Become a Better CEO by Practicing These Four Traits

Many people express interest in becoming a CEO, but not everyone has the skills required to successfully lead their organizations. Here’s what it takes to be a standout in the role and boost company growth.

The position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) may be one of the most-coveted positions in the business world. Approximately 87% of executives expressed interest in becoming CEO, according to 2017 research, but it’s a tough role to be successful in. The same report found about 25% of CEOs leave their jobs involuntarily. 

So, what could you do to increase your chances of meeting and exceeding expectations as CEO of your company? The short answer is you need to model the vision, strategies, attitudes, and growth your business was founded upon, plus have a few important personal characteristics.

The four traits that make a stellar CEO

According to the “CEO Genome Project,” a Harvard-directed study, what makes for a successful CEO is widely at odds with the stereotypes that boards and directors actually look for during the interview process. Its researchers identified four traits that generally make one more likely to succeed in the demanding role of chief executive officer:

• The ability to decide quickly and with conviction
• The ability to be reliable
• Excellence in effective communication to generate buy-in
• The ability to proactively adapt to changing business situations

It is quite rare for leaders to shine at all four of these behaviors, but more than half of the successful candidates that partook in the study excelled at more than one of them. These are traits that appear simple on the surface, but require quite a bit of practice to master.

Deciding quickly and with conviction

There are tons of Hollywood stories about Wall Street CEOs who always seem to know exactly how to steer their companies to massive success. The reality is a little bit more humble: Successful CEOs do not make a mark by making great decisions but by being decisive. 

• High-performing CEOs consistently make decisions earlier, faster, and with higher levels of conviction – even when information is incomplete and in unfamiliar areas. 
• Decisive CEOs are 12 times more likely than others to be high-performers.
• Great CEOs know that a wrong decision is sometimes better than no decision at all.
• They also know that waiting for all the information to formulate the perfect answer creates bottlenecks that could lead to loss of value, frustration, and missed opportunities.

Just as importantly, high-performing CEOs forge ahead without wavering once a path is chosen. Employees and other stakeholders quickly lose faith in those who backtrack once a decision is made. The good news is that pretty much any bad decision you make as company leader will be non-lethal, so it costs your reputation more to be indecisive or show a lack of conviction.

Delivering reliably

It goes without saying that being able to consistently deliver as a CEO is one of the most important traits for success in the role. In fact, the Harvard study found that candidates who score high for reliability and predictability here were twice as likely to land the top job, and 15 times more likely to succeed in it.

The keywords here are reliability and predictability: Candidates who predictably exceed expectations by 2% to 10% are more likely to be considered by a board – and be effective as CEO – than those who manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat once in a while to exceed expectations by 30% to 50%. The stakes at the C-suite level are high, so stakeholders want to know what to expect every single time. Top candidates also rate highly on qualities such as:

• Accountability
• Organizational and planning skills
• Performance monitoring
• Strong leadership qualities
• Talent acquisition
• Team building expertise

A key feature in reliably delivering results is setting realistic expectations. The handful of predictably reliable CEOs drill deep into the structure, budgets, people, and other realities of their companies before taking action. They develop their own point of view of what the company is and how it works before establishing and executing a plan of action that is aligned with those realities. 

Excelling at engagement for impact

The very best CEOs are able to fully understand stakeholder priorities and merge them with business results. Numbers indicate that CEOs who can lay out plans, secure buy-in across the organization, and align their efforts with value creation tend to be 75% more successful in the role than their peers.

A key aspect of this trait lies in the power of communication a chief executive brings to the job. Remember:

• Your moods, gestures, tone, and ability to pick up on the intangibles in interactions will be magnified 100 times as CEO. 
• A mastery over these aspects can play a deciding role in whether you get the full backing of stakeholders.
• It is often more impactful to instill confidence in your ability to lead than expend energy on being liked or avoiding painful decisions. 

CEOs who excel at engagement for impact also know how to give everyone a voice without necessarily giving everyone a vote. The latter slows the decision-making process and often results in decisions that may be popular but less-than-stellar. All of this is also best achieved without sliding down a slope toward the autocratic, lone-wolf mindset. CEOs who opt to go it alone ultimately tend to fail in the long run.

Adapting proactively

One of the most critical skills every leader should have is the ability to adapt to changing or unforeseen circumstances. As a CEO, a huge part of your workday likely consists of operating in uncharted waters for which there is no playbook. Harvard’s study found:

• That CEOs who are more likely to achieve success can anticipate changes and adapt ahead of time. 
• Successful CEOs often have to make choices about focusing their energies on the short-, medium-, or long term. 
• The most adaptable spend as much as 50% of their time thinking about long-term possibilities. 
• That doing so enables them to pick up on early signals of impending upheaval.

Adaptable CEOs are also plugged into many information sources and more open to treating mistakes as learning opportunities. This means they are more likely to make strategic moves for the future.

How a highly trained team supports successful CEOs’ visions

The success of any company hinges on its CEO’s ability to lead, but having the right sales team in place to achieve its goals is crucial. MetaGrowth Ventures is a consulting firm that is committed to helping founders and CEOs take their companies to the next level through the development of world-class sales teams. Our experts help you hire and train top candidates to expedite success. That means our clients are fully primed to scale their businesses and thrive.