As an employee. I really don't care if the CEO is outgoing.
Honestly it is a relief when the CEO isn't trying to sell me on some vision (with the exception of one CEO who was a legit magical salesman) or whatever it is. Just give me my orders so I can get on with it, I don't need a show / extrovert at the helm.
Maybe other people do and maybe the article is wrong, but at least for leadership, I don't need a super outgoing guy. I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing.
Now if the CEO is a guy who is gonna come running out onto a stage screamming at a presentation, like that is who he is ... that's cool too.
Entirely depends on the work that needs to be done. That quote will implode at times when actually applied in reality. Sometimes you need to marshal the soldiers to victory, and you're not typically going to do that by your soldiers barely knowing you exist. You're going to have to inspire them actively, so they better know you exist, and they better believe what you're saying, they better believe in the mission.
There is also a valuable spot in some parts of the business world for the Barnum & Bailey promoter. It can be extraordinarily difficult to stand out from the crowd, often while competing against far larger companies, even if you have a superior product. If you can't be outgoing and draw attention to your superior product (get in front of a major tv audience and nail it, present effectively to audiences on stage at COMDEX, etc), perhaps against far larger ad budgets, your great product may be doomed.
To be fair, I don't think your soldier example is a counterexample. You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself. If you do use yourself, you suddenly become an even bigger vulnerability for the army. If you end up getting killed, the entire motivation leaves the army right in the middle of the battle.
It doesn't mean you are a bad leader if you do it, merely that a better leader might have seen a different path and gotten a better result.
> You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself.
You're going to have to do that yourself at times. You can't build an army without your troops knowing who you are, you have to instruct them at some point, and they have to believe you for some reason. You have to inspire them at some juncture just to get the organization rolling. You can't sufficiently motivate them if they don't know you exist at some point in the chain of events. What are they motivated by, inspired by, if they don't know you exist? You have to actively win them over, they have to believe in you for a good reason. You can't do that by always being the quiet person they don't know exists, they will not believe in you if that's all you have ever been to them. Which goes to the point that there's a time and place - likely many times and places - where even an introvert CEO will be called to inspire actively, to be outgoing for necessary effect. There is no scenario where that won't be the case if you're leading over the long-term. And that's the point and why it is a counterexample. There are times you'll have to be the charismatic outgoing leader that inspires the troops to charge over the hill. Times when the business is against the wall and you have to inspire everyone to fight for survival, believe that it's possible to succeed in a dire context. Or times when you need a massive sea change in the business, and you have to actively get everyone on-board the new direction (otherwise it'll be a disaster). It's the exceptionally rare business scenario where that never needs to happen across years, much less decades. Businesses are made by such moments, just as they also are made by the day to day monotonous work.
Obviously at some point the example gets far too specific to actually be useful, but...
In general there are lots of alternatives. Pay, objective, even lower level subordinates that are personally motivating, etc. There are many ways to motivate people that does not involve being the single shining star for everybody.
Is it realistic to never personally take a visible and active role in running an army? Probably not. I'm not trying to argue that. But - in theory - if you could do it, you'd build a stronger army. Otherwise it will all fall apart the moment you forget to drink enough water and faint on a hot day in the middle of a battle. The more support structures are in place that don't require your visible and active participation, the stronger the organization is.
Remember, we're talking about a one-liner here. It's not going to capture all sorts of realities and exceptions and little details. Just because you can point out that reality is not the ideal does not invalidate a small saying about the ideal.
If someone who knows me is asked to define me, there will be none who says 'shy', then again the same person would likely tell it's been 2 years since we've spoken.
I was the CEO a startup which I had to close due to my health issues 2 years ago. Since then my social behavior has changed polarity, I have nearly stopped any real-time communication(live meeting, call, chat).
I think it was caused by the trauma from events associated with having to explain the health scenario to half-dozen visitors every day over a year(social construct in India), then going through the pain of closing the startup of 5 years(in which I was on phone every hour) and again having to explain it to everyone I know.
This might sound extreme it is, but I've never felt peace like this before. The obvious victim is my business ambitions, There's only few things you can do as an indie who communicates only via email.
Since I've been at the both end of the spectrum, I would say if you're an introvert CEO then you need to have someone else i.e. 'a people person' to do all the extrovert things required for a business. I believe many successful business are run like this because the CEO can put their energy where it matters the most i.e. making money.
"I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing."
I think this is the problem. It's really really hard to do that at scale. Different people require different types of messages in order to get it. You need to repeat your vision of what needs to get done again and again and again. That can be hard for an introvert. It doesn't mean you can't be shy, but I think that's why it can be a challenge.
Jack Walsh, one of the most successful CEOs ever at GE, where he grew stock capitalization from $12 billion to $417 billion, and revenue grew from nearly $28 billion to $170 billion said his job mainly was repeating his messages and goals all the time. Giving speeches. You'd think a powerful CEO like him would just snap his fingers and order people and they would do it, but no. If someone wanted to gum up the works, there's nothing he could do about it, even as the CEO. This is what he said.
When Welch took the helm of GE in 1981, he built the company’s own pit — a large lecture hall with a pitched floor — at GE’s corporate learning campus in Crotonville, New York, and made it the beating heart of the place. He would hold court there every other week and use it to foster a generation of managers who, in turn, helped him grow GE into the most valuable company in the world.
So it was the constant education and re-iterating goals of the company.
I feel like that's a good way of accidentally telling folks the wrong thing and never knowing.
I've certainly worked with a lot of folks who detailed "do this" and when done we discovered it is "to achieve this goal" ... that late bit of info proved the thing we did was not as useful or would need more work later.
CEO of a big company, but not a well known name. He retired a while back. I'd rather not give too much of my work history away, and his name wouldn't be of much use to anyone.
I only met him a few times but he was one of those guys who seemed to be able to figure you out from the start and knew how to connect with you just instinctively. It probably helped that his early history was engineering, then sales, then up the executive chain. He understood the 'types' of folks who did those jobs and how to work with them.
Thank you for your reply. It wasn't my intention to make you reveal too much about yourself, so no problem here.
Sounds like an interesting character either way. You already need to possess a lot of mental flexibility and social intelligence to thrive inside both engineering culture AND marketing culture.
I am a shy CEO and can confirm. It can be difficult but definitely doable. We currently have one employee, myself, and although I sometimes have difficulty confronting him we mostly get our work done.
I run a one man business and love to blame things on someone else.
Scheduled too many jobs this week? Friggen boss is overworking me again. New business cards have too small of a font? Ugh, I need to have a talk with my designer.
I think the return of introvert CEOs and other executives and leaders is coming. Remote work has turned down the “impact” (or presence) of the extroverted leader. The thoughtful and reflective qualities of introverts are well suited for leading others and making the big decisions.
An extrovert can manifest himself in video/voice calls and even email. He will be the one to contact people, plan meetings, ask how everyone is doing,... An introvert can be on site and not leave his office except to walk around see how things are going, not talking to anyone.
There was a study that extroverts actually did better under lockdown than introverts, because extroverts quickly found alternative ways of socializing. Introverts still needed to socialize, even if not as much, but after lockdowns cut the few ties they had, they had more trouble remaking them, being less experienced with social tools.
Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities.
On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director.
An example: here's an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation).
Can You Be An Introvert Director? Note: there's a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video:
I can relate. I’m very introverted in that I need a lot of time alone to be in my head (the lockdowns this past year were a cakewalk). But I’m not shy at all. I love talking to strangers and have very low anxiety when it comes to public speaking.
The real problem is that we don’t have good examples of leaders. A lot of the examples we look for in terms of whom to emulate comes from the pop culture view of corporate America and startups. At a previous company I worked at far too many people were trying to behave like Steve Jobs and give that as an excuse for being an asshole.
I think Bob Iger is also a really great example. Maybe not "super shy," but he's definitely pretty introverted. It's really interesting watching interviews with him.
Recent gig, I was the introverted CEO of a company with 80+ employees on three continents, and I spent time in all our office locations.
One of the superpowers of not talking all the time is that you’re listening more often than not. And if you can be judicious with what you say, and confident & persuasive when you do need to use your influence, it can be very effective.
My attitude towards really outspoken and / or in your face-ish CEOs has changed over the years. With the obvious caveat that I never worked with anyone like Musk or Jobs, nor do I know what they were really like / thinking.
I worked with some folks who were notorious at companies for challenging people, speaking forcefully and so on. More subdued folks like myself and others really hated them.
But most if I got to know weren't jerks, they weren't challenging you personally as a person. They were trying to push you, see if you'd push back, professionally. The folks I worked with would take it very personally, and understandably a lot of people do. Yet the other folks who excelled under those leaders, they let it roll off their back and just got back to it.
I've had more than one conversation of "He didn't say you suck... he didn't like where you put a button."
Some of those guys who challenged people WANTED push back, they wanted to see the other person really disagreed and had their own vision. When that would happen, often they would get the go ahead to do that thing...
One day I was honestly just tired and said something that sounded like I was pushing back pretty hard and the response "Ok then we'll go that route.". That was it, conversation over . To that individual willingness to push back in the face of opposition up the food chain meant you really believed / knew what you were doing.
Musk or Jobs, I've no idea, but in a world where I agree there's way too much toxicity, sometimes I see folks label any challenge as toxic and they don't realize that it's ok to disagree, and sometimes those folks want that.
I'm pushy (not deliberately) and seem like a jerk to some people. I've spoken to a few folks like myself and the consensus seems to be we all wanted pushback but it really wasn't for any other reason than we wanted to hear good ideas/thoughts.
Pushy people probably all lack a little empathy because we only care about the topic at hand. In your example - it doesn't occur to many people (me..) that saying "i don't like where that button is" suggests anything more than that specific thing.
I'm in the process of leaving a manager. I'll happily disagree with a decision and present my alternative, but only once, unless they specifically ask me to explain it again. If I have to repeat it, it means they didn't listen properly the first time, which is disrespectful.
One incident in isolation is forgivable, but once it becomes a pattern, it's time to go.
Didn’t listen properly? It’s hard for me to imagine this working to one’s advantage over the long term. Many people need things explained to them multiple times and sometimes in different ways. I give a lot of presentations to people all over the org chart and people of all backgrounds can uptake information at embarrassingly low rates.
Have you considered that you’re not explaining it well enough?
Yes, many scenarios I've played through in my head after awakening at 2am.
For this particular example, it's not the information uptake that's the problem, it's the obvious unwillingness to put any effort into even hearing it out.
And, yes, I still consider that I could be the problem, but upon many a midnight consideration, I've decided that I have to break this particular egg in order to find that out.
As a passive person it took me several years to learn how to push back and I deal with people who regularly challenge me and I push back and challenge them. PM says deadline is not movable, I say I think you can make it happen. And we have a balance in power.
I never worked with Jobs or Musk, but from stories I read about them, they are straight up bullies and sociopaths. Musk told a guy who took one day off to attend birth of his first born to get his priorities straight. That is not normal.
> Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace.
This is a silly notion that ignores the fact that there are plenty of people who are both capable and want to work for leaders like Jobs/Musk. Nobody forces anyone to work the hard hours at these companies, and the complainers who don't make it are usually all you hear about since the individuals driving toward the mission are busy doing just that.
It's like Navy SEALS, you take any random selection of 1000 people, ask them how much they believe in the mission, and then put them into the sieve and see which ones have the chops to make it. Drill instructors would be called "toxic" too, but that's the entire point of the filtering function.
Not sure if it is binary as the gp says, but it seems people do take more shit in the US for a shot at wealth. In NL at least, I know that most people I know (and most are well off, but not millionairs) will and have walked if their manager talks to them in the wrong tone of voice. In the 80s you still had hard ass vs empathic managers : it now shifted very much to the latter and the former is generally considered strange and indeed toxic.
I guess this has less to do with the culture (the culture was more or less the same in the 80s and 90s in many countries when I did work for hard ass drill sergeant shouters as CEOs in both NL and DE: I even was one for 5 years until I noticed that it pained me as much as it did the people working for me) than with the realization, which seems to be in a large part of the EU now, that you basically do not have to do any of it: the social net allows to do mostly whatever you want. Sure you will not be able to drive lambos, but that is also considered silly (and a bit sad) in most places here anyway. But you won't starve here if you do not bend over and take it.
Covid sped up this realization again: what are you doing it all for if you lose your good years working like an animal and take abuse to boot?
It's technically possible for most people to "be" anything, i.e. to succeed in an unusual way, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. Why is our current economic environment not optimized for this behavior? Why is our economy set up to disproportionately reward ruthless behaviors and predatory personalities?
It's not necessarily the economy that's setup this way, it's more basic than that, it's human behaviour.
The psychological reaction to the power of hierarchy and the difficulty in questioning that power and the inherent internal-monologue questioning of 'what could I have done better?' to satisfy those to whom I report.
Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's them, but like with domestic violence, the victims sometimes / often will, confusingly, go back to their aggressors, further enabling the toxic, and sometimes criminal, behaviour.
There's a fine line between being a 'snowflake' and allowing yourself to be repeatedly victimised, and it's entirely dependent on each individuals "transaction value". Where the economy comes into it is in the lifestyle impact of changing jobs: in an employers market, ruthless behaviour probably has fewer repercussions.
The economy nominally runs on money and productivity, but human beings run on emotions, credit and blame. So everywhere you look, if there is an opportunity to gain credit for something (even if financial incentive isn't there, like most of the arts) there is some cutthroat competition to have that credit reassigned to you, by fair means or foul.
The ticket out of this - in an individual sense - mostly comes through following well-worn ancient wisdom around virtue - humility, integrity, diligence, etc. That gives you an edge over the long run because the virtuous stuff enables sharing and therefore access to a trusted network studying the most interesting problems available(and from there, higher-profile life opportunities), while someone who is out to "make a name for themselves" is spending all their time looking over their shoulder trying to push down the competition and toot the horn on their own work(which is tailored to min/max credibility, not to study anything in particular).
Our economy is perpetually in a state of having the two outlooks overlap each other which accounts for the mixed messages - as soon as a good idea gets popular it gets gamed and gatekept. Keep in mind that we have only grudgingly managed to accept - within the last few centuries - that good economies are not premised on simple conquest and exploitation. We still have a long way to go.
In school, I was so shy, I constantly struggled to initiate conversations and I was always playing back what I said in my mind and feeling bad about how dumb it sounded. I held others to a higher esteem than myself.
But as I grew older, the system beat shyness out of me by revealing the ugliness in people. Now I don't care about what people think. I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job.
Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn't matter what they think.
> I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job
That'd be going too far, and is an indication of emotional immaturity. Just leaving the job, and giving a clear indication of the reasons in an exit interview, should be far more of a stab in the guts to your boss.
Shouting and swearing allows them to blame your emotional state and justifying a stance of 'better off without you', thus enabling a (potentially) toxic boss to continue to treat the next person the same way.
Always consider how to make the greatest positive impact. It can actually be far more long-term therapeutic than shouting and swearing.
Honestly it is a relief when the CEO isn't trying to sell me on some vision (with the exception of one CEO who was a legit magical salesman) or whatever it is. Just give me my orders so I can get on with it, I don't need a show / extrovert at the helm.
Maybe other people do and maybe the article is wrong, but at least for leadership, I don't need a super outgoing guy. I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing.
Now if the CEO is a guy who is gonna come running out onto a stage screamming at a presentation, like that is who he is ... that's cool too.