the transformational CEO

Four key functions collectively define a successful role for the CEO in a transformation:

1. Making the transformation meaningful. People will go to extraordinary lengths for causes they believe in, and a powerful transformation story will create and reinforce their commitment. The ultimate impact of the story depends on the CEO’s willingness to make the transformation personal, to engage others openly, and to spotlight successes as they emerge.
2. Role-modeling desired mind-sets and behavior. Successful CEOs typically embark on their own personal transformation journey. Their actions encourage employees to support and practice the new types of behavior.
3. Building a strong and committed top team. To harness the transformative power of the top team, CEOs must make tough decisions about who has the ability and motivation to make the journey.
4. Relentlessly pursuing impact. There is no substitute for CEOs rolling up their sleeves and getting personally involved when significant financial and symbolic value is at stake.

Everyone has a role to play in a performance transformation. The role of CEOs is unique in that they stand at the top of the pyramid and all the other members of the organization take cues from them. CEOs who give only lip service to a transformation will find everyone else doing the same. Those who fail to model the desired mind-sets and behavior or who opt out of vital initiatives risk seeing the transformation lose focus. Only the boss of all bosses can ensure that the right people spend the right amount of time driving the necessary changes.

Carolyn B. Aiken and Scott P. Keller

"The CEO’s role in leading transformation". mckinsey.com. Feb. 2007

being present becomes the cornerstone

Like all CEOs, Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Company, has a daily schedule of back-to-back meetings. All of these meetings are important, all include complex information, and most require far-reaching decisions. Under these conditions, being present moment to moment, meeting after meeting, is a challenge. But in Barton’s experience, presence is not a choice. It’s a necessity.

“When I’m with people during the day, I’m doing my best to be focused, I’m present with them,” he told us. “Part of this is because I get energy from being with people. But the other part is because if you’re not focused, if you’re not present, it’s discouraging to the other people. They lose motivation. If you’re not present, I think you may as well not have the meeting. It can sometimes be difficult to do, but it’s always important.”

The person in front of you does not know what you were dealing with a moment ago, nor should they. It’s your responsibility to show up and be fully present to effectively use the limited time you have with each person you meet.

Barton believes being mindfully present requires discipline and skill. It takes discipline to stay on task, not letting yourself be affected by nagging challenges or distracted by mental chatter. And it requires skill to have the mental ability to stay laser focused and present. When he’s present throughout his day, he finds it deeply gratifying. Being present becomes the cornerstone to getting the most out of every moment with each person.

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter

"If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present" Harvard Business Review. December 13, 2017.

their discipline is weak

One of the great tragedies we witness almost daily is the tragedy of men of high aim and low achievement. Their motives are noble. Their proclaimed ambition is praiseworthy. Their capacity is great. But their discipline is weak. They succumb to indolence. Appetite robs them of will.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Ensign May 1979 as found in Ensign May 1994

create meaning

Understand that meaning is what motivates employees in a manner that sustains. Foster meaning through actions such as being clear on the organization's purpose, encouraging each employee to define the legacy they want to leave behind, and by granting large swaths of autonomy. You also create meaning for employees when you invest in their personal growth and development and help foster their sense of competence and self-esteem.  

You can help your employees become better versions of themselves and in so doing become a better version of yourself.

Scott Mautz

"Developing These 5 Habits Will Make You a Once-in-a-Career Leader to Employees" by Scott Mautz. Inc. Jun 19, 2018.

four characteristics of the transformational leader

Transformational leaders exhibit four characteristics in their interactions with employees; idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.

Transformational Leaders

• Charisma: Provides vision and sense of mission, instills pride, gains respect and trust. 
• Inspiration: Communicates high expectations, uses symbols to focus efforts, expresses important purposes in simple ways.
• Intellectual stimulation: Promotes intennigence, rationality, and careful problem solving. 
• Individualized Consideration: Gives personal atention, treats each employee individually, coaches, advises. 

Transactional Leaders

• Contingent Reward: Contracts exchange of rewards for effort, promises rewards for good performance, recognizes accomplishments.
• Management by Exception (active): Watches and searches for deviations from rules and standards, takes corrective action.
• Management by Exception (passive): Intervenes only if standards are not met. 
• Lasissez-Faire: Abdicates responsibilities, avoids making decisions. 

Bernard M. Bass

"From transactional to transformational leadership. Learning to share the vision." by B.M. Bass.  Organizational dynamics.  Winter 1990.  As quoted by "Phoebe Hayman, the founder of Seedling, Talks About Leadership as a Support Role" by Ramon B. Nuez Jr. Huffington Post. August 28, 2017.

providing purpose, direction, and motivation

Leadership is the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization (ADP 6-22)...

Influencing is getting people... to do what is required. Influencing entails more than simply passing along orders. Through words and personal example, leaders communicate purpose, direction and motivation.

Purpose gives subordinates the reason to achieve a desired outcome. Leaders should provide clear purpose for their followers...

Providing clear Direction involves communicating what to do to accomplish a mission: prioritizing tasks, assigning responsibility for completion, and ensuring subordinates understand the standard. Although subordinates want and need direction, they expect challenging tasks, quality training and adequate resources. They should have appropriate freedom of action. Providing clear direction allows followers to adapt to changing circumstances through modifying plans and orders through disciplined initiative...

Motivation supplies the will and initiative to do what is necessary to accomplish a mission. Motivation comes from within, but others' actions and words affect it. A leader's role in motivation is to understand the needs and desires of others, to align and elevate individual desires into team goals and to inspire others to accomplish those larger goals. Some people have high levels of internal motivation to get a job done, while others need more reassurance, positive reinforcement, and feedback...

Improving for the future means capturing and acting on important lessons of ongoing and completed projects and missions. Improving is an act of stewardship, striving to create effective, efficient organizations...

Headquarters, Department of the Army

ARMY LEADERSHIP (INCL C1) 6-22. Army Doctrine and Training Publications. 8/1/2012

whatever a man does, he’s bound to take some risks

…in the late 1860’s… Papa and a bunch of other Salt Licks formed a “pool herd” of their little separate bunches of steers and trailed them to the new cattle market at Abilene, Kansas.

This was to get “cash money,” a thing that all Texans were short of in those years right after the Civil War. We lived then in a new country and a good one. As Papa pointed out the day the men talked over making the drive, we had plenty of grass, wood, and water. We had wild game for killing, fertile ground for growing bread corn, and the Indians had been put onto reservations with the return of U.S. soldiers to the Texas forts.

“In fact,” Papa wound up, “all we lack having a tight tail-hold on the world is a little cash money. And we can get that in Abilene.”

Well, the idea sounded good, but some of the men still hesitated. Abilene was better than six hundred miles north of the Texas hill country we lived in. It would take months for the men to make the drive and ride back home. And all that time the womenfolks and children of Salt Licks would be left in a wild frontier settlement to make out the best they could.

Still, they needed money, and they realized that whatever a man does, he’s bound to take some risks.


Fred Gipson
Old Yeller. Haper Collins. 1956.

parade with us, my brave fellows

Parade with us, my brave fellows. There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly!

George Washington riding among the Americans during the battle at Princeton on Jan. 3, 1777

in 1776 by David G. McCullough. Simon & Schuster, 2005. p.289

don't throw me out of the boat!

When I think of crisis I think of the story of Louie Zamperini as told by Laura Hillenbrand in her book, Unbroken. While on a rescue mission, Louie’s B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The three survivors (Zamperini and his crewmates, pilot Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara) end up in a life raft with minimal food, trying to make landfall. One night, in an act of panic, Mac ate all of the chocolate bars (approximately 6) as the other men slept. Mac’s actions put the other two at significant risk. Louie and Phil were discouraged by Mac’s actions, but they didn’t throw him overboard.

Later, the three men are spotted by an enemy fighter pilot, who strafes the small raft – puncturing the boat. Hillenbrand writes:

Phil’s raft had been slashed in two…. [T]he ruined raft… didn’t sink, but it was obviously far beyond repair…. Each time one of the men moved, air sighed out of the chambers and the… raft sat lower and lower in the water. The sharks whipped around it, surely excited by the bullets, and the sight and smell of men in the water, and the sinking raft,

As the men sat together, exhausted and in shock, a shark lunged up over a wall of the raft, mouth open, trying to drag a man into the ocean. Someone grabbed an oar and hit the shark, and it slid off. Then another shark jumped on, and, after it, another…. As they turned and swung and the sharks flopped up, air was forced out of the bullet holes, and the raft sank deeper. Soon, part of the raft was completely submerged.

If the men didn’t get air into the raft immediately, the sharks would take them…. The men hooked [a pump] up to one of the two valves and took turns pumping as hard as they could. Air flowed into the chamber and seeped out through the bullet holes, but the men found that if they pumped very quickly, just enough air passed through the raft to lift it up in the water and keep it mostly inflated. The sharks kept coming, and the men kept beating them away….

Louie began patching… As Louie worked, keeping his eyes on the patches, the sharks kept snapping at him…. Hour after hour, the men worked, rotating the duties, clumsy with fatigue. The pumping was an enormous exertion for the diminished men…. All three men were indispensable. Had there been only two, they couldn’t have pumped, patched, and repelled the sharks. For the first time on the raft, Mac was truly helpful. He was barely strong enough to pull the pump handle a few times in a row, but with the oar he kept every shark away.

I think of those three men, struggling to survive in the boat. Surely, if Louie and Phil had thrown Mac overboard for eating all of their food, they wouldn’t have survived the sinking raft and attacking sharks. Mac had the opportunity to act during this crisis, and his heroic efforts saved the lives of the men. Mac was necessary to avert disaster.

While we’re in crisis situations, stress levels rise and it’s easy to find fault with one another. Encouragement is more important than criticism when the team is truly up against it. Are you inspiring the troops, or busy trying to throw them overboard when the going gets tough?

Adam Dibble

"Don't throw me out of the boat!" leadershipYES 2/24/2016

and make sure to read:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010.

ask for commitments

Real leaders don’t “give assignments”—they ask for commitments. They understand that the initial conversation is a chance to frame the entire subsequent experience. When people make a commitment—a choice—they feel a far deeper connection to their work. When it is assigned to them—or others sell them on it—a subtle and insidious agreement is made: that the leader is responsible for their motivation. The worker is consenting to this work as a favor to the leader.

Joseph Grenny

"Leadership Lessons from Ex-Cons" Crucial Skills. 9/15/2015

leadership is...

Leadership is the ability to articulate a vision and get others to carry it out.

Jack Welch

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis by Jeffrey A. Krames. 2014.

passionately remind them

Most of us know this instinctively, but in the heat of the moment, it's easy to forget how powerful an insight it can be. In an experiment at Harvard in the early 2000s, for example, psychologists gave a math test to a group of college students, all Asian American women. Researchers randomly split the group into two. Before being given the test, one group was subtly reminded that they were women; the other that they were Asian Americans. What happened? The first group performed below average; the second group, above it. The lesson: Perceptions--in this case, that women are weak in math and that Asian Americans excel in it--can have a huge impact on performance. Other studies have found the same thing. In the 1970s, researchers at Harvard asked subjects to take a math test, then paired them up to role-play a boss and an assistant. Then they were given another test. The scores of the assistants dropped an average of 50%.

As the leader of a company, of course, you are constantly faced with employees who do not perform up to expectations. What should you do? The single worst thing is to call them lazy and attempt to shame them into taking action. Instead, employees need to be reminded of what they are capable of accomplishing, even as you observe that they are falling short of their potential.

Which brings us back to Sir Winston. In his early days as Prime Minister, Churchill also had to exhort a war-weary military, Parliament, and public to stay the course. In a make-or-break speech to the House of Commons, Churchill acknowledged "the darker side of our danger and burdens" and went on to say, "It is in adversity that British qualities shine the brightest, and it is under these extraordinary tests that the character of our slowly wrought institutions reveals its latent, invisible strength." The speech has been credited with helping to revive Britain's sagging spirits and gradually changing the course of the war.

So if your people seem to have lost some of the passion they once had for their jobs and your company... why not take a page from Churchill and passionately remind them about the light within them? Who knows what possibilities you may create?

Hitendra Wadhwa

"What Would Winston Do?" Inc. 5/29/2012

the mystique of leadership

The mystique of leadership, be it educational, political, religious, commercial or whatever, is next to impossible to describe, but wherever it exists, morale flourishes, people pull together toward common goals, spirits soar, order is maintained, not as an end in itself, but as a means to move forward together. Such leadership always has a moral as well as intellectual dimension; it requires courage as well as wisdom; it does not simply know, it cares.

T.M. Hesburgh

Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1971

As quoted in Jones, H.E. and Moser, H.R. From Trait to Transformation: The Evolution of Leadership Theories – Middle Tennessee State University

good leaders motivate

Good leaders motivate people in a variety of ways. First, they always articulate the organization's vision in a manner that stresses the values of the audience they are addressing. This makes the work important to those individuals. Leaders also regularly involve people in deciding how to achieve the organization's vision (or the part most relevant to a particular individual). This gives people a sense of control. Another important motivational technique is to support employee efforts to realize the vision by providing coaching, feedback, and role modeling, thereby helping people grow professionally and enhancing their self-esteem. Finally, good leaders recognize and reward success, which not only gives people a sense of accomplishment but also makes them feel like they belong to an organization that cares about them. When all this is done, the work itself becomes intrinsically motivating.

John P. Kotter

"What Leaders Really Do.” Harvard Business Review. 1990.

fit his message to his audience

“[E.D.] Morel has never had an equal as organizer and leader of a Dissenting movement,” writes the historian A.J.P. Taylor. “He knew exactly where to look for rich sympathizers; and he took money from them without altering the democratic character of [his movement]. Millionaires and factory workers alike accepted his leadership.” Among the millionaires were Quakers like the wealthy but plain-living chocolate manufacturer William Cadbury. Subsidies from these supporters kept the West African Mail alive, and it was the newspaper, not the Congo Reform Association, that paid Morel’s salary. Paradoxically, Sir Alfred Jones of the Elder Dempster line also invested a little money in the paper, doubtless hoping to soften the attitude of his former employee. But his hopes were in vain; Morel repeatedly attacked Jones without mercy, exposing his doings as Leopold’s major British ally. When Jones saw he would have no influence, he pulled his advertising from the paper.

Morel knew exactly how to fit his message to his audience. He reminded British businessmen that Leopold’s monopolistic system,  copied by France, had shut them out of much Congo trade. To members of the clergy he talked of Christian responsibility and quoted the grim reports from the missionaries. And for all Britons, and their representatives in Parliament, he evoked the widespread though unspoken belief that England had a particular responsibility to make decency prevail in the universe.

Adam Hochschild

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 3, 1999.

the best way to predict your future is to create it

A vision builds trust, collaboration, interdependence, motivation, and mutual responsibility for success. Vision helps people make smart choices, because their decisions are being made with the end result in mind. As goals are accomplished, the answer to “What next?” becomes clear. Vision allows us to act from a proactive stance, moving toward what we want rather than reactively away from what we don’t want. Vision empowers and excites us to reach for what we truly desire. As the late management guru Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” 

Ken Blanchard

Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations (Revised and Expanded Edition). FT Press, 2009. p.18

don't be afraid

When Jobs was designing the iPhone, he decided that he wanted its face to be a tough, scratchproof glass, rather than plastic. He met with Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, who told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what it dubbed “Gorilla glass.” Jobs replied that he wanted a major shipment of Gorilla glass in six months. Weeks said that Corning was not making the glass and didn’t have that capacity. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was unfamiliar with Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but Jobs had repeatedly shown that he didn’t accept that premise. He stared unblinking at Weeks. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks recalls that he shook his head in astonishment and then called the managers of Corning’s facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, and told them to convert immediately to making Gorilla glass full-time. “We did it in under six months,” he says. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” As a result, every piece of glass on an iPhone or an iPad is made in America by Corning.

Walter Isaacson
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Harvard Business Review the Magazine. April 2012.

could you find a way?

One day Jobs marched into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, the engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain why reducing the boot-up time wasn’t possible, but Jobs cut him off. “If it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if five million people were using the Mac and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million or so hours a year—the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks Kenyon had the machine booting up 28 seconds faster.

Walter Isaacson
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Harvard Business Review the Magazine. April 2012.

the art of the critique

Harry Levinson, a psychoanalyst turned corporate consultant, gives the following advice on the art of the critique, which is intricately entwined with the art of praise:

• Be specific. Pick a significant incident, an event that illustrates a key problem that needs changing or a pattern of deficiency, such as the inability to do certain parts of a job well. It demoralizes people just to hear that they are doing “something” wrong without knowing what the specifics are so they can change. Focus on the specifics, saying what the person did well, what was done poorly, and how it could be changed. Don’t beat around the bush or be oblique or evasive; it will muddy the real message. This, of course, is akin to the advice to couples about the “XYZ” statement of a grievance: say exactly what the problem is, what’s wrong with it or how it makes you feel, and what could be changed.  “Specificity,” Levinson points out, “is just as important for praise as for criticism. I won’t say that vague praise has no effect at all, but it doesn’t have much, and you can’t learn from it.”
• Offer a solution. The critique, like all useful feedback, should point to a way to fix the problem. Otherwise it leaves the recipient frustrated, demoralized, or demotivated. The critique may open the door to possibilities and alternatives that the person did not realize were there, or simply sensitize her to deficiencies that need attention – but should include suggestions about how to take care of these problems.
• Be present. Critiques, like praise, are most effective face to face and in private. People who are uncomfortable giving a criticism – or offering praise – are likely to ease the burden on themselves by doing it at a distance, such as in a memo. But this makes the communication too impersonal, and robs the person receiving it of an opportunity for a response or clarification.
• Be sensitive. This is a call for empathy, for being attuned to the impact of what you say and how you say it on the person at the receiving end. Managers who have little empathy, Levinson points out, are most prone to giving feedback in a hurtful fashion, such as the withering put-down. The net effect of such criticism is destructive: instead of opening the way for a corrective, it creates an emotional backlash of resentment, bitterness, defensiveness, and distance.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.153, 154

managing vs. leading

Companies manage complexity first by planning and budgeting-setting targets or goals for the future (typically for the next month or year),establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision ofthe future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.

Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organizing and staffing-creating an organizational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements, staffing the jobs with qualified individuals, communicating the plan to those people, delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, and devising systems to monitor implementation. The equivalent leadership activity, however, is aligning people. This means communicating the new direction to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement.

Finally, management ensures plan accomplishment by controlling and problem solving – monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings, and other tools; identifying deviations; and then planning and organizing to solve the problems. But for leadership, achieving a vision requires motivating and inspiring – keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

John P. Kotter
“What Leaders Really Do.” Harvard Business Review. 1990.