CEO complaints about the board shows need for candor
Research into rifts in the "top table" reveals 7 key CEO gripes.
Chief executives make 7 typical complaints about their leadership team, according to BlessingWhite, a global onsulting firm based in the US.
The complaints are clear signs that the senior management team isn't functioning well, the firm said.
“As a rule, such gripes or comments made by the president or chief executive officer reflect underlying interpersonal issues confronting the leadership team,” BlessingWhite CEO Christopher Rice said. “Among them is that the CEO gets too much agreement and too little candor, and this is the most frequent reason for a leadership intervention to help with strategic alignment, team building or comparable exercise."
Team members often find they’re not actually talking with one another but just messaging or trying to stay on top of things.
Top 7 CEO complaints
"The challenge is to encourage every team member to speak up, to facilitate more back and forth, even if it means dissent from the CEO’s point of view,” Rice continued.
BlessingWhite has paraphrased the top 7 complaints they most often hear from CEOs before a leadership development initiative is implemented:
- “Everyone always agrees with me, and that makes me uneasy.”
- “All I get is data, but not much insight.”
- “We focus so much on competence that the senior team never gets emotionally charged up.”
- “All we talk about is results, but we don’t change the way we do things.”
- “I find myself talking strategy until I’m blue in the face, but my team doesn’t get it.”
- “Some of my best people have left, and no one tells me why.”
- “A lot of change is happening, but people don’t see how it all fits together.”
Get together and speak frankly
Many leadership teams become so focused on results and data, said Rice, that there's a natural tendency to overlook fundamental person-to-person issues.
“Top people are inundated with data, daily if not hourly, and if it’s not data, then it’s a torrent of e-mail," he said. "So team members often find they’re not actually talking with one another but just messaging or trying to stay on top of things.
It’s usually the CEO who sees that something needs to be done to shake up the team.
"Then after a year or two, the CEO gets the sense that team members are drifting apart, that the overall picture is less distinct and it’s time for everyone to get together and speak frankly.”
Intervene before bad news strikes
“The CEO may be so charismatic that no one else is comfortable contributing, or sounding a discordant note," he said. "CEOs, however, tend to be intuitive and recognize when they’re not hearing all they need to hear. It’s usually the CEO who sees that something needs to be done to shake up the team.”
Another frequent issue is lack of emotional engagement by members of the team, Rice said. “This may occur even when an organization is doing well, that is, when the right numbers are coming in," he said.
"In these cases longer-term behavioral issues are often overlooked amid the good news. The great CEOs are the ones who don’t wait for earnings to tail off but intervene so that all the top people are truly involved on a visceral level.”
Have your say
What do you think – should you be more honest with your CEO? Have you identified similar communication problems within the executive board at your organization? Discuss the pros and cons with other communication practitioners via the Communicators' Network.
Got a news story? Contact the newsdesk