William Wu Personal Blog

One of the books that I personally enjoyed tremendously is “The FIVE Temptations of a C.E.O.” by Patrick Lencioni. 

This is a provocative fable leadership story that depicts the challenge and inspiration of overcoming the five deceptively simple barriers to successful leadership.  The story introduces a struggling CEO, Andrew O’Brien, who meets a wise old janitor of BART train, Charlie. Via intensive and often combative exchanges, the two debate fundamental issues faced by all leaders – issues involving personal integrity and effectiveness in the ongoing struggle for success.  The 5 temptations revealed by Charlie to Andrew are real challenges that test a leader’s character:

• Temptation 1: Choosing to preserve one’s own ego/career ahead of results.
• Temptation 2: Choosing popularity and camaraderie with their direct reports over holding them accountable for delivering on the commitments that drive results.
• Temptation 3: Choosing certainty over clarity by focusing too much on the need for precision and correctness that cause decisions to be postponed or deliverables to be vague.
• Temptation 4: Choosing group harmony over productive conflict.  Harmony sometimes restricts productive ideological conflict and, therefore, decisions are often suboptimal without all perspectives out on the table.
• Temptation 5: Choosing invulnerability over trust.  Executives mistakenly believe that allowing their direct reports to challenge them too comfortably can lead to the credibility loss.

New York Times had a recent article on C.E.O. Characteristics by David Brooks that echoed the concepts above:

“…warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.

These results are consistent with a lot of work that’s been done over the past few decades. In 2001, Jim Collins published a best-selling study called ‘Good to Great.’ He found that the best C.E.O.’s were not the flamboyant visionaries. They were humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls who found one thing they were really good at and did it over and over again.

That same year Murray Barrick, Michael Mount and Timothy Judge surveyed a century’s worth of research into business leadership. They, too, found that extroversion, agreeableness and openness to new experience did not correlate well with C.E.O. success. Instead, what mattered was emotional stability and, most of all, conscientiousness — which means being dependable, making plans and following through on them.

All this work is a reminder that, while it’s important to be a sensitive, well-rounded person for the sake of your inner fulfillment, the market doesn’t really care. The market wants you to fill an organizational role.”

Character is an exhibition of the inner principles that we follow.  As General Omar Nelson Bradley from the U.S. Army said, “We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”  We need to hold ourselves responsible for a higher standard than anybody expect of us.  This is the only way a true leader develops his or her integrity and inner principles. Following Albert Einstein’s advice, “Try not to become men of success.  Rather become men of value.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower also told us, “The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and cleaver speech and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered and kicked overboard.”

In the end, most of us have succumbed to one or more of these ‘temptations’. By understanding of these temptations that creep into our character weakness will help us avoid the embarrassment or setback that we try so hard to avoid in our career.  Use the following key messages from Mr. Lencioni’s book as a constant reminder:

• Make results the most important measure of personal success, or step down from the job.
• Work for the long-term respect of your direct reports, not for their affection. View them as key employees who must deliver on their commitments.
• Make clarity more important than accuracy and not afraid of risk being wrong. If the decisions made in the spirit of creating more clarity turn out to be wrong when more information become available, change plans and explain why. Do not afraid of the loss of personal pride at the expense of paralyzing the business.
• Tolerate discord and encourage people to air their ideological differences, and with passion.  View tumultuous meetings as signs of progress but guard against personal attacks that stifle important interchanges of ideas.
• Best executives get results by putting their weaknesses on the table and invite people to help them minimize those weaknesses.

Horace Greeley puts a perfect conclusion here,

“Fame is a vapour,
Popularity an accident
Riches take wings
Those who cheer today
Will curse tomorrow
Only one thing endures:
Character”