Wisdom from the West Coast: Personal Lessons in Leadership.
First the bad news. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, stated, âmost things you canât controlâ. âHowever,â he added, âthereâs one thing you can controlâââhow you treat people.â
Jeffâs message was about action, not emotion. He has been with the company since 2008 and was instrumental in its acquisition by Microsoft for $26 billion in 2016. âEmpathy is no good without action,â Jeff said. Itâs just about treating people as youâd like to be treatedâââand that includes the competition. âAm I compassionate with my competition? Yes. Do I lower my defences? No.â Words like âempathyâ and âhumilityâ featured in Jeffâs description of his leadership approach, but this was realism not idealism. The ever-growing strength of LinkedIn strongly suggests his approach is a winning one.
Bananas, Not Wine
A leader is not only defined by the decisions she makes, but also how she delivers themâââhow fast and how clean. John Hamm , CEO Coach and Octopus Venture Partner, urged the founders not to confuse difficult decisions with unpleasant ones. The former are foggy, the latter are clear, but emotionally difficult to execute. Firing a long-standing colleague, for example, can be an awkward, even painful, necessity. Holding back, mis-identifying it as a âdifficultâ rather than an âunpleasantâ decision is not good leadership, particularly in the arena of hiring. âHire slowly, fire quickly,â said John. âProblems age like bananas, not wine,â so clear seeing and clear action must cut through denial and avoidance.
The quality of the team you surround yourself with is any good leaderâs concern. John expanded on the theme of hiring âA-playersâ. These are the people who, in turn, hire the best people. They are team players and they know their value to the company. They donât need to prove it, they just do it. To keep the flow of A-players coming, John encouraged the founder CEOs to be âalways meeting peopleâ. Not necessarily hiring, just connecting, listening and learning. âYour network is your most powerful tool,â said John, so staying open to new introductions is smart practice, however content you are with your current team.
The Power of No
Jeff Miller is a veteran Silicon Valley leader. As CEO of Documentum , he grew the company from a staff of 15 with $500k of sales in 1993, to a listed company of 1,200 with revenues of $200m in 2001. Once upon a time, Jeff said no to a $1m deal. Why? Because it wasnât on strategy. (âWeâre not doing specials,â Jeff said.) It spawned the legend: âwe may not be right, but we are not confusedâ. Jeff believes, and has proven, that any team 100% focused on an 80% right solution, wins. This means leaders donât have to be right (and who is, infallibly?), but they do have to be clear and committed to a strategy.
Relationships
Dave de Walt (FireEye), made the surprising claim that good CEOs spend very little time running their company. They do however spend a great deal of time with the people theyâve hired to run it. âSpending timeâ doesnât necessarily mean poring over figures and results. Asking, listening and shooting the breeze is as valuable as talking shop. In leadership, Dave was saying, relationships are as important as functionality.
Tom Reilly of Cloudera is a self-confessed introvert. A former mechanical engineer at IBM who âfell asleep on his pencilâ, Tom is not a likely candidate for leadership. But he now leads a company that recently merged with Hortonworks to create a combined equity value of $5.2bn. He describes himself as a âpractising extrovertâ. He takes time to walk the floors of his company, deliberately looking people in the eye, asking their name and then using it three times in the conversation. Tom is nothing if not methodical, but his people get the attention he feels they deserve.
Hands On
Lily Kanter (founder of Serena & Lily) likes to see her teamsâ shirt sleeves rolled up. âEvery VP should own some piece of the âdoingâ,â says Lily. There is no longer room for âjust managersâ. So a Head of Marketing, for example, with strong analytics, should be closely involved in that area. Leadership in this case is not about personal heavy lifting; the load is shared through collaboration. Alluding to Dave de Waltâs point, a CEO should be in the business of tweaking, not wrenching.
Steve Lucas, CEO of Marketo, said, âno matter what you do, some people are just not going to like you!â He has a story to illustrate this hard reality. When he arrived at Marketo there was a company shuttle bus that was costing the company $2m a year. It was used by 11 people. He cancelled it immediately and emailed the 11 users a bus pass each. There was outrage, but, Steve noticed, only from those who didnât actually use the shuttle. He was unrepentant. âThis was not about culture, it was about being grown-ups,â Steve said. He tempered this lesson in thick skin by adding that âthis does not give you the right to be flippant or dismissive. Ruffling some feathers is okâââif itâs done respectfully and humbly. No CEO should walk around thinking their title means they have all the answers.â
As You Would Be Done By
Taking flack, as Steve explained, can be part of the job, but Jeff Weiner added a counter-point; the ability to graciously receive compliments. It hinges on the question; who do your team need you to be? âI know how I want to feel around a CEO,â said Jeff. The position can carry with it a certain âsovereignâ or figurehead role, symbolic more than personal, which people naturally respond to. If someone pays you a compliment, Jeff urged, receive it gracefully. After all, isnât that how youâd like to be treated?
Leadership undoubtedly includes making hard personal decisions. Doing whatâs best for the company can lead some Founder CEOs to step aside as their company evolves. In our next post weâll look at how leadership can affect the lifespan experience of a Founder CEO.
 âA great time-out to reflect on strategy and the role of CEO, through the lens of the experiences of A-game players. The week has reframed my expectations of myself.â
– Kate McLaughlin, We Got POP
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