Don’t expect an Emmy Award in the C-Suite

We all keep hearing about that word; the one that is supposed to be the glue of organizations, the developer of financial and human capital sustenance and growth.  Yes, I am referring to leadership.  It is not a prized position.  In fact, when things go well, it’s all about the team, and when it goes bad, it’s all about their bad judgment.  But I am not here to define leadership.  Many sources, including Center for Work Life blogs have done this already, but I want to shed some light on managing your career as a leader.  How would one go about using one’s abilities and talents and focus on developing the competencies necessary to choose the right companies, functions and teams to fulfill the leadership challenge?  Pinpointing the needed competencies in today’s highly divergent geographical and industrial market is a hard enough question.  I am aiming to answer what will be useful in the future. 

I have examined hundred of executives profiles over the past decade or so and have interviewed numerous top manager regarding the talents and competencies of current and future leaders, especially within the C-Suite and have found some clear “cuts” if you will (pun intended).

Credit: James Martin (CNET)

The truth is that although there used to be clear lines between the various C-level jobs and their functions, today’s technology and global decision oriented market demands that at the forefront of one’s technical and functional expertise, executives hone in on their leadership and business acumen as a whole.  Every C-level executive needs to have a plan for how to develop a structure that will provide a competitive edge.  This is exactly the reason why upon promotion to the C-Suite, executives can no longer solely rely on what they had as competencies, but rather to quickly add to the repertoire as relates to business strategies and contributions to key decisions within the overall organization, rather than their unit or department or function.

It is now more important than ever for functions and departments to come out of the parochial thinking and respond quickly to what the organization’s vision dictates, so that they can get the necessary actions built by their teams in conjunction.

Whether a CIO, CMO, CSHO, CHRO, CFO,  or CEO, the executive suite, is less exclusively concerned with functions within their role, and is instead more attuned with leadership and organization effectiveness across multiple platforms, functions, and regions across the world.  In a sense, the C-Suite today is no longer just a function leader, but rather a “Hybrid” of all function leaders.  One of the common concerns I hear when working with our C-Suite clients is that they feel they have more in common with their executive peers than with the people within their function whom they have been amongst for years.  “This is not a bad thing” I tell them.  It means you are evolving to your needs” I tell them. So here are some needs and the talents and competencies necessary to meet them:

1.  With the advents of technology and generational changes in the market from baby boomers to millennials, all C-level positions have to poise themselves to manage a workforce and a customer base that has grown up in the digital age and has a strong desire for speed and immediate communication.

2.  One of the greatest and most emphasized themes concerning leadership within the C-Suite is the concept of risk management.  Due to the various global events that have shaped the economy since a decade ago,  such as 911 and the Wall Street Revolution, executives need to act as partners in making rational choices.  Balancing the agenda between new opportunities and assessing them for merits strategically and financially should be at the heart of every C-level leader.  This will mean becoming more culturally and internationally aware and training their team on real-time operational and legal effectiveness across multiple time zones.  Safety, security, and reputation management are all becoming integral to the senior leadership’s agenda.

3.  Less risk means more need for collaboration, increased need for transparency, and innovation and a more active rather than reactive mindset. 

4.  Investing largely in succession plan development is a huge component of competitiveness among organizations, and as a talent specialist, I am so often concerned to see this be treated as an HR priority, rather than an entire organization’s goal toward striking a competitive advantage. Ironically, our research shows that it’s now more common for the CEOs to owe their jobs to the boards rather than to their predecessors. Over the past year there was a notable jump in the number of CEOs who were recruited from their company’s board. I hope that this comes with more accountability at the top. Internal hires are certainly recommended as C-level recruits, as they create the right morale for teams, but board appointed candidates are as good as the board’s effectiveness. Is the board rightly facilitated? Is the board diverse enough?

5. With more women in the executive suite, more millennials and more demands in work-life balance, extrapolating the link between top performers’ personal values and their valued proposition to the organization will need to be a top priority.  Leadership within the executive suite needs to be directly tied to the key performance indicators of an organization to deem it as surmountable for the success and ROI of talent to organization performance.  Vision execution will no longer be the CEO’s job, but that of the entire C-Suite.

6.  All and all, the types of skills increasingly in favor are strong communication, empathy, collaboration, and trust building. One skill that will be of foremost importance will be the ability to elicit public trust as the face of the company. That will include facility and credibility with socially responsible initiatives. To thrive as a C-level executive, an individual needs to be a good communicator and team player, a culturally aware collaborator, capable of leading regardless of rank, a strategic thinker who can connect with key players quickly, able to engage their team and customers with flexibility and resistant to stress and burnout.

This last theme has run consistently through my findings in that the requirements for all the C-level jobs have shifted toward Emotional Intelligence and “softer” leadership skills. Technical skills are merely a starting point, for what is the success factor. In other words, the Hybrid executive can no longer lead from the “Suite”, he/she has to lead, eager and starry eyed, with a diamond hand from anywhere, and anytime, Emmy Awards not included!