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#CareerAdvice : #YourCareer -7 Signs You’re #CEO Material… How Did You Score?

June 18, 2019/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

You may be starting in your first entry-level position, or you maybe be an executive VP at an established company. Wherever you are in your career, if you’re ambitious and goal-driven, you may have one question in your mind: will I be the CEO someday?

Becoming a CEO often requires a certain amount of being in the right place at the right time, but having certain qualities will significantly boost the chance that you’ll be considered for the spot of CEO – or any leadership position, for that matter. To find more about what those essential qualities are, we reached out to Tiffany Franklin, executive career consultant and founder of TJF Career Coaching, who broke down what it takes to be considered as CEO material.

1. You’re not afraid to take calculated risks

CEOs are responsible for significant decisions about the strategy and future of the organizations they lead. While a CEO must maintain stability within an organization, they also must sometimes take risks that can result in both short- and long-term pay-offs for an organization. Enter the importance of being a strategic risk taker. Franklin describes this as “having that ability to consider a confluence of multiple internal and external factors, both for the organization and the global market as a whole.” She adds that strategic risk takers “see lessons from the past, but you are looking to the future, in terms of marketing, timing, and people. You’re learning from mistakes, but yet you will take a calculated risk.”

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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2. You know how to communicate well

Communication is one of the foundation stones for being a leader. For CEOs, Franklin says, “you want to motivate and empower the people around you… To be able to sell your vision, and also outline a path to make it a reality.” She adds that a big part of that is relationship-building skills. Communication and relationship-building skills are also an integral part of generating employee satisfaction as a leader. As a CEO, a critical component of approval is employee satisfaction. In a 2016 Glassdoor study on the factors that predict high CEO approval, it was found that a one-star increase in employee satisfaction (measured by the overall Glassdoor rating of a company) predicts a 36.9 percent improvement in CEO approval.

3. You’re always challenging yourself

Being a CEO generally doesn’t happen in the first year of career, and often doesn’t even happen in the first decade of your career. It is a place of leadership that, more often than not, is earned through repeatedly facing professional challengesand retaining a diligent focus on self-improvement. There are multiple challenges that are good to take on throughout your career in order to boost your leadership skills and gain recognition among professional peers. On top of volunteering for leadership positions within your company and pursuing leadership credentials like an MBA, Franklin also recommends getting involved with affinity groups at your workplace, as well as getting involved in professional associations, volunteering for boards of directors, and even looking for community service projects that have leadership opportunities.

4. You’re emotionally intelligent

It’s not enough for somebody to be ambitious, says Franklin, but they also need emotional intelligence. “So much of being a CEO is being decisive and purposeful, yet thoughtful when you’re making decisions,” she adds. For thoughtful decision-making, as well as building strong, trust-filled relationships, not to mention being a good communicator, emotional intelligence is key.

5. You know how to surround yourself with the right people

While a CEO is often the face of an organization, they are supported by a team of people who are helping them maximally perform. According to Franklin, having CEO potential means being self-aware enough to know what you’re good at, but also what you may lack, and building a team that complements the areas you have deficiencies in. In turn, she says, this makes a team that can challenge each other, and also brings different things to the table.

6. You find yourself leading projects

CEOs are people who trust can be put in to get a job done. CEOs are also good managers and delegators. You may find that you’re naturally asked by people in your organization to take on big projects and to lead teams. But putting yourself in situations like that whenever the opportunity arises can also help hone your leadership skills. “I think when you volunteer to go above and beyond, not immediately expecting anything, people will start to take notice,” says Franklin.

7. You’re thinking ahead

The best CEOs are visionaries for the organizations they lead. “It’s not just trying to figure out what the trends are and jumping on those, it’s being a thought leader,” says Franklin. Another critical component of being a thought leader is the ability to translate your visions into concrete actions that employees within your organization can take.

Building CEO Leadership Skills

Even if you’re not strong in some of the leadership capabilities that CEOs require, there are many routes to take to bulk up your management prowess. For one, MBA programs are always a good way to learn leadership skills and show your commitment to be a good manager. Franklin also says that If you don’t have the time or availability, there are also smaller courses and certificate programs that you can take in leadership. Reading books in MBA curricula can also both help you build your leadership skills and make for a great conversation starter at professional events, she points out. Then, she says, “keep networking, building skills, and stretching yourself to get to the visionary piece.”

GlassDoor.com | June 18, 2019 | Posted by Lillian Childress

Your #Career : The Fastest Path to the #CEOJob, According to a 10-Year Study…Some People’s #Careers Take Off, while Others’ Take Longer — or Even Stall Out.

February 17, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Common wisdom says that the former attend elite MBA programs, land high-powered jobs right out of school at prestigious firms, and climb the ladder straight to the top, carefully avoiding risky moves. But our data shows a completely different picture.

We conducted a 10-year study, which we call the CEO Genome Project, in which we assembled a data set of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments and studied 2,600 in-depth to analyze who gets to the top and how. We then took a closer look at “CEO sprinters” — those who reached the CEO role faster than the average of 24 years from their first job.

We discovered a striking finding: Sprinters don’t accelerate to the top by acquiring the perfect pedigree. They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top. We found that three types of career catapults were most common among the sprinters. Ninety-seven percent of them undertook at least one of these catapult experiences and close to 50% had at least two. (In contrast, only 24% had elite MBAs.)

Through these career catapults, executives build the specific behaviors that set successful CEOs apart — including decisiveness, reliability, adaptability, and the ability to engage for impact — and they get noticed for their accomplishments. The catapults are so powerful that even people in our study who never aspired to become CEO ultimately landed the position by pursuing one or more of these strategies.

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Go Small to Go Big

The path to CEO rarely runs in a straight line; sometimes you have to move backward or sideways in order to get ahead. More than 60% of sprinters took a smaller role at some point in their career. They may have started something new within their company (by launching a new product or division, for example), moved to a smaller company to take on a greater set of responsibilities, or started their own business. In each case, they used the opportunity to build something from the ground up and make an outsize impact.

In his late twenties, “James” was hired in a strategy and business development role inside a multibillion-dollar marketing and communications business. Early in his career, he was offered the chance to build out one of the new businesses. It felt like a demotion, or at best a lateral move, to be handed a blank org chart and a highly uncertain future. “It was zero revenue when I stepped in, and we built that business to $250 million,” he says. By building a new business from scratch, he picked up essential management skills, such as running a P&L, managing a budget, and setting a strategic vision — all critical prerequisites to becoming a CEO (over 90% of the CEOs we studied had general management experience). Thirteen years later, he found himself the CEO of a $1.5 billion education and training business.

Make a Big Leap

More than one-third of sprinters catapulted to the top by making “the big leap,” often in the first decade of their careers. These executives threw caution to the wind and said yes to opportunities even when the role was well beyond anything they’ve done previously and they didn’t feel fully prepared for the challenges ahead.

Take, for example, “Jerry,” who at age 24 joined a $200 million business as a senior accountant. Eight months after being hired, he was offered the CFO position, leapfrogging the controller who hired him. Though he was young and still learning the ropes, he embraced the challenge with gusto. “I was very young for my level, and I was given responsibility ahead of my readiness,” he says. As CFO, he gained insight into a broad set of functions and proved his ability to thrive in a new, uncertain environment. Within nine years, after a stint as COO, he landed his first CEO role.

If you don’t expect this kind of opportunity to fall into your lap, you are not alone. However, what we heard from these sprinters is an attitude of “You make your own luck.” Seek out cross-functional projects that touch numerous aspects of the business. Get involved in a merger integration. Ask your boss for additional responsibilities. Tackle tough, complex problems. Above all, make a habit of saying “yes” to greater opportunities — ready or not.

Inherit a Big Mess

It may feel counterintuitive, and a bit daunting, but one way to prove your CEO mettle is by inheriting a big mess. It could be an underperforming business unit, a failed product, or a bankruptcy — any major problem for the business that needs to be fixed fast. More than 30% of our sprinters led their teams through a big mess.

Messy situations cry out for strong leadership. When faced with a crisis, emerging leaders have an opportunity to showcase their ability to assess a situation calmly, make decisions under pressure, take calculated risks, rally others around them, and persevere in the face of adversity. In other words, it’s great preparation for the CEO job.

“Jackie,” the CEO of a transport company, didn’t wait for the big mess to find her. She sought it out. “I liked working on something that was a mess and needed to be figured out: IT, cost, tax. It didn’t matter,” she says. “I got the ugliest assignments. I could unscramble them and figure out an answer.” By stepping up and risking her career on the jobs nobody else dared to tackle, Jackie proved she could deliver results for the good of the company. She landed her first CEO role 20 years after day one in her first job.

While there is no single path to the CEO seat, these career catapults can be replicated by anyone who aspires to a leadership position, and could be especially powerful for those who may find it harder to get to the top. Women, for example, take 30% longer to get to the CEO role, according to Korn Ferry.

Accelerating your career through these catapults doesn’t require an elite MBA or a select mix of inborn traits, but it does require a willingness to make lateral, unconventional, and even risky career moves. It’s not for the faint of heart. But if you aspire to top leadership, you might as well get used to it.

Harvard Business Review | JANUARY 31, 2018

Elena Lytkina Botelho, Kim Rosenkoetter Powell, Nicole Wong