Temptation 1

The most important principle that an executive must embrace is a desire to produce results. As obvious as this sounds, it is not universally practiced by the highest-ranking executives in many companies. Many CEOs put something ahead of results on their list of priorities, and it represents the most dangerous of all the temptations: the desire to protect the status of their careers.

How can a person become the CEO of a company and not be a maniac for results? Most CEOs were results maniacs before reaching their ultimate jobs. Once they “arrive,” though, many of them focus primarily on preserving their status. This occurs because their real purpose in life has always been personal gain. With nowhere to go but down, it almost makes sense that once they have achieved their ultimate status, they will do whatever they can to protect it.

This causes CEOs to make decisions that protect their ego or reputation or, worse yet, to avoid making decisions that might damage them. They reward people who contribute to their ego, instead of those who contribute to the results of the company.

This poses a good question: Don’t executives realize that by focusing on results they will ultimately achieve greater status and ego satisfaction in their careers? Yes, but this requires a lot of work over a long period of time. It allows for too many risky episodes of status-loss along the way. Remember, even temporary loss of status is unacceptable to CEOs who do not resist this temptation.

Simple advice for CEOs: make results the most important measure of personal success, or step down from the job. The future of the company you lead is too important for customers, employees, and stockholders to hold it hostage to your ego.

Temptation 2

Even CEOs who resist the temptation to overfocus on protecting their status sometimes fail. Why? Because they do not hold their direct reports accountable for delivering on the commitments that drive results. This happens because they succumb to a different temptation: the desire to be popular.

Wanting to be well liked by peers is an understandable, but dangerous, problem for CEOs. Being at the top of an organization is lonely. There are very few people in a company with whom CEOs spend considerable time, aside from their direct reports.

Those reports are often the same age and earn the same kind of money as the CEO, especially relative to other employees in the company. Most CEOs become friends with their reports and commiserate about the constant needs and shortfalls of employees. They develop a sense of camaraderie around their overwhelming responsibilities. It is no surprise, then, that when it comes time for a CEO to tell these same people that they are not meeting expectations, they balk.

Empirical evidence of this phenomenon is that CEOs conduct performance reviews for their direct reports far less diligently than do managers at other levels. Why? It isn’t because they are too busy or lazy, but because they don’t want to deal with the prospect of upsetting one of their peers. Ironically, those same CEOs will not hesitate to ultimately fire a direct report when his or her performance problem becomes too costly, thereby severing the relationship completely. But they often fail to provide constructive or negative feedback along the way.

Simple advice for CEOs: work for the long-term respect of your direct reports, not for their affection. Don’t view them as a support group, but as key employees who must deliver on their commitments if the company is to produce predictable results. And remember, your people aren’t going to like you anyway if they ultimately fail.

Temptation 3

Even CEOs who resist the temptation to protect their status and to be popular with their direct reports sometimes fail. Why? Because even if they are willing to hold their direct reports accountable, they are often reluctant to do so because they don’t think it’s fair. That’s because they haven’t made it clear what those direct reports are accountable for doing. Why don’t they make these things clear? Because they give in to yet another temptation: the need to make “correct” decisions, to achieve certainty.

Many CEOs, especially highly analytical ones, want to ensure that their decisions are correct, which is impossible in a world of imperfect information and uncertainty. Still, executives with a need for precision and correctness often postpone decisions and fail to make their people’s deliverables clear. They provide vague and hesitant direction to their direct reports and hope that they figure out the right answers along the way. The chances that they will produce the results CEOs eventually decide they want are slim.

Simple advice for CEOs: make clarity more important than accuracy. Remember that your people will learn more if you take decisive action than if you always wait for more information. And if the decisions you make in the spirit of creating clarity turn out to be wrong when more information becomes available, change plans and explain why. It is your job to risk being wrong. The only real cost to you of being wrong is loss of pride. The cost to your company of not taking the risk of being wrong is paralysis.

Temptation 4

Even CEOs who resist the temptation to protect their status, to be popular with their direct reports, and to make correct decisions sometimes fail because they don’t feel comfortable with the decisions they make. That’s because they haven’t benefited from the best sources of information that are always available to them: their direct reports. Why not? Because they give in to the next temptation: the desire for harmony.

Most people, including CEOs, believe that it is better for people to agree and get along than disagree and conflict with one another. That is how they are raised. However, harmony sometimes restricts “productive ideological conflict,” the passionate interchange of opinions around an issue.

Without this kind of conflict, decisions are often suboptimal. The best decisions are made only after all knowledge and perspectives are out on the table. Not every person’s perspective and opinion can be agreed with, but they can be considered. When all available knowledge is considered, the chances of optimal decisions are greater—not to mention the likelihood of confidence in those decisions, which is just as important.

Simple advice for CEOs: tolerate discord. Encourage your direct reports to air their ideological differences, and with passion. Tumultuous meetings are often signs of progress. Tame ones are often signs of leaving important issues off the table. Guard against personal attacks, but not to the point of stifling important interchanges of ideas.

Temptation 5

Even CEOs who resist the temptation to protect their status, to be popular with their direct reports, to make correct decisions, and to create harmony sometimes fail. Why? Because even though they are willing to cultivate productive conflict, their people may not be willing to do so. Why not? Because the CEO gives in to the final temptation: the desire for invulnerability.

CEOs are relatively powerful people. Being vulnerable with their peers and reports is not a comfortable prospect. They mistakenly believe that they lose credibility if their people feel too comfortable challenging their ideas.

No matter how much these CEOs encourage productive conflict, they do not achieve it because it doesn’t feel safe to their people, who see them as unwilling to enter the fray. As a result, those reports position themselves around the inferred opinion of the CEO and conflict with one another only when it is politically expedient.

Simple advice for CEOs: actively encourage your people to challenge your ideas. Trust them with your reputation and your ego. As a CEO, this is the greatest level of trust that you can give. They will return it with respect and honesty, and with a desire to be vulnerable among their peers.

CEOs who focus on results more than status, accountability more than popularity, clarity more than certainty, productive conflict more than harmony, and trust more than invulnerability can still fail, but only if they are thwarted by competitive and market pressures that are largely out of their control.

The model, on page 119, is displayed in seemingly reverse order to show the sequential impact of the principles on one another. Instilling trust gives executives the confidence to have productive conflict. Fostering conflict gives executives confidence to create clarity. Clarity gives executives the confidence to hold people accountable. Accountability gives executives confidence in expected results. And results are a CEO’s ultimate measure of long-term success.

Overcoming the Five Temptations