50% of all CEOs experience isolation from their staff. They feel lonely at the top. A survey from RHR International found out that first-time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation, with nearly 70% of those who experience loneliness saying it negatively affects their ability to do their jobs. Other studies indicate that any individual with newfound authority, such as coming into the C-suite for...
How You Know Your Management Team Isn’t Working Out
A CEO can be, in many respects, not unlike a middle school teacher. You’re dealing with powerful personalities day in and day out. Some of them need more direction than you’d like to give, while others are off in the corner plotting your demise. If you can manage to get the right people in place, however, your job is more like that of a professional...
5 Worst Ways to Relate to Your Employees
Every CEO worth her salt knows she’s constantly being watched. Too many CEOs learn the hard way that distance breeds contempt. So, you do your best to seem approachable and connect with your employees. From your VPs on down to the janitor, you’re on the lookout to relate to your people. Knowing it and doing it right are two different things, however. Here are some...
How to gracefully fire an employee
“You’re fired” – Donald Trump may make it look easy, but trust me, firing an employee is one of the most painful aspects of owning your own business, and for many bosses, the process is fraught with sleepless nights and stomach churning anxieties. As mentioned by Amy Maingault, “A small business will be particularly vulnerable to the effects of a termination gone awry”- the damage...
Do CEO’s need to unwind or are they just being babies?
I was reading an article on ideas for CEOs to relax and unwind and realized that there is a common perception that CEOs need to de-stress via pursuits such as golf, yachting, sailing and sports cars – these have been favorite pastimes of CEOs since we’ve had CEOs. As the thinking goes, they need to explore these activities because of the demands of the job....
7 things CEOs do not like
While being an entrepreneur can be incredibly rewarding from a financial or social basis, it also has its share of annoyance. You need to bite the bitter pills in order to reap all the rewards. Here are the seven things that are particularly more frustrating for the CEOs when it comes to business: Ego: Ego gone wild is one step worse. The business world has...
How CEOs Make Friends
Justin Lahart writes that peer pressure starts in the school yard, but it continues all the way through to the corner office. A closely knit group of 11 friends who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1949 cut a wide swath through the post-World War II economy. Including luminaries like Johnson & Johnson CEO Jim Burke and Xerox CEO Peter McColough, they celebrated, compared notes...
I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.
If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the...
Top websites for CEOs
Mike Myatt thinks that if you want to shorten your shelf life as a CEO, it’s easy to do – be uninformed and disengaged. There’s a big world out there, and CEOs need to get out of their bubble and go see it for themselves. Too many chief executives live in an isolated world of constant travel, public policy and capital markets road shows, board...
CEOs: Read this Before You Open Your Mouth
Are you a CEO preparing to give a town hall state-of-the-union talk to your employees? Whether you’re a new CEO or one who’s been sitting in the chair for some time, keep reading. An awful lot of planning, time and resources go into these town halls. They’re frequently big productions beamed via satellite to offices around the world. Employees take time away from their jobs...