A CEO coach shares new leaders’ biggest blindspots (and how to overcome them)

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates The CEO transition is by far and away the toughest transition the executive will go through. And the role is unlike any other.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Welcome to Meet the Leader. I'm Linda Lacina, and I am very excited to welcome you to our New York studios here at the World Economic Forum for a very special conversation on leadership. We have with us today Ty Wiggins. He drives the CEO and executive transition practice at consultancy Russell Reynolds. And what that means is he works with leaders when they make that move from mere mortal to CEO.

And you all know that CEO is a tough job, is a lonely job, and that makes Ty's job all the more important. He is part coach, part cheerleader, part therapist, and all around sounding board for people who have an outsized impact on economies, the climate, and people in general.

He has collected years of insights into a brand new book, The New CEO, and he is going to give us a backstage pass into his world, talking to us about what works and what doesn't in that top role in the lessons learned that can help all of us better make change happen. How are you, Ty?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates And. Well, Linda, thank you for having me.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader I'm excited to get into this. Why don't we get a little bit into your job which is a fascinating one. And so you are meeting these people when pressure is high, but also the potential is at its greatest. What are those conversations look like? How do you even get started? What does that look like?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates It's a privilege. The work that I get to do. And it is, you know, private, confidential conversations with with fantastic people, leading organizations.

It generally starts right at the point of transition, and someone goes into transition as soon as they mentally accept the role. So at that point, they start thinking about the role they start planning. So these are conversations that are happening one on one. They start with a refresh around and transition challenges. You know, transitions are tough. And sometimes we will remember them more favorably than they were the last time we went through them. So there's a there's a refresh on what to expect.

Then there's an adjustment around the thinking of how you would start and the preparation in terms of communication, early meetings. There's a presence piece. You know, the CEO transition is by far and away the toughest transition the executive will go through. And the role is unlike any other. So there isn't a sandbox, per se. There's no really great training ground. So getting them ready for what will be different and what they don't expect is really important. And then as the individual starts, we're spending regular time talking, through a regular cadence of meetings for a lot of calls in between as things come up. And then we work right through until, you know, they really start to to embed their stamp and then start to make changes in the organization.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And what don't people really understand about these CEO transitions?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I think for the CEOs themselves, if you're a first time CEO, it's it's really the scope and complexity of the role. So in the book, we were blessed to have, you know, a number of very well-known CEOs talk about their transition and consistent with a lot of them was the role was different than I expected. So if you think about Ramon LaGuarta, who's the CEO of PepsiCo with PepsiCo, 25 plus years running, enormous areas of the business had a good line of sight to the CEO for a very long time. Got to the CEO role and said, you know, you think you know what it's going to be like and you don't. It's a massive shift.

So this aspect of I think I know what to expect and I'm a bit shocked is really, really common. So I think that's probably the bit that that stands out. And then there's just the sheer weight and enormity of the time pressures, how busy they are, the adjustment they need to make personally. And this concept of being the main attraction. You know, senior executives, you know, they're well known, people listen to them, they have a voice. But when you're the CEO, you're it. You know, everything is pointed at you. And so this attention on everything that you say, everything that you do, who you meet with when you when you come, when you leave. This is also a bit of a surprise.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And when you're talking to these, these CEOs, these new CEOs, how do they process this new change? What are you seeing in their body language and their behavior? How are they different once that reality really sinks in?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates It's a variety of things. You know, you will see physical change. You'll see some some CEOs changing, you know, aspects of their appearance, you know, dressing, speaking, behaving for the for the role. You'll see them, you know, suffer a little bit more in terms of fatigue and anxiety and stress. So we do try to balance exercise, family through this transition period when they're moving at great pace.

But it's really the recognition that there's no sort of gap or break for them. There's nothing off the record. And, you know, there's a number of sort of funny sort of stories in the book, you know, one of which was a, a CEO who went into work, you know, early as he did, went to the cafeteria and, so talking to the cafeteria staff and asked what the soup of the day was. They said, it's a chicken noodle. He said quite casually, "Oh that's great. I love chicken noodle soup." And about three months later, one of his aides came and said, "Listen, I'm getting a lot of requests. You need to go down and tell the cafeteria you like something other than chicken noodle soup, as if they've made that same soup for three months, and we're sick and tired of it." So it's an interesting analogy around the things that they say. They turn into actions. They turn into projects, people go and get this stuff done. So that's probably the big adjustment that see us have to make.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And a CEO like like that individual, how do they leverage that into other leadership moments later on? How does he sort of use that to challenge people?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I mean, in this case, it was great. He went back down to the cafeteria to address the recent glut of chicken noodle soup and make a bit of a joke about it. But what he did do was use it with his executive team and the layer of leaders below that. Any time he felt he was getting excessive head nodding and agreement, he would say, is this another chicken noodle soup moment? Are you just agreeing? Because this is what I'm what I'm saying? Or is this what you really believe? So he was able to use it in an what we would call an anchor to bring forward that conversation.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And you mentioned that, hey, this can be a very stressful transition because now there's more attention on them. The, the, the type of attention is very, very different. But, what do you think is maybe the biggest driver if you were going to rank sort of the biggest stressors for these folks in their in their early days, what does that look like?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think it's the it's the scope and the responsibility. You know, any transition, whether you're a CEO or not, you tend to be moving from a situation where you are performing well. You've got a good network. You know how to do your role. This is one of the reasons you get the new role is that you're doing well. And you do almost have to start again. So at the time when they're under the most pressure to make decisions to be, you know, directional and visionary, they're sort of the most wobbly because they've just stepped into that role.

So I think the toughest aspect of the CEO transition is -- and it's something that comes up with everyone I work with -- is finding this balance between listening and learning and acting. So they want to do stuff, you know, these are people that they're used to getting things done. This is part of their their mental usually. So now they have to actually learn, listen, understand before they act. But they have this internal drive, and sometimes an external drive, to quickly deliver.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Anybody who is promoted into a leadership role, they have to make a shift because, as you said, what got you into the role is not what's going to help you keep this one. And what is maybe the biggest shift for them in trying to get things done? Well, how do they have to approach that in a new way in the top role?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates So this is a classic case of getting things done through other people. You know, a lot of the change when people come from C-suite, especially if we think about, you know, a common role would be the COO role. You know, these are people that run around the organization absolutely executing and getting things done. They're rolling up their sleeves, they're involved. They can be, you know, pushy to a point. When they become CEO, they now have to get that work done through other people.The CEO dipping into the operational component can be quite a challenge. And this is one of the areas where boards express early concern. And I hear this quite a lot, which is, "Our CEO is acting like a COO. He she is in the operations, in the execution. You know, in the work. And we're worried that they're not looking at the business at the right level."

Only the CEO can really have that perspective of the business longer term. And the role of having the vision really sits with them. So if they spend too much time so down in the weeds, it can cause concern.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And in those moments. What do you say to them? Like how do you how do those conversations work?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates So a lot of times it's feedback that I get. So one of my processes is to do stakeholder feedback really early in the piece so that we can understand how the CEO has landed and to build a scorecard, per say, of transition success. And in that, I'll often hear some of this information. If I don't hear it there, I'll hear it in the conversations that the CEO is telling me: What happened this week? What were you involved in? What meetings were you in? What what were the actions after the meetings and how many of those did you own?

And I'll start to pull them back a little bit and say, this sounds very operational, this sounds very executional. And the response is often, something along the lines of, I just need to fix a few more things and then I can be CEO. And that's not that's not the attitude. You know, there's never a shortage of things to fix. It's about really being able to sort of come up and down out of the operations and up to the strategic level.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader You mentioned that, hey, you know what? There's maybe not a roadmap. There's no manual necessarily to be a CEO. And it's there's really no manual in a lot of ways for a lot of leadership positions. Sometimes you're promoted into these jobs in the exact way that you need to execute at that time, with that team and with these projects, isn't isn't always obvious. What should any leader who's maybe, like, kind of thinking about what we're talking about-- What should they be thinking about when they come into these roles to make sure that they're executing, in a way that's most effective?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates One of the things that really helps with transition at all levels is clarity around the transition expectations. So a lot of people move into a role. There's a job description or a role description which is very clear, but it also talks about when the person's at full speed, so rarely talks about what success looks like at three months, six months and nine months. So if you can build some clarity around what your transition milestones look like, you can really accelerate that transition. So you come before about what got you here won't get you there is really appropriate. And so when people get under pressure they often revert back to what worked for them before. And this is where we see people failing to make the transition and failing to really step up to that role.

The other thing would be, you know, some people view the promotion internally or the next step up as a reward for all the good work they've already done. Sort of the end of the race. It's not. It's the beginning of the race. When you get promoted internally, it's part performance but a lot of around potential. So if you step into it with the attitude of this is just me doing a little something faster and better, you'll miss the opportunity and you might actually store your career at that level.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader What are the most important things that somebody can get done in that first 100 days? What what should they be 100% focused on?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates They should be 100% focused on assessing and making those early decisions about the individuals in the senior leadership team. You know, it's it's not necessarily the case that the person is no good at this. That person might not be the right fit for that CEO of where the organization needs to go. So moving on, the team within that first 100 days or starting to move is crucial.

Building good relationships with the board. You need to engage the board fairly quickly and early and spend some time. A lot of CEOs will go and spend a day or two days with each board member in their early period, because they need to understand that person's view on the organization, that person's view on their role on the board and the role of the board. And they need to lay the groundwork for some of the things that they're thinking about early in the period about where they want to take the organization.

The next would be really trying to understand the culture. You're not going to shift the culture in that period, of course, but you need to get a good read on the culture and you need to, as CEO, be really careful about where you get your information, because as I said before, a lot of people are telling you, yes, the information is always filtered before it gets to you. People know when you're in the building, they're on their best behavior. The uniform is on, right? Like you've got to acknowledge all of that. So are you seeing the surface level culture or do you really understand what's there? Because if you, as CEO decide to take the organization in a different direction and the culture is resistant, it will make it much harder to achieve that.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And what is the biggest mistake that either a CEO or any kind of leader can make in those first 100 days?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think at the base level, you know, things that CEOs say early on can become problematic and become, unfairly attached to them. And they have to work quite hard to change that. So you do have to be really careful about what you suggest, you know, thinking openly, ideating on the fly. None of that works when you're CEO because it becomes really fixed.

I think aside from a particular mistake, I think any mistake that results in a loss of confidence from the board. Is dangerous. You know, birds have lots to do. But one of their key roles is to hire and fire the CEO. So, if you lose the confidence in the support of the board early, you'll really, really struggle. We will sometimes make a set of offhand jokes that people coming into CEO roles, the goal here is to be the first-time CEO, not the one-time CEO. So sometimes you do need to earn the right for the second and third year in that first year, and the board is critical to that.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader We talked a little bit about, you know, hey, like what really works for people who are in these roles. What traits what traits really come to mind? You sit down with these folks, you meet them, you talk with them. And I imagine that you have a measure right away of, oh, this will be fine. Or maybe in some cases, okay. You know, maybe here's something we need to there's an opportunity here that we we can dig in on. What are the traits that, effective CEOs need to have in order to succeed?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I think short term and through the transition, and certainly something that I look for is, is sort of a gut feel around coachability. You know, how open is this individual to understand and to learn and to listen? And how fixed are they on those ideas? How fixed are the ideas about what they think it's going to be like? And this is, you know, part of the challenge. If you have a firm view of what you plan to do when you get there, and you often see CEOs making decisions and taking actions really, really quickly, and then having to walk them back down the track, and that can be very detrimental. So I think there's a degree of a learning mindset. It's a bit of humility as well. Like it's a humbling time to be CEO, as a first-time CEO, or stepping into a new CEO role where you don't have all the context and the information. You don't necessarily have the network. You often don't have the understanding of how things get done to be as effective as you have just been.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And what are the traits that you know? Gosh, they they could hold somebody back that maybe they're not the best fit for, the top role. What comes to mind for those traits?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I think from a board's perspective, you know, not being visionary enough, not being able to see further down the path. So one of the shifts that everyone makes is they go up a level, but it's more pronounced when you get to the CEO role, is your time horizon. So when you're thinking about your role, when you're thinking about the business, what time horizon are you using? You know, when you're at junior levels, you make decisions, the impact is a week from now. You know, senior management, it might be six months from now. The CEO could be three, five, ten years from now.

When you look at CEOs in their legacy period and they start to get to the point of leaving their organizations, we can't really judge a lot of their decisions until years after they've gone. So the time horizon is one of those areas. So inability to get to that level, as I mentioned before, a lack of willingness to step away from the operations. There's a there's a lot of days for CEOs where they spin their wheels and at the end of the day or the end of the week, they can't really put their finger on something that they delivered. And that can be difficult. So what some will do is go back and solve a problem. Start a project. Fix something so that they can get a little bit of a dopamine hit around. I actually got something done this week and that's not their job.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Like addicts. Action addicts. If there's a moment where, a CEO has dropped the ball and you need to have a conversation with them, what does that look like? How do you how do you tell them?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates How I can benefit of my role sitting on the on the side of the table that I sit. I set this up very early that, whilst it sometimes will be supportive, other times it will be, quite challenging. And if I think that they've missed the mark or that they've made a mistake, I'll be very quick to to tell them.

So if I give you an example, I worked with the CEO for about the last year, and he was really dragging his heels on his senior leadership team. And so I was able to bring research to the table. I kept pointing it out, and at one point I said, listen, I think you're now an outlier to be in the role as long as you have been to have not made a change, and you have already identified that some of the people you don't think are exactly the right fit for you. I think you need to do something. And fortunately, he did something that week in terms of communicating to the board because the board were just about to come and say, we've red flagged two of your team and we're worried that you haven't identified it. So I will introduce it. And that's part of the advisory piece. Part of my role is to see ahead and to say, listen, CEOs at this point in the transition are talking about this and you're not. Let's talk about it.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And in that particular, moment, how did that leader react?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates He was fine. No, he didn't love it. But he recognized where he was dragging his heels and why he was dragging his heels was starting to affect the performance of the organization and particularly his performance. And so what started out as a gentle nudge became quite a hard poke in the side. You need you now need to get moving on this.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader You mentioned that, you know, people are open to feedback, but even when people are open to feedback, they still have an idea of what they wanted to do, and they may be impatient to get it done. And they might still need a recalibration. So how how do you sort of help those folks still sort of realize that you need to make a little tweak here. You know, how do they make that that that, that shift and that mindset shift?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates In a lot of cases, I'll use, blinded stories from other clients, of other people I've worked with. So if I want to shift an individual's thinking around something, I can come straight out and say listen, this is what I know, and this is what I think, and this is what you're doing, and this is what I think you should do it. Or I can say, let me talk. Let me talk to you about two other CEOs that were in similar stages in different spaces. And here's what they did and how it worked out.

So if I think about another example, I had a CEO who was dead set on making changes to her team within the first two weeks. And I said, you know, it's great to go fast. And we talk about that in the book. You know, you need to go fast. But this is this is fast. You're an outlier on the wrong end of the scale. What's the loss if you wait an extra week or two? And I continued to push, and I was able to use the example of another CEO who really lost momentum by making a structural announcement too early when the organization responded with, how do you know you? You haven't been here long enough? You haven't taken the time. You've clearly made this up before you -- you decided this before you got here, and it took a long time to reverse that. So I was able to both use the experience I've had, the research that I've got and other people's experiences to say, just wait.

And she did wait and things shifted significantly. So it was a really good decision to wait. She went at six weeks, which is still fantastic in terms of speed. But she didn't have to unwind it, you know, to back any of it out.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader When people talk about giving good feedback or hard feedback, they always talk about trust and they always talk about, hey, you got to be really, really good listener. But I don't think there's anybody that doesn't think that they're not a great listener. And they think there's always something that we can do to improve. In your mind, what can any leader do to be a little bit better at how they're either building rapport with the people that they need to give feedback to or, being a little bit of an active, more active listener, what can they physically, tangibly do?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think there's I think there's a number of things, you know, I encourage a lot of the people I work with to take physical notes, to go back to taking physical notes. Because it slows them down, it slows their response. It helps them to process, some structure around the questions that you're going to ask. Like, I'll often role play different scenarios with my clients and I'll be able to say, listen, you just asked five closed questions back to back. Here's what you're going to hear back, you know, and you're going to be pleased to hear it because it's confirming the way you've asked a question and you're not going to learn anything.

I'll push them to explain to me in other people's language what they what they've heard. But I think if we take the attitude of, you know, of being curious as opposed to being right, if we're really mindful of our confirmation bias, and this is a big thing in transition when you step into a new role. I'm yet to work with a leader who doesn't have moments of have I bitten off more than I can chew? Is this more than I can cope with? So there's a there's a moment there that they very excited to hear things or say things that they expected to find. It confirms to them that they're the right person, that they're up for the challenge at the board made the right decision. So you have to be really, really careful because you'll go looking for that. So checking your confirmation bias and really, you know that old adage of seeking first to understand rather, oh yeah, to understand rather than be understood is really valuable.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Have you worked with leaders that may maybe just sort of hit a wall and they didn't quite know which way to turn?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates You know, I would refer to it as a bit of a wobble. And there's a good story in the book. Alan Beecham, who's the CEO of Toll, you know, talked about at six months when they thought that the environment, the economy, was going to change, realized that it was just more uphill, started to really second guess, you know, have I got the right strategy in place? Have I got the right team. Had a good conversation with the chair, which is another sort of key relationship for the CEO and expressed the concerns that he had. And the chair was able to say, listen, you're thinking is spot on. Your assumptions are valid. You need to trust your gut. You need to keep going. So it happens a lot.

And this is why it's important for a lot of CEOs to have some external support, because they quickly realize that this type of discussion, the "I don't quite know what I'm doing here discussion" It's not a comfortable one to have with the chair or the board or your executive team. So where are you having these conversations so all CEOs and senior leaders should have an external network of people that they can talk to.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And when you talk about that network of people that they can talk to. One of the things that you mentioned in the book is that it's important that you have people that can challenge you in a constructive way. Tell me about that, because I think sometimes people think about people challenging them and they think, whoa, wait a minute. You know, what does that mean? That. Why is that helpful and what does it actually look like?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Is it to make the joke in the in the book that when you become CEO, your jokes are funnier, your stories are more interesting? People will agree with you. You hear, "Yes," to a lot of things that you want to hear. Yes, true. You can also move around the organization and get involved in any part of it. No one's really going to tell you no. So true honest feedback becomes harder and harder to get.

It is really important to have people around that not only think differently, have a different breadth of experience, and who are comfortable to say, you know, I think you did that wrong. And that's a that's a key part of a role like mine. If I am not comfortable to say, I think you really messed up on that case, then I'm missing the opportunity to really help. And so I always find. And the people that I know that work in this space, we need to be quite comfortable to be sacked. Because if we're not, then, then we're not actually giving the right level of advice. And again, the people that, that I get to work with, that they don't always love it, but they love that they're getting it.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader So sometimes people take feedback in different ways. So if you have somebody who's challenging on your team, challenging your idea, what is a way for leaders to make sure that they are, using that, that they're using the difficulty in a way that is, is helping them, the team, the company, and all the rest of that.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates CEOs especially have to be really in control of their responses. So if you have someone in your team who is challenging, you need to make sure it's a positive situation. I've worked with, a leader for a number of years, and he puts his personality was one where he loved a good debate and he would rise to the challenge. And it was intellectually stimulating. It was energetic for him. But he was also a fairly big guy. And so his ability to dominate the conversation and his interview was, if you really passionate about your your view, you'll, you'll fight it out with me and we'll have the right response. So that worked if he came up against another one of him that didn't work with the rest of the team. So what he was inadvertently doing was shutting down the challenge and making it a non-safe space. So we had to work on some some introductory language. How do you set the meeting up? How do you buy your time. How do you manage your response. Because if you don't get that pushback as CEO, you know you can be 5 or 10% off on decisions and they have a massive impact. You can't miss that opportunity. You need to create the environment where people are happy to give their view and happy to challenge yours. And you can still, you know, we can still disagree and commit. Provided we've had a good process.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Let's talk about, what those elements are. What's my little recipe list to have a meeting or an environment where people have what they need to to challenge something in a productive, constructive way? What 4 or 5 things need to be in place?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I think for CEOs and senior leaders, the first is being really careful not to lead the witness. You know, they use one of the quotes from from Nelson Mandela about, you know, you know, leaders should speak lost. And that's really, really true. And we do see the the funny stuff that comes through on sort of LinkedIn around the the leader goes into the room and says, "listen, we have this problem and I think this is a solution, but I'm really interested to hear your view." And lo and behold, the views come back exactly the same.

So I think the first is in the setup. When you are a COO or a general manager, you have an opinion. You're encouraged to give it. You can deliver it almost any time during the meeting and it will influence, but it won't steer. When you're CEO. As soon as you give your opinion, you've steered the conversation. By setting the conversation up with your context, you've started the discussion and you've often ended it. So I think the first thing is you need to be really careful about your presence and how you set this up, even to the point of setting establishing what the problem is. Get other people to lead. Create the space in the meetings for other people to lead that discussion and hold back your, your, views and opinions.

I joke with leaders often that they'll say things like, oh, this person said something and I really disagreed, but I didn't say anything. I said, well, you you did, because our poker faces are never as good as we think they are. You've let them know, so you need to be careful about that. Asking more questions is a great one. So if the person says something and you disagree before you disagree, ask another question. Can you elaborate? Can you expand? Can you explain this a little bit more? Take some notes. Digest. Let the person finish. These are some of the tactics that that leaders will change and use to make sure that they're getting the information out before they give their view.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader One of the things too, you were you were talking about in the book, you have an example from Hans Vestberg, right? He's the CEO of Verizon who has been on Meet the Leader. And, one of the things he talked about was a, a boss contract. Tell me a little bit about what a boss contract is and why it's important. How can it be useful?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates So the vast contract that Hans uses with his executive team is is it's a it's a contract where the individual gets to set out where their skills are, what their capabilities are, what their key focus is, are. What their deliverables will be and importantly, how they're going to measure their success. So I think it's really valuable because it creates clarity for both sides, and it allows the individual to set some of these things. Because if enhances you, and he's done some really clever things about making sure his view doesn't dominate, his view might be limited compared to the individual. So you really want to understand how they can best use their skills and capabilities, and how they can deliver the outcomes and what they should be doing, but it also creates a good degree of autonomy. You know, we know that if the individual comes up with the answer, we're more wedded to it. We will implement it better, we will execute it better. You know, we'll drive it home if it's ours, if we think we own it. So there's a key component about that. And it also increases the accountability. You know, here are the things that you said you were going to do. So let's get that done. And I think it's a really effective way to, to empower and to lead a senior leadership team.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader It makes a lot of sense, with all of these things, we talked about a range of different blind spots that leaders can have, whether it's confirmation bias, whether it's them sort of trying to, do the job they had before and try to fix problems that they don't need to be fixing anymore. What is a way that a leader can sort of check themselves and make sure that they are identifying their own blind spots eventually, hopefully they have a long career as a leader, and they'll have to be checking this all around. What should they be asking themselves in your mind to make sure that they can identify, that they have a blind spot?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, you know, blind spots are called that for a reason. So it is quite hard to, uncover them in isolation. So this is where the external network comes in. This is where feedback, either from the executive team or from the board is quite helpful. Asking questions in terms of -- I'll give you a good example -- Leaders go into meetings and come out without great outcomes? One of the things I would tell them is before you go into the meeting, write down what you think the other person's agenda is. What does success look like for the other people in the room? And that alone shifts their perspective a little bit, too. Okay, well, I actually think they want to know this or they want to understand that. So that can sometimes shift their view, especially if this is the sixth meeting of the morning and they bouncing from meeting to meeting. So there are some aspects like that.

But I think the blind spot spotting is really best done by people external. And this is why it's so important to have people outside. And if you are coming from a senior executive role into the CEO role, then one of the networks you need to build really quickly is other CEOs. Because if you're a CFO, for example, you have a great network of CFOs, which will be helpful. But now you need to quickly build a network of CEOs, people that have shared that experience and shared that understanding to help you.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Well, when we started this chat, you said, hey, it's a privilege to do your role. But you also say in the book that it's a privilege in general to lead. Can you talk a little bit about that privilege aspect? Cause I think it's really, really important. I think it can probably also help people as they navigate through tough situations.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Being CEO, being any senior leader and I think is a privilege is not a right. Yes, you've the opportunity to do it. But if you forget why you're there and who you're there, and this concept of servant leadership and that you're here to serve, not be served, I think it's really, really important. And again, the people that I get to work with, and it's probably a factor in a number of factors, have the humility around this. So when you ask them what's the best bit about being say, what's the worst bit? You often hear the same response is the responsibility. I've wanted the responsibility to make change. I wanted the responsibility to drive the organization, and I've wanted the responsibility to make decisions. But what's hard is the responsibility.

Another example I use in the book, which was was quite interesting, was I worked with a what I'd call a reluctant CEO, and he was he promoted into the role. Wasn't really looking to do that. It was an unfortunate circumstance. And so he was reluctant. And we were having this discussion as we started to talk about the responsibilities of the role. And I said, you know, you're responsible for -- and he finished my sentence. He said, "I know 120,000 people." I said, "No, you're responsible for 120,000 families. I said, it stretches more than that. You can't be on the fence here. You need to commit. You're the right person for the role. You need to get this done. But you can't shy away from this. This is not light hearted." So the best bit and the worst, that often is the responsibility. So really acknowledging that and stay humble through that I think it's crucial.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Anybody who is listening or watching this conversation, how can that reminder help them as they are helping a team, maybe through a rough patch? Maybe there's something that's just not sort of coming together quite yet. They need a little bit more patience, a little bit more elbow grease. How can that reminder of -- this is a privilege -- how can that help them?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates When some CEOs are going through what I call the crash. Which is happens at various levels in various amounts for most people. You know, one of the things I often suggest is for them to to get out of their office and back into the field - the depots to factories, you know, the regions. Go back out and sit with people and see the impact that your decisions have. See the passion that the people have for the roles. Remember who you're here serving and who you're working for. And that will often ground them out of this particular issue, which is causing them a level of stress and anxiety, or that they don't have an answer for. And so that the sort of re grounding yourself as to why you're doing this and what's really important, can really help when it gets tough and at some point it gets tough. Early on there'll be a challenge. There always is.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Tell me a little bit more about the crash. How do you know you're getting into it? And what is it?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates You know you're getting into it when you start to really second guess. A lot of the things that you thought coming in, a lot of the things that you thought in the first couple of months or weeks, and your own skill set in the ability and you start to unpick some of the things that you, you were fairly comfortable with.

You know, so an example of a crash would be somebody goes through the process to make changes to the senior leadership team. They get to months six, seven, eight. They've got the right sort of people in place. And now they start to second guess if they got the right team in. Why are we doing this? You've gone through this process. Let's think about what's really going on here. Moments of lack of confidence, or a significant challenge.

I've worked with CEOs that got, you know, sort of four months and something significant happened, either legally or with the government or with the economy. That meant that what they thought they were going to be doing for the next six months, they can no longer do. And so that can knock their confidence as well, because they go from a particular situation to another.

Mark Bitzer, it is the CEO of Whirlpool, was really good with this. In the book, Super Humble kept saying, I know the company feels like mine, but I'm just a salaried employee and no CEOs bigger than the board, no CEOs bigger than the organization. And he was very fixed on my job is to leave the organization in a much better state for the next individual. In fact, when he got the role, he wrote a not quite a manifesto, but certainly a detailed document, which he called well, for eight point out to reference the fact that he was the ATC, and a lot of that talked about what happens when he's fixed. Not so much. What am I going to do when I get into the chair?

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader I want to talk a little bit about your background. You got started in the very beginning as a your basketball coach. Professional basketball coach. Does that. How much does that? I noticed that in my experience, a lot of athletes are very open to coaching, because that's just how that is as an athlete. That's how you perform. Does that help you or hurt you in talking to CEOs?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think it's a significant help. I loved the role of coaching. I quickly learned that I was a much better coach than I was player. And I think that sort of, you know, sits well in how in how I sort of structure my work now. The clients that I work with ran much bigger organizations and roles, and I've had. My ability to transfer a lot of the information that I learned from others into The New CEO, I think is key.

But the the aspect of coaching that I loved was the the communication component. So, you know, communication is one of those things that you never you never fully done with. It's a it's a continuing, you know, sort of skill set. And I think being able to communicate in a way that really resonates with the individuals is really key. And I think this is another thing I talk about in the book is one of the challenges that CEOs can have is that if you've come from a particular function -- you may have run high performance teams for lots of years, but they might be very similar. So if you're, you know, not picking on the CFOs, but I use the CFOs, if you've been a CFO to go to CEO, you've likely run teams of financially-thinking people who tend to think differently to say, marketing or H.R.

So when you become CEO, one of the challenges that you have is that you are now leading a team with very different thinking styles and views of the world, and it's not a natural, sort of not an automatic that you'll be able to lead them effectively. So you have to change your communication. You have to change your approach to create the environment for each of those individuals to function and for the team to to perform.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Is there something that you do today as a coach, that would never have occurred to you to do before if you hadn't had that background as a professional basketball coach.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates One of the lessons I learned really early as a coach, I was young, and I was coaching a women's basketball team at a time when I my understanding of the world was more limited. And I learned some really good lessons around, how to motivate, how to communicate, how to influence. And where my other experience were with men's teams, it was easier to have one style that generated a result across 80% of the players. With the women's team, it was very different and I had to tailor it to each individual player. And that was a lesson that has stayed with me ever since. You just cannot have a one size fits all. You know, I met with the CEO and I last week and I was trying to explain this and he was arguing the point. And he has two daughters. I said, so with your daughters, do you parent them the same? It's an entirely different. I said that same parents, same upbringing, different approach. He said, yeah. I said, it's the with your executive team, you can't take it one size fits all. You have to adjust. You know, your power of communication is in the communication being understood, not in the fact that you said it 3 or 4 times.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader You mentioned that you had to kind of expand your toolkit for motivation. What is that toolkit? Can you give us a sense of what are these maybe different, opportunities or different ways that people can think about motivation when it comes to teams and different individuals?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Well, I think there's so many different levers for motivation. You know, and we tend to rely on the basic ones organizationally around compensation and status and title. But there's a lot that that people can really sort of get under in terms of what really drives the right behavior. You know, what about it in terms of praise? What about it in terms of reward, in terms of accountability. So, you know, some people flourish when there are tight guardrails. You know, tell me exactly what success looks like and check in on a regular basis. And, and some personalities will respond really well to that. Others that would be awful. So picking the right one is important.

And I remind leaders at all levels, and CEOs as well, that in some cases we lead others the way we like to be led, which works for some people, but not all. So this is one of the biases that we potentially have. So I think, you know, good communication trying to find out what motivates and what motivates is really important. And many people will look at of senior leader roles and CEO roles as, you know, you don't need to motivate on a regular basis. You know, these are fantastically capable people. They come with their own sense of motivation. But where you can help is get out in front of them and remove the motivators. So make it easy for them to to do well.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Is there a piece of advice that you've always been grateful for?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Lots of advice, but one that sort of sits with me all the time is, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So how you into the situation, your mindset on approaching tasks and opportunities. And I think that, you know, the confidence around becoming CEO -- you see some very externally confident people that are internally thinking, well, what am I gotten myself into? So bordering the confidence around good process. And you know, what you can bring to the role and that you can get help. I think it's really, really important.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And how has that helped you?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates It allows me to check my own thinking. When I get into situations where the noise of the I think is stronger than. Well, how do you know? Where's the evidence there. Well, where's the truth in that assumption? You know, so I think that's important.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader You were a CEO of a smaller organization, so not one of these big multinationals like some of the some of the folks that you, you help with. How has that sort of, informed, what is the, the thing that you needed to learn that, you know, it was maybe the gap between you and the people you're coaching. And also, what is the thing that you were able to bring that nobody else was able to bring, to these experiences that you have when you're coaching these leaders.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Like you said it was, it was a very small organization, and it was a great learning time. The personal lessons around that for me were twofold. One was I was too much in the detail. I wanted to get in and solve things, and I, I could and that was kind of the problem. So that made it easier. And I restricted other people's development in that role because I would fix it for them.

The other aspect was dealing with the board. That was a real surprise for me at that time in terms of how boards thought and acted, and what they expected from me and how unrelenting they were. Let me say how hard it was to sell them on why this was a good idea. So that was a it was a really interesting aspect is that, but I think in terms of the client work, I draw almost nothing from that experience and everything from the experiences that I've gleaned working with the others, because at the size and scale of the clients that I work with, the moving parts, is such that, you know, there's just there's different challenges at different levels and sizes of CEOs.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader I'm sure. And a lot of people are going to be watching and listening to this. Is there a piece of advice? A skill that you think, gosh, every leader could benefit from from X or Y? Is there something that you see a trend or you wish people would upskill in one area and it could have magnitudes of help? What's something that anybody, any leader could improve on right now?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think communication, as I mentioned before, is one of those. If you think you're done at that, that's a that's a massive blind spot. You know, this is something that you refine constantly. And so constantly learning, watching other people assessing, being critical. Having yourself recorded and transcribed. I think it's a great skill. So if you can communicate better and constantly improve that, that will make you a better leader across the board.

The other aspect that I would suggest leaders to do is reflect, you know, we we're super busy. We run from thing to thing. Often the learning that leaders have through coaching or advisory is in part because they're forced to stop and reflect. So if leaders are listening to this and thinking, how do I do something small to to improve? One would be to take some time each week to reflect on what what's happened, what have you learned? How would you do that differently? What was the other person's impression, etc..

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And how would that help them?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates It forces them to stop saying things solely from their point of view.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Absolutely. We have a little bit of a rapid response thing where that I want to kind of get your, your,takes on, just to kind of get your, your quick insights on, sir. So I'm going to read you a few things and I want you to fill in the blanks. I want you to to finish my sentences for me if you can. All right. So your biggest work pet peeve is.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Tech that doesn't.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Work. The one thing you can't work without?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Coffee.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader The best thing that new leaders can do is?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Share their intent. Because if you don't tell people why you're doing things, all they have to understand is what you've done, and they make their own narrative around it.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader All leaders forget?

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates I think what the other person wants and needs at times.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader On your worst day, every leader must.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Regulate their emotions.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Perfect emails are always Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates Short,

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader and the best meetings have this in common.

Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds Associates An agenda and an idea of what success looks like. So we leave the room with a did we actually do something? Thank you.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And thank you very much for coming to the New York office. We're excited to have you here at the World Economic Forum. This is one of many episodes to come of me, the leader. And so thank you and thanks so much to you for being part of this episode. I'm Linda Lacina again. And for more episodes of Meet the Leader, go to wef.ch/podcasts on our website.