Why the CEO needs to care about everything

As base­ball great Yogi Berra once said, “The prob­lem with the future is that it ain’t what it used to be.” And the future world of the CEO will be very dif­fer­ent from the one in which most CEOs have learnt their cur­rent lead­er­ship skills.

The con­verg­ing tends of tech­nol­o­gy, diver­si­ty, Gen­er­a­tion Y and glob­al­i­sa­tion are cre­at­ing a bru­tal storm of trans­paren­cy, a world where noth­ing can be hid­den.

The future CEO will be held to a ruth­less account­abil­i­ty by edu­cat­ed stake­hold­ers who are expect­ing a broad­er con­tri­bu­tion than mak­ing lots of mon­ey. These edu­cat­ed stake­hold­ers will have an agen­da that incor­po­rates social jus­tice, cli­mate change, inclu­siv­i­ty and men­tal well­be­ing.

A lead­er­ship job that was already dif­fi­cult is going to require a whole new set of skills. The future CEO is going to require a new licence to lead. Are you up for the chal­lenge?

Trust is key

The new licence of lead­er­ship will require CEOs to rely upon the pow­er of trust rather than trust­ing in pow­er. What does this mean? It means that tra­di­tion­al­ly our lead­er­ship cred­i­bil­i­ty has been earned through intel­lec­tu­al prowess and the expert use of author­i­ty to max­imise sin­gu­lar out­comes, such as max­imis­ing prof­it.

How­ev­er, in a world where def­er­ence to author­i­ty is col­laps­ing and pur­pose-led, emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent lead­ers are com­ing to the fore, our lead­er­ship cred­i­bil­i­ty will need to be earned from build­ing human trust, not exer­cis­ing expert author­i­ty.

To build human trust, the research demon­strates that CEOs will need to work on three mutu­al­ly rein­forc­ing capa­bil­i­ties: abil­i­ty, integri­ty and benev­o­lence. Indeed, the for­mu­la for trust is: trust = abil­i­ty × integri­ty × benev­o­lence.

When I share this for­mu­la with the CEOs I coach, most instinc­tive­ly under­stand the need for abil­i­ty and integri­ty, but few have a grasp of this word “benev­o­lence”, which means wish­ing well for oth­ers. It’s com­mon human care, com­pas­sion and kind­ness.

The benevolent CEO

None of the CEOs I work with have attend­ed the “intro­duc­tion to benev­o­lence” course for senior lead­ers because in the old world, benev­o­lence was a nice-to-have. In the new world, which relies upon the pow­er of trust, benev­o­lence becomes the must-have dif­fer­en­tia­tor that renews our licence to lead.

How does a CEO do benev­o­lence? Through my own research at Aston Busi­ness School, we can now iden­ti­fy that there are nine habits of trust, three for each of the com­po­nents of abil­i­ty, integri­ty and benev­o­lence.

The three habits of benev­o­lence are evan­ge­lise, be brave, be kind. CEOs who evan­ge­lise get on the front foot to spread the good news about their busi­ness and their brand. They counter the tide of social-media cyn­i­cism with an equal­ly relent­less and pas­sion­ate cam­paign to pro­mote an inspir­ing, pur­pose-led vision.

CEOs who are brave know there is a moment when the leader is expect­ed to self-sac­ri­fice in sup­port of a goal that is big­ger than their own per­son­al sur­vival. It is a quaint idea, but moral brav­ery inspires trust.

Final­ly, benev­o­lent CEOs have the capac­i­ty to be kind. This does not mean they do not make tough deci­sions, are not per­for­mance focused, clear eyed and strate­gic. What it means is that as they do all those things, they retain the capac­i­ty to con­nect with their fel­low human beings and treat them with dig­ni­ty and respect.

As one leader I inter­viewed put it, “The CEO doesn’t need to do every­thing, but they do need to care about every­thing.”

So are you one of these future CEOs? Do you have the will to renew your licence to lead in a world where noth­ing can be hid­den? Can you do benev­o­lence, along­side doing abil­i­ty and doing integri­ty? If “yes”, then you will be glad that the future ain’t what it used to be because you will come to find that now is your time.