a crisis as the public face of the company? Deal with a board of powerful directors with divergent opinions? These demands require new talents. In the words of one well-known executive coach, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

In such high-stakes situations, CEOs need wise mentoring. That’s not the same as coaching. Although executive coaches are often superb at providing feedback and closing gaps in specific managerial skills, precious few have actually worked in equivalent roles themselves. Mentors, by contrast, are role models who have “been there and done that.” They can offer timely, context-specific counsel drawn from experience; wisdom; and networks that are highly relevant to the problems to be solved. And unlike company-managed mentoring programs, CEO mentoring is driven by the mentee, reflecting a level of customization rarely provided to people in the ranks.

When CEOs get this kind of support, good outcomes follow. We surveyed 45 CEOs who have formal mentoring arrangements, and 71% said they were certain that company performance had improved as a result. Strong majorities reported that they were making better decisions (69%) and more capably fulfilling stakeholder expectations (76%). More than anything else, these CEOs credited mentors with helping them avoid costly mistakes and become proficient in their roles faster (84%). Patterson spoke for many when he called mentoring “a more practical way to develop.”

Making the Match

Given the clear benefits of mentoring for developing CEOs, why is the practice not already ubiquitous? The single biggest obstacle is the difficulty, and sometimes awkwardness, of making a match between mentor and mentee—assuming that the CEO is not already lucky (or savvy) enough to have gained informal access to a valued adviser.

Three Heads Are Better Than Two

What could be more valuable to a CEO than having an experienced and trusted external mentor? Perhaps having two. When Paul Geddes became the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland’s insurance division, in 2009, he sought the counsel of two prominent board chairmen, each of whom had led a large business over three or four decades.

Likewise, Gavin Patterson, the CEO of BT Group since September 2013, started meeting with both Niall FitzGerald (a former chairman of Unilever) and David Simon (a former chairman of British Petroleum) after his promotion to chief executive of BT’s retail business, in 2008.

The practice may strike some observers as an invitation to confusion. But these executives recognize that even the smartest mentor has blind spots—some of which can overlap with a mentee’s. They also know that having two mentors increases the likelihood of hearing from someone who has dealt with similar complex and novel challenges.

The more diverse the challenges, the greater the benefit of multiple mentors. One CEO we interviewed, the head of a UK utility, summed up his view: “The two-mentor model is the ideal model. If offered twice the time with one of them, I wouldn’t swap.”

Sometimes it’s the CEO’s boss, the chairman of the board, who puts the wheels in motion. In 2009 Paul Geddes was the head of RBS Group’s insurance division and a potential successor to the CEO. But when European regulators required RBS to spin off the insurance business, he had a short time to prepare for an IPO. He recalls, “I had a lot to prove, and a lot to learn very quickly.” Geddes was introduced to the idea of a mentor by a board chairman who had himself been part of a mentoring process.

However, an interesting alternative to colleagues as connectors is emerging: high-level external consultants who play an intermediary role. These professional “matchmakers” use their networks and their insights into personality, often gained through executive recruiting, to set up meetings between previously unacquainted business leaders. Typically a first meeting is followed by a series of conversations, allowing both parties to assess the potential for good outcomes from the relationship. (Contrast this with what often happens at lower organizational levels, where mentors are simply assigned to mentees.)

The mentors in our study were all former CEOs themselves and unaffiliated with their mentees’ organizations. This profile satisfies three needs: the need for relevant experience, the need for a broad perspective, and the importance of complete trust.

“Relevant experience” usually means the mentor has sat in the hot seat as the CEO of a large, complex enterprise and visibly succeeded. Geddes talked about the need for mentors who were “10 to 15 years ahead” of their mentees. Many of those in our study were semiretired and serving on multiple boards.

A broad perspective, too, generally comes from the outside. You want mentors who not only think differently but also understand how the company is regarded in the marketplace. Take Nokia, once the mobile phone market leader, which found itself in a precipitous slide as Apple and Samsung claimed increasing market share. In 2010 Stephen Elop—a former Microsoft executive—was brought in to turn the company around. At the suggestion of his chairman, he began meeting with Peter Sutherland, a former chairman of BP and the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. Sutherland’s help was on a purely personal basis, and Elop, a Canadian, found him invaluable in many ways, including as a guide to the unfamiliar dynamics of European board governance. Moreover, Sutherland could offer an objective view as to whether Elop’s new strategy was building positive momentum. (In September 2013 Nokia announced the sale of its key assets to Microsoft at a significant premium to shareholders.)

Finally, the absolute necessity of trust in a mentoring relationship drives CEOs to seek counsel from experienced outsiders. As Peter Lynas, the CFO of BAE Systems, told us, “Only a certain level of issues can be raised with an internal mentor.” For some chief executives it is simply too risky to expose gaps in knowledge and experience to a chairman or a member of the board. Martine Verluyten learned from mentors when she was the group finance director of Umicore SA and found that it was “most effective when I was trying to show my strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to trying to put up a front.”

Speaking from the other side of the table, Roger Carr (currently the chairman of BAE Systems and one of Paul Geddes’s two mentors) stressed the importance of “being able to talk to someone in confidence who is not a stakeholder or a paymaster.”

Making It Work

In the strongest CEO mentoring relationships we studied, clear rules of engagement ensure that both parties commit to total confidentiality (even when a CEO’s boss contacts the mentor to ask how his charge is doing). This emboldens mentees to disclose without fear of repercussions. Beyond that, interactions are designed to deliver what both see as the aim: helping the CEO traverse the learning curve more quickly and perform role functions more effectively.

Related to these rules of engagement is the expectation that both parties will prioritize and prepare for meetings that are set and organized by the mentee. It’s never easy to carve out time on a CEO’s calendar. But to engage in the kind of mentoring described here and stick with it, the executive must make it a part of his or her workflow. Sessions should have formal agendas, defined by the problems currently confronting the CEO and shared far enough in advance to allow mentors to reflect on their experience. Geddes described an approach that was “structured, driven by me, irrespective of topic,” and “felt like a live business process.”

Regular sessions—fairly long but fairly infrequent—are a must. Putting dates on the calendar allows the CEO to set aside some thorny issues that might otherwise be a nagging distraction, knowing they will be thoughtfully addressed in due course. Robert Swannell, the chairman of Marks & Spencer, describes why he chose this kind of mentoring arrangement for a new CEO: “We wanted it to be a formal program where people knew we were spending money on it, it would be taken seriously, and there would be a certain rigor to it.”

Finally, and despite such a disciplined structure, the mode of knowledge sharing generally preferred by both parties is storytelling. Most mentors told us that they shared specific and relevant examples from their own careers—including not only triumphs but also poor decisions that resulted in bad press, tarnished reputations, employee layoffs, or share price declines.

“The common thread would be genuine advice based on true-life experience,” Carr concluded, thinking about the mentoring he had provided to a number of executives. “The credibility of what I say is rooted in the visibility of what I have done, over a long time.”

Plenty of research demonstrates the power of stories to advance learning and development. Because they evoke emotion and empathy, they prove far more memorable than other forms of information and idea sharing. By presenting a chronological series of events, decisions, and consequences, they suggest lessons without asserting them aggressively. They are always about someone other than the listener, so they create psychologically safe spaces in which to ponder “What would I do?” Thus a session that might have felt like an interrogation or a lecture becomes a productive dialogue. Gavin Patterson put it this way: “The mentoring was about codevelopment in situ, not about preparation. Having the problems in front of you and sharing them with an experienced mentor is really where the value comes.”

Most interesting to us was the psychological boost that mentors’ war stories seemed to give new CEOs. David Nish told us, “The storytelling my mentor gave me was way beyond expectations. It’s about believing I’m unlimited…and I try to give my people the same—the belief that they can do anything.”

Similar sentiments came from Chris Jones, the chief executive of Welsh Water, who described a mentor’s habit of sharing what had worked well elsewhere and then probing to find how the problem at hand was similar or dissimilar: “Talking these issues through with someone who has experienced similar challenges in their own past helps to give me a great deal of confidence.”

What’s in It for the Mentor?

In this article we’ve highlighted the benefits that CEOs derive from top-level mentoring relationships. But what makes them valuable to mentors—especially those who are eminent and easily able to fill their time with other important activities? In-depth interviews with 15 mentors revealed the answers:

Sense of impact.

Our survey of mentees and mentors shows that they seek different elements in a match. Mentees consider reputation, capabilities relevant to their needs, and compatibility of styles. Mentors try to evaluate openness to learning and potential for success. They have wisdom to share, and they don’t want to waste it on people who won’t put it to use. Said another way, they are motivated by the opportunity to have an impact.

Personal learning.

Mentors also consider whether a mentee has knowledge, skills, and abilities from which they can learn. They appreciate industry, career, cultural, geographic, and generational experiences that are different from their own, and enjoy connecting with a new generation of leaders. Niall FitzGerald, a former chairman of Unilever, says that mentoring “keeps me abreast of what is currently challenging CEOs” and allows him to apply their thinking to new problems, opening the door to future opportunities and learning.

Fees for service.

In many cases an external mentor receives a contractual fee for the engagement, but it typically represents a small fraction of his or her income, let alone net worth. A number of our study subjects told us they would continue to mentor even if they weren’t paid. The contractual relationship merely focuses both parties on making the most of the experience. 

Teaching Top Dogs New Tricks

David Nish has little doubt that the mentoring he has received from Niall FitzGerald has made a very real difference to his performance—and Standard Life’s. Without testing his ideas against this seasoned leader’s experience, he would have found it harder to assert a bold strategic refocus, to tear down the walls of a stodgy hierarchy, and to put new emphasis on performance management, talent management, cost effectiveness, and investments in growth. Standard Life’s share price is at a record high. Over the course of three years it returned £1.2 billion to shareholders and doubled its market capitalization. The company is now seen as a leader in its industry. Other CEOs in our study, and their organizations, have had similar success.

Not every CEO has had the benefit of such a valuable mentor. But for the good of their organizations, perhaps more of them should. When business leaders fail to decide and act wisely, their companies suffer. With the right mentoring at the top, everyone stands to gain.

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Suzanne de Janasz is the Thomas F. Gleed Chair of Business Administration at Seattle University’s Albers School of Business and Economics.

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Maury Peiperl is a pro-vice-chancellor of Cranfield University, in England, and the director of its School of Management.