Podcasts about ceo test master

Adam Bryant is a Senior Managing Director and Partner at the ExCo Group, where he works with hundreds of senior leaders and high-potential executives. As the creator and former author of the iconic “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, Bryant has mastered the art of distilling real-world lessons from his hundreds of interviews and turning them into practical tools, presentations and exercises to help companies deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams.  He also works with executive leadership teams to help drive their transformation strategies based on a best practices framework he developed for his widely praised book, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders.   Questions  •  We always like to ask our guests in their own words, could you share a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got to where you are today. •  What would you say the ratio was in terms of gender, and even generation in terms of the number of CEOs that you interviewed? Would you say you got a wide cross section of different generations? And would you say it's more of a male to female higher ratio, or vice versa? Or do you think it was balanced? And did you find any differences based on those considerations that I just mentioned? •  What would you say are three overarching themes that you'd have picked up or trends that you picked up from those interviews? •  What are some ways that you believe the leaders can help to reinforce at least to strengthen any doubts that employees may have to ensure that they recognise that the technology, that artificial intelligence is not there to get rid of them, but rather to make their jobs easier. •  Could you also share with our audience what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? •  Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently. •  Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel sometimes that their products and services, of course, are the best, but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. And so, if you're sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business? •  Now, could you also share with us what's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. •  Where can listeners find you online? •  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights Adam's Journey  Adam shared that he was a journalist for 30 years, 18 years he was at the New York Times, spent a lot of years as a business reporter and interviewed a lot of CEOs. And he just found over time, the more he spent with CEOs, the more he wanted to set aside the usual questions people ask of CEOs about their company strategy and their products and services and things like that. And just ask them kind of how do you do what you do? And how did you learn to do what you do? So, he rolled that impulse up into this very simple “What if” in 2009 and it was what if I sat down with CEOs, and never asked them a single question about their companies? And instead just ask them about personal leadership lessons they've learned over the course of their lives and how they think about all the universal challenges of leadership, like hiring and building teams and culture and all those things. So, that was kind of the initial idea, and sort of brought him very much into the leadership space.  So, he did that for a decade, interviewed more than 525 CEOs, started writing books and teaching leadership and all that was a side project in addition to his day job managing teams of reporters at The Times. And he left The Times 6 years ago to join his current firm, the ExCo Group. And as said, their core business is kind of one on one mentoring and leadership development and he's got 4 interview series on LinkedIn, and continue writing books and interviewing leaders about leadership, not about company strategy. So, that's kind of the thumbnail.   Gender or Generation Influence on Leadership Me: So, leadership is your thing, Adam, and I heard that you interviewed 500 and odd people, that's a lot of people to be talking about. And I can imagine that, what would you say the ratio was in terms of gender, and even generation in terms of the number of CEOs that you interviewed? Would you say you got a wide cross section of different generations? And would you say it's more of a male to female higher ratio, or vice versa? Or do you think it was balanced? And did you find any differences based on those considerations that I just mentioned?  Adam stated that he appreciates the question. And it was the 500 plus for the New York Times, and with all the interviews that he's been doing on LinkedIn since, he's now passed the 1000 interview milestone, but to your question. So, he told the story of how he created the Corner Office column based on that simple “What if” and the other sort of guiding principle he set for himself from the very start was that he was going to embrace diversity in every sense of the word - race, gender, nationality, for profit, not for profit, size of company, really want to get as much of a cross section as he could. Interviewed a couple of leaders from Jamaica as well, a guy named Lloyd Carney, who ran Brocade Communications.  And so, his goal was very much to not just go down this sort of fortune 500 list of CEOs, because then it's going to be overwhelmingly white males, of course. And he really wanted to get a complete view of leadership.  And to your question about patterns that he was looking for, he thinks there are pretty clear patterns, like talking to young CEOs who run tech companies in Silicon Valley is a slightly different conversation than somebody who's running at Fortune 20 company, for example.  But on the specific question of gender and being in first couple of 100 interviews he did, he's always sort of looking for patterns and sometimes when he would give talks, people would say, “Have you noticed any differences between men and women leadership styles?” And he has to say, where he comes down is that he doesn't, there's just too many exceptions to the generalizations and stereotypes that people have about men and female leadership styles. So, to the point is like there's so many exceptions that for him, the generalizations and stereotypes do break down at the sort of CEO level.   People have written a lot about it and talk a lot about how one of the differences between men and women when they're coming up in their careers that women will sometimes feel like they need to be 100% qualified for a job before they go for it. Whereas men are much more willing to raise their hand even if they're not ready. And that may be true. And there's a lot of research around that. But for people in the CEO role and their leadership style, he really didn't see the difference, to be clear, not in terms of whether they were the same, they had different leadership styles, but just around EQ or IQ or extrovert, or introvert or different styles, it didn't break down along gender lines for him.   Three Themes/Trends Identified From Leadership Interviews Me: Now, you said you've way surpassed 1000 mark as it relates to CEO interviews, especially with your LinkedIn profile of interviews added to that. Across the many different interviews you've done, I imagine for CEOs across many different industries, what would you say are, let's say three overarching themes that you found that is critical for a leader to be successful, especially if the leader is trying to ensure that customer experience is one of the KPIs that they believe in, not just about operational of the business or making the profits, but having a culture where people value the internal customer experience and of course, there's some, I would say, measurement, or some assessment that's being done to ensure that it's been transcended to the external customers as well. What would you say are three overarching themes that you'd have picked up or trends that you picked up from those interviews? Adam stated that it's a great question about what are sort of the common themes that through lines from all the interviews. And he'll start with the idea of simplifying complexity, which he thinks is an art form, it's a skill. And he doesn't think you can be a CEO or an effective leader if you're not good at simplifying complexity, there's a lot going on in the world, in different industries, inside your company and he really feel like it is a leader's job to be able to stand in front of their entire team at an all hands meeting or on a zoom call, and just answer those really simple questions that frankly, little kids ask in the backseat of the car, like, “Where are we going? How are we going to get there? When are we going to get there? And not everybody does that.  We've all encountered people who actually seem to add more complexity to things, but you've got to be able to simplify complexity and boil it down to the 3 or 4 things that are really going to matter at your company. And he just thinks that's a really critical skill and depending on the nature of your business, but if you are in a customer service business, and that's crucial to your success, then you've got to be really clear about how that is going to drive your success and you can't be the leader who says we have 20 priorities and customer service is one of them. If it really is critical to driving your success, it has to be one of a hit handful of key priorities and there's got to be a way to measure it, you have to talk about it all the time, you have to role model it, and just keep shining that bright spotlight on why it's important. So, he thinks that's one.  In terms of a couple of other things, because people often wonder, like if I want to be a CEO? Like how do I get to the corner office?  And he finds people are often trying to think of like, well, what's the right path? And they wonder, you know, am I on the right path if I want to get that job. And based on all the interviews he's done, he's come down on the idea that there really is no right path per se, directionally, there's obvious things if you want to get to a certain place, you have to be moving in the broadly in the direction toward that. But in terms of the specific path, it's not about sort of checking boxes and getting certain titles, but the thing that has really struck him about all the leaders that he's interviewed is that they make the most of the path that they are on.   So, it's not like they're wondering, am I on the right path? It's whatever they are doing, they've realized that there are life lessons and leadership lessons everywhere, and you can always be learning. And to him, that's one of the skills that really sets people apart that whatever experience they're having, and the metaphor he likes to use is that your experience is like this sort of wet towel, like it absorbs all this experience. But then, what do you do with that, and he thinks the best leaders take that talent, they sort of twist it and wring it, and just get every last drop of insight and lesson around it, from it. Because, again, there are lessons everywhere, you can learn from a bad boss, you can learn from a good boss, you can learn from watching teams.  And so, the really high performers to him is they're always making time to process and reflect and say, “Okay, what did I experience? What did I see? What are the patterns? What are the lessons that I can learn from that?” And the final point he'll make in terms of how you succeeded, we could talk about this for hours, but just one of them that he thinks really sets people apart is the simple idea of being a good listener. Because he feels like it's one of those things it's not taught in business schools, he doesn't know of any business school that teaches a course on listening, but he feels like it's really an underappreciated superpower of good leaders.  Because whenever you start thinking, like, I've got all the answers, like, that's when you're dead in the water. And so, you have to just have a really great skills as listener to get everybody's best thinking out on the table so that you really know what's going on in your organization, because history is filled with stories of big companies that got into trouble because nobody wanted to tell the boss the bad news.  So, you've got to not only be a good listener, one on one and in team settings, but you've almost got to build an infrastructure at your companies so that you know what's really happening and so that there's not some like, bad news on the front lines or trouble spots that you're not hearing about. So, to him, those are the three things that jumped to mind when you asked that question.   Ways Leaders Can Help Reinforce to Employees the True Role of Artifical Intelligence Me: So, leadership is very important, as it relates to delivering a strong customer experience. And I always tell my clients that mud flows from the top of the stream, so meaning, if the leadership is poor, and customer service, or customer experience is not important to them, it really flows all the way down to the end user, which is the customer, whether it's digital experience or face to face.   In your experience, especially with so much technology happening out there nowadays, we have Chat GPT, there's a lot of artificial intelligence coming on board. And I mean up to last night, I was watching the local news, and they had a question poll that they were posing to Jamaicans stating did they feel that their jobs are in jeopardy as it relates to AI being so evolving and coming about.  And so, I wanted your views on as it relates to leadership, what are some ways as I don't think that people's jobs are going to become obsolete. I believe that human interaction is something that we will always need, regardless of the industry that you are in, and I believe the technology is there to definitely enhance the experience not to replace it.   But based on your research across the different industries, what are some ways that you believe the leaders can help to reinforce at least to strengthen any doubts that employees may have to ensure that they recognize that the technology, the artificial intelligence is not there to get rid of them, but rather to make their jobs easier? Adam stated that to him, what Yanique just said is the answer. The point of AI and technology is to take care of much more of the routine things so that we as human beings can add more value and let the machines take care of stuff. So, ideally, it will take care of just those rote aspects of our jobs so that we can figure out better ways to add value, because that's ultimately what's about, right, like, how are we individually and as teams creating value for the company.   And in terms of leadership's role in all this, he often comes back to the power of stories, which is a big part of communication, because he thinks there are some leaders who are good at saying the right words and phrases, and it's easy to stand on a stage and say customer service is really important. But he thinks telling and sharing stories is how you make that real. And whether that story is about how you as a leader, customer service is really important to you and your experience in your life and the success of the company, and then to sort of tell stories to highlight people on the team who have really gone above and beyond and make them the heroes.  Because he thinks company culture, maybe everybody talks about values, and a lot of culture is determined by who gets fired and who gets promoted and compensation structures. But he often thinks about culture is determined in large part by the hero narratives that the companies tell because if you think of companies like tribes, they are tribes in a sense, that it's really like who does the tribe hold up as a hero? And what did they do? And if customer service is really key to your success, then how do you as a leader tell the hero narratives, tell the stories, highlight the people that went above and beyond.  To him, that's one of the ways from a leadership point of view, you make people feel like, “Wow, this really is important.”  And it's not just the heroes within the company, but also telling the stories about your customers, and how you are helping them and having an impact on their businesses in their lives. So, he often come back to this idea that leaders in many ways are like the storytellers and chief and so they've got to tell those stories and share those narratives.   App, Website or Tool that Adam Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resources that he cannot live without in his business, Adam shared that he probably do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. He mentioned that sounds like a really obvious answer, but just in the work that he does, and he's got 4 interview series, and he really believes that LinkedIn is emerged as kind of the Facebook for business, and everybody's on it.  And people have written about this before, but he also thinks it's just an important reminder that there's a lot of toxic stuff on different social media sites and he just stated the blindingly obvious, but he does find LinkedIn is a pretty positive place. Like people are generally pretty supportive of each other, and then they kind of put their best selves there. So, that's where he spends a lot of time.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Adam When asked about books that has had a great impact, Adam stated that in terms just in terms of fiction. He recently finished a book called Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver, he thinks it won the Pulitzer Prize. It's been a long time since he's read a work of fiction that had as much insight about human nature and just packed with wisdom. So, he does recommend that.  Non-fiction, he really like adventure books, he has to say. So, stories about whaling adventures in the old days and how people survived, he's really drawn to stories about resilience and what people do when they're facing a really tough task. So, he's often drawn to that.   Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital  Me: Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel sometimes that their products and services, of course, are the best, but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. And so, if you're sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business? Adam shared that to him, it's about constantly going back to the why. And people talk a lot about mission and purpose. And he'll be honest, he finds that conversation, especially happened after in the last few years, just companies have been talking a lot about their purpose and mission statements. And some of them he will confess does make him a little sceptical, because they are often very broad and general, and at such a high altitude, they feel kind of disconnected from the business. And very often they're just some version of make the world a better place.   But he thinks there is an art form to doing that, right, which is to constantly be communicating people and reminding people about the impact that you're having as a business. Because his prediction and not asking you to bet 20 bucks on his prediction, but he feels like this moment we're in where purpose discussions are so front and centre, he thinks those are going to be shifting more towards impact over time. And to him, the difference is that when you talk about purpose, that's really about your intent. And that's the very internal, you're basically saying, “When I get up in the morning, this is my purpose. Nobody can question that.” Because you say this is in my heart.  He thinks one of the things that special and unique about business, is that it's more about impact, which is how do you show that purpose in action? So, to him, that's much more about like almost proof, like we said, this is our purpose, but this is what we're doing. We want to show you, we want to be able to document and show you the impact that we're having.  And he thinks as a leader, we can all get kind of pulled down to just the day to day of the business. But you often have to sort of pick your head up and remind people and just sort of take stock and say, “Look at the difference we're making in people's lives.” And when you say those things, they should be tied directly to the business, it shouldn't feel disconnected. And you don't have to worry about being so lofty, and everybody's making the world a better place, you can be very much like look at the difference we're making for our customers and what we're doing. Because that helps bring out people's like, passion and pride. And then you're going to get that extra effort from them.   What Adam is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Adam stated that at a personal level be very mundane at the risk of oversharing, but he's really focused on ping pong these days. Me: Really? Are you trying to master it?  Adam stated hardly master it, but he's sort of living in New Orleans now. And they moved there a few years ago, their two daughters moved there, and so, they joined them. And as he recently passed a birthday with a number six in front of it, he sort of decided he wanted to get back in touch with his inner teenager and start taking up some sports and things. So, he actually has a ping pong coach. He stated that he knows that sounds pretty unusual. Me: That is brilliant. Adam stated that he trains with him a couple of days a week. And his metrics scoreboard about whether he's getting better or not, is he played his son-in-law once a week for a couple of hours, and what's cool is when you're 61, and you say, I want to get better at that, and you actually get better at it. That's pretty cool. So that's his very personal thing he's focused on right now.  But much more broadly, he's been in the leadership field and he's pretty passionate about it for a couple of reasons. He will say that if you give him a really big magic wand with three things to do it, he would get rid of racism, inequality and bad bosses because there are still too many bad bosses in the world.  And he thinks sometimes we under appreciate what a toxic effect they have on individuals and by extension their families. And that's not just to be negative about that but what also gets him out of bed is just trying to help people be better leaders for those who do want to be better managers and leaders. And he thinks there's a huge responsibility and privilege that comes with that.  His approach to leadership, he doesn't wake up in the middle of the night pretending he's come up with some new theory, he takes more of a journalistic approach to understanding leadership and interviewing people who are leading and have been leading for a long time. And then what he tries and do is sort of share the insights and the stories and the frameworks and really open up that conversation so that people could say, “Wow, that's a great tip, I can take that and use it with my own team.” So, if at the end of the day he could make a small contribution and help people become better as managers and leaders, that's pretty motivating.   Where Can We Find Adam Online LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/   Personal: https://adambryantbooks.com/about-adam/ Book:https://www.amazon.com/Leap-Leader-Ambitious-Managers-Leadership/dp/1647824893/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GPHBI3CJH7I1&keywords=leap+to+leader+adam+bryant&qid=1682433550&sprefix=leap+to+leader+adam+bryant%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adambbryant Website: https://www.excoleadership.com/   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Adam Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Adam shared that there's probably a couple that he always falls back on. And he's heard this from CEOs he's interviewed, but one of them is that “95% of the worst things that happen to you in your life very often turn out to be the best things that happened to you in your life.” And that's not to say all of them, right. And some things that happened to you there's nothing good about them. But when you think back on your life, and sort of those moments of adversity that you've faced, very often they did turn out to be like, really important pivot points that helped you grow and build character. And there's a lot of lessons and insights there. So even though when you're in the middle of something it feels pretty dark, sort of know that over time, you're going to learn a lot from that.  And there's a couple of other short answers. There's that expression, “You're either winning or learning. It's not about winning or losing, but it's about winning or learning.” So, there's always lessons that you can and should be taking from whatever adversity you're going through. If you feel like you've failed or disappointed yourself, it's like that happens to everybody. Right? But the question is, what do you do with it? What is that wet towel of experience that you can then take and ring and say, okay, “What are the insights here and keep squeezing it for that?”  Me: Thank you so much for sharing. We'll definitely have those two in the show notes of this episode. Well, Adam, we are at the end of our interview, I can't believe it feels like we just started talking but thank you so much for jumping on this podcast today and sharing all of these great insights and nuggets as it relates to leadership, all of the great information and experiences that you've garnered over the years talking to CEOs as you had mentioned from so many different industries from all different walks of life across the world. I am sure that anyone who listens to this episode will pick up at least one thing that they can run with to help them sharpen their leadership skills. So, thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!    

Are there common elements that make a great leader or CEO? Adam Bryant is an expert on executive leadership who has interviewed more than 1,000 leaders for the “Corner Office” series he created at The New York Times and for his four current leadership series on LinkedIn—with CEOs, CHROs, board directors, and prominent Black leaders. Adam is the author of four books on leadership, published by the Harvard Business Review Press – including “The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership,” and “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders,” the book that we discuss on this podcast. We discuss managing up and working with leaders, the trappings of expertitis, substituting the word “priority” with “outcome”, and what Adam thinks is needed most from leaders in the world today.

Adam Bryant shares powerful insights on how to get promoted and be successful as a leader. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) What every aspiring leader should know about themselves. 2) How to get promoted without asking for a promotion. 3) The key ratio that positions you for advancement. Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep886 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT ADAM — Adam Bryant is Senior Managing Director and Partner at the ExCo Group, where he works with hundreds of senior leaders and high-potential executives. As the creator and former author of the iconic “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, Bryant has mastered the art of distilling real-world lessons from his hundreds of interviews and turning them into practical tools, presentations, and exercises to help companies deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams. He also works with executive leadership teams to help drive their transformation strategies, based on a best-practices framework he developed for his widely praised book, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders. • Book: The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership • Book: The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed • Website: AdamBryantBooks.com • Company Website: ExCoLeadership.com — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Video: “Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk” • Book: The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger • Book: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick — THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • BetterHelp. Make better decisions with online therapy. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/awesome. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Adam has written three books, including his latest “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders” and is a senior adviser for Organisational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. As a New York Times journalist & editor, Adam had an extraordinary front row seat listening to more than 525 CEOs and growing through their experiences. Today as Managing Director of The ExCo Group, an executive mentoring firm, he continues to observe and capture the essence of the leaders he interviews. Together we discuss how to set yourself apart as a leader; why your personal brand really matters, why less talking and more walking is needed to close the gap on diversity and how the world has changed and skills like humanity, empathy and compassion matter more than ever.

Today, #18 in our countdown of last year's top 22 books: “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders.”In the decade he spent writing the “Corner Office” column for the New York Times, Adam Bryant interviewed hundreds of CEOs and learned what separates good leaders from great ones. In "The CEO Test" Adam and his co-author, Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen, share what they've learned about staying nimble, handling a crisis, and creating cultures that work.We'll be back with a new season of interviews in February, featuring Jill Lepore, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Ray Dalio, David Chalmers, Paul Bloom, and a bunch of other brilliant thinkers.To learn more about “The CEO Test,” visit adambryantbooks.com. And to hear more great Book Bites, download the Next Big Idea app at nextbigideaclub.com/app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, #18 in our countdown of the top 22 books of last year: “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders." In the decade he spent writing the “Corner Office” column for the New York Times, Adam Bryant interviewed hundreds of CEOs and learned what separates good leaders from great ones. In "The CEO Test" Adam and his co-author, Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen, share what they've learned about staying nimble, handling a crisis, and creating cultures that work. We'll be back with a new season of interviews in February, featuring Jill Lepore, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Ray Dalio, David Chalmers, Paul Bloom, and a bunch of other brilliant thinkers. To learn more about “The CEO Test,” visit adambryantbooks.com. And to hear more great Book Bites, download the Next Big Idea app at nextbigideaclub.com/app.

There is practical training and a test to become a driver, yet often, there is no real training or test to become a good CEO. In fact, the research shows that most people in management don't get any real leadership training until they have on average 10 years in management. The result is fumbling or downright failed leadership. Now, you may have been a leader for a long time, but if there was a CEO Test, do you honestly believe you would pass? Let's find out together. Our guest is Adam Bryant. Adam has interviewed more than 700 CEOs about the key leadership lessons they've learned, first as a journalist at The New York Times, and now in his interview series on LinkedIn as part of his consulting work with ExCo Group, an executive mentoring and leadership development firm. Adam's written his third book, "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders," with Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen. The book is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Website https://adambryantbooks.com Social Media https://twitter.com/adambbryant https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership Part 1) The Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders The Clarity of Strategy The Dangers of Presumptive Knowledge Would You Pass The CEO Test? 4 Step Strategy: What, Levers, Challenges and The Scoreboard Leadership is...Everything The Importance of Specificity Be & Do Use Your Time Machine The Paradoxes of Leadership

There is practical training and a test to become a driver, yet often, there is no real training or test to become a good CEO. In fact, the research shows that most people in management don't get any real leadership training until they have on average 10 years in management. The result is fumbling or downright failed leadership. Now, you may have been a leader for a long time, but if there was a CEO Test, do you honestly believe you would pass? Let's find out together. Our guest is Adam Bryant. Adam has interviewed more than 700 CEOs about the key leadership lessons they've learned, first as a journalist at The New York Times, and now in his interview series on LinkedIn as part of his consulting work with ExCo Group, an executive mentoring and leadership development firm. Adam's written his third book, "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders," with Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen. The book is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Website https://adambryantbooks.com Social Media https://twitter.com/adambbryant https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership

Adam Bryant is managing director of The ExCo Group, a senior leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Prior to this, Adam worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The New York Times. He interviewed more than 500 CEOs for “Corner Office,” a series on leadership that he created in 2009. He also writes a monthly column for Strategy+Business magazine and is the Senior Advisor to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. Adam is the author of three books: His new book is THE CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, published by Harvard Business Review Press, which he co-authored with Kevin Sharer, the former President and then CEO of Amgen during which he grew the company to $16 billion in revenue from just $1 billion. Adam's first book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, was a New York Times bestseller, drawing on insights from CEOs to identify the qualities that help explain why certain executives are promoted over others to become CEOs. In his second book Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, Adam distilled the wisdom of hundreds of business leaders to identify the secrets to a high-performing corporate culture. In this podcast he shares: The seven most critical tests that determine the success of a CEO Advice on how to simplify strategy so that everything can get on boardWhy we should be thinking about strategy as “making bets” rather than plansA compelling metaphor for strategy and leadership—think of it as keep bunnies in their boxes__________________________________________________________________________________________"I think that is one of the things that set effective leaders apart...is they have the skill of simplifying complexity. So take all the complexity in the world, in your industry and your company, and boil it down to a simple framework because I always say it's one of the leader's tests is to be able to stand on a stage at an all-hands meeting...and answer the questions that little kids ask...like 'Where are we going? How are we going to get there? '...To be able to do that takes a certain habit of mind...it is a muscle that you need to develop."-Adam Bryant__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Adam Bryant + The topic of today's episode2:32—If you really know me, you know that....3:24—What is your definition of strategy?6:10—Can you explain more what you mean about leaders lacking "shared language"?6:40—What has been your biggest surprise in interviewing so many CEOs?9:07—Could you tell us about the seven key attributes that you discovered throughout your work?11:40—Is the skill of demystifying and clarifying the complex a skill that can be learned?14:00—Why do people have a tendency to overcomplicate ideas and use hundred-dollar words?15:10—Getting people accept ideas is more than just simplifying; can you explain the importance of repetition?16:48—You talk about business being about bets—could you elaborate on that?18:40—How can people follow, find and learn from you__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Company page: https://www.excoleadership.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/adambbryantLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/Personal Site: https://adambryantbooks.com/

Adam Bryant is managing director of The ExCo Group, a senior leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Prior to this, Adam worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The New York Times. He interviewed more than 500 CEOs for “Corner Office,” a series on leadership that he created in 2009. He also writes a monthly column for Strategy+Business magazine and is the Senior Advisor to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. Adam is the author of three books: His new book is THE CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, published by Harvard Business Review Press, which he co-authored with Kevin Sharer, the former President and then CEO of Amgen during which he grew the company to $16 billion in revenue from just $1 billion. Adam's first book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, was a New York Times bestseller, drawing on insights from CEOs to identify the qualities that help explain why certain executives are promoted over others to become CEOs. In his second book Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, Adam distilled the wisdom of hundreds of business leaders to identify the secrets to a high-performing corporate culture. In this podcast he shares: The seven most critical tests that determine the success of a CEO Advice on how to simplify strategy so that everything can get on boardWhy we should be thinking about strategy as “making bets” rather than plansA compelling metaphor for strategy and leadership—think of it as keep bunnies in their boxes__________________________________________________________________________________________"I think that is one of the things that set effective leaders apart...is they have the skill of simplifying complexity. So take all the complexity in the world, in your industry and your company, and boil it down to a simple framework because I always say it's one of the leader's tests is to be able to stand on a stage at an all-hands meeting...and answer the questions that little kids ask...like 'Where are we going? How are we going to get there? '...To be able to do that takes a certain habit of mind...it is a muscle that you need to develop."-Adam Bryant__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Adam Bryant + The topic of today's episode2:32—If you really know me, you know that....3:24—What is your definition of strategy?6:10—Can you explain more what you mean about leaders lacking "shared language"?6:40—What has been your biggest surprise in interviewing so many CEOs?9:07—Could you tell us about the seven key attributes that you discovered throughout your work?11:40—Is the skill of demystifying and clarifying the complex a skill that can be learned?14:00—Why do people have a tendency to overcomplicate ideas and use hundred-dollar words?15:10—Getting people accept ideas is more than just simplifying; can you explain the importance of repetition?16:48—You talk about business being about bets—could you elaborate on that?18:40—How can people follow, find and learn from you__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Company page: https://www.excoleadership.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/adambbryantLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/Personal Site: https://adambryantbooks.com/

There is practical training and a test to become a driver, yet often, there is no real training or test to become a good CEO. In fact, the research shows that most people in management don't get any real leadership training until they have on average 10 years in management. The result is fumbling or downright failed leadership. Now, you may have been a leader for a long time, but if there was a CEO Test, do you honestly believe you would pass? Let's find out together. Our guest is Adam Bryant. Adam has interviewed more than 700 CEOs about the key leadership lessons they've learned, first as a journalist at The New York Times, and now in his interview series on LinkedIn as part of his consulting work with ExCo Group, an executive mentoring and leadership development firm. Adam's written his third book, "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders," with Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen. The book is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Website https://adambryantbooks.com Social Media https://twitter.com/adambbryant https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership Curious about how to tap into what drives meaning in your life and create meaningful transformation in the lives you touch? Take a look at DovBaron.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is practical training and a test to become a driver, yet often, there is no real training or test to become a good CEO. In fact, the research shows that most people in management don't get any real leadership training until they have on average 10 years in management. The result is fumbling or downright failed leadership. Now, you may have been a leader for a long time, but if there was a CEO Test, do you honestly believe you would pass? Let's find out together. Our guest is Adam Bryant. Adam has interviewed more than 700 CEOs about the key leadership lessons they've learned, first as a journalist at The New York Times, and now in his interview series on LinkedIn as part of his consulting work with ExCo Group, an executive mentoring and leadership development firm. Adam's written his third book, "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders," with Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen. The book is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Website https://adambryantbooks.com Social Media https://twitter.com/adambbryant https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership Part 1) The Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders The Clarity of Strategy The Dangers of Presumptive Knowledge Would You Pass The CEO Test? 4 Step Strategy: What, Levers, Challenges and The Scoreboard Leadership is...Everything The Importance of Specificity Be & Do Use Your Time Machine The Paradoxes of Leadership Curious about how to tap into what drives meaning in your life and create meaningful transformation in the lives you touch? Take a look at DovBaron.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Adam Bryant, former New York Times journalist and leadership expert, in conversation with Prof. Hitendra Wadhwa, exclusively on Intersections. Adam has had a 30-year career in journalism, including 18 years at The New York Times, where he created the weekly "Corner Office" column in 2009, interviewing 525 CEOs and other leaders for over a decade. He has written two popular leadership books that emerged from these interviews: Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation and The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. Adam's next book, co-authored with former Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, is scheduled for a March 2021 release by Harvard Business Review Press.

Our guest is Adam Bryant - Managing Director at The ExCo Group and author of multiple books including the most recent "THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders,". Adam has a 30-year career in journalism, including 18 years at The New York Times. He created the weekly "Corner Office" column in 2009, and has interviewed 525 CEOs and other leaders over a decade. Since joining The ExCo Group, he has started popular interview series on LinkedIn with board directors, CEOs, CHROs and prominent Black leaders, and he writes a monthly column on leadership for Strategy+Business magazine. Adam also is the senior adviser to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. In this episode of Scaling Culture, Ron and Adam discuss: How strategy drives culture and 4 key components for leaders to succeed The power of defining the most critical metric and setting the tone How to have tough conversations and the importance of listening skills  For more information about Adam, please connect with him on LinkedIn or go to adambryantbooks.com. For more information about the Scaling Culture Podcast or our Scaling Culture Masterclass that comes out in the next 5 weeks, go to scalingculture.org.

Guest: Adam Bryant is a respected and noted expert on executive leadership, whose work includes 525 Corner Office columns for the New York Times. He joined The ExCo Group as Managing Director and Partner after a distinguished career as an editor and journalist. Adam has a proven ability to distill real-world lessons and insights from his hundreds of interviews and turn them into practical tools, presentations and exercises to help The ExCo Group clients deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams. He works with executive leadership teams and organizations to foster a culture of innovation, based on a best-practices framework he developed for his widely praised book, "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders." Before joining The ExCo Group, Adam worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The New York Times. He interviewed more than 500 CEOs for "Corner Office," a weekly series on leadership and management in The Times that he created in 2009. Episode in a Tweet: Take the CEO Test! Learn what tests you need to pass to be an exceptional leader and change the world. Quick Background: They had me at the title. A CEO Test??? I hadn't heard of any such thing, and I knew I had to find out if I would pass the test. The average CEO only lasts five years in the job, and I wanted to find out why. What was I doing differently, being that I've been in the CEO role at StoneAge for over 12 years and still have a long runway ahead of me? Would I pass or fail? Have I just been lucky, or am I doing a few things right? I waited with anticipation for the book to arrive. Once I read it, I was a fan. "The CEO Test" is one of the best books I've read in 2021. I appreciate the "tests" Adam and his co-author line out and once I finished the book, I reached out to Adam to get to know him and his firm. During this episode, Adam and I talk about the challenges leaders face today and how they can overcome the obstacles and crises that will undoubtedly continue to come their way. Adam shares his views on a leader's superpower. News flash, it's not what you might think! We also talk about the importance of a clear and simple strategy and a business's reason for existing. Adam also shares what it was like to be a reporter and editor at one of the country's largest newspapers, The New York Times. This is an insightful and motivating episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! How to find Adam: https://adambryantbooks.com/ https://www.excoleadership.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/ Subscribe to his newsletters: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-new-director-s-chair-6495698283434901505/ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/leading-in-the-b-suite-6516489087090782208/ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-leading-6509860728994881536/ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/strategic-chro-6495697551163957248/

Meet Kevin Sharer:Kevin Sharer led Amgen for 20 years, first as President and then as CEO. He also co-authored The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders. Kevin served on several boards of directors and on the faculty of Harvard Business School. Kevin received a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, an MS in aeronautical engineering from the US Naval Postgraduate School, and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business.Key Insights: Kevin began his leadership journey in Navy submarines, translating his technical skills and interest in personal growth to his roles as President and eventually CEO of Amgen. He shares timeless knowledge about improving oneself and the skills necessary to be a successful CEO or board member.Governance. It's not enough to just show up. Being a good board member means balance, building relationships, and making the tough calls. (46:09)Passing the CEO Test. Kevin discusses what selecting a quality CEO entails, including asking all the right questions and trusting your gut. (24:14)Asking the Right Question. Diving deep and asking the right people questions will give you all the information you need to make quality judgements. (15;59)Listening as an Art Form. The biggest revelation in Kevin's career was the importance of listening, and how he needed to be a better listener. (28:21)

Today's guest is Adam Bryant, Managing Director at The ExCo Group (formerly Merryck & Co. Americas). The Exco Group specializes in helping boards, executives, and teams unlock their full leadership potential and deliver high-impact performance for their enterprises. Adam is also the author of The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders; a book that focuses on the seven most critical reasons leaders succeed or fail. Adam hasn't always been a Thought Leader. For 30 years, he had a successful career as a journalist, editor, and columnist, primarily at The New York Times. As he honed his communication skills and learned the ins-and-outs of complex teams, Adam focused on the question: “What if we interviewed a CEO for an article and didn't discuss their business background?” Instead, he focused the conversation around the lessons of leadership, culture, hiring, and talent, to see what made high-powered leaders flourish and grow.  Over 10 years, Adam interviewed 525 CEOs. Those lessons eventually became a book: The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. In it, he presented the insights and advice he gleaned through those interviews in order to to help others master the steep learning curve of leadership. In today's episode, Adam discusses his skills as a journalist, and how they positioned him to elevate others through the practice of thought leadership. He credits that background with his impressive ability to see patterns, focus on the essence of an issue, and find insights in both challenges and success - and share those gifts with others. If you're feeling blocked, this is the episode that can show you how to find your strengths and bring them into the game! Three Key Takeaways: Non-traditional questions can be a great way for Thought Leaders to gain new insight.  Thought Leaders can find strong, accessible examples of leadership lessons in TV and movies. Thought Leadership might start out as a "side-hustle," but if nurtured properly, can take on a life of its own!

All leaders face their challenges and versions of stress and demands—the intensity and consequences of those challenges grow as they move higher into roles with more width and complexity. Despite all the effort through the years to understand what it takes to be an effective leader, the art of leadership remains enormously tricky and elusive. Leaders at all levels can learn from Adam Bryant, co-author of the book The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, as he joins Jason Marc Campbell on Superhumans at Work to share the seven key reasons that explain why leaders succeed or fail in their roles.    Adam Bryant is managing director of The ExCo Group (formerly Merryck & Co. Americas), senior leadership development and executive mentoring firm. He has a proven ability to distill real-world lessons and insights from his hundreds of interviews and turn them into practical tools, presentations, and exercises to help The ExCo Group clients deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams. He works with executive leadership teams and organizations to foster a culture of innovation, based on a best-practices framework he developed for his widely praised first book, The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders. In his second book Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, Adam distilled the wisdom of hundreds of business leaders to identify the secrets to a high-performing corporate culture. He continues to conduct leadership interviews on LinkedIn—with CEOs, board directors, prominent Black executives, and chief human resources officers—with more than 160,000 subscribers.    Listen out for: - The CEO test. - The key responsibilities of a CEO. - Why there are so many bad bosses. - The right culture that a CEO needs to nurture. - The best qualities you need to have to be a successful CEO.   Bonus: - Subscribe to 'Mindvalley Membership' to discover 30+ Mindvalley Quests – at a surprisingly low annual fee. You can also watch our podcast sessions live, interact with the guests, connect with the world's best teachers and find your community here

Adam Bryant author of "The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders" by The Best Business Minds

Adam Bryant is the Managing Director of Merryck & Co., a senior leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Prior to joining Merryck, Adam worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor, and columnist at The New York Times. Adam cites the most common pitfall leaders face. “In terms of leader challenges, the biggest one is the gap between how clear something is in their own head versus how clear it is to everybody else.”         Sponsored by...   Cultivate Grit. Amplify Action. Get The Importance of Journaling   We help YOU enjoy the success we've already enjoyed. Free downloads of Quick Reference Guides on Delegation, Time Management, Sales, and more.   Key Takeaways [5:25] Adam shares what inspired him to write his book, The CEO Test. [7:10] This book is not just for CEOs! This is a book for leaders. [9:10] The simplest questions are often the hardest to answer. [10:15] A lot of leaders think they understand strategy, but actually, we each define strategy completely differently and it's not so clear what it really means. [11:35] A leader's job is often to just explain to people where they're headed. Almost like answering questions the way little children have in the backseat of a long car ride. [12:15] Your strategy might seem clear to you, but to your team, it's not. It's important to constantly check in and double-check that everyone understands where we're headed. [13:15] We love simple answers to complex problems, but that rarely works the way we need it to. [15:00] New leaders are confused. They don't know how to be. [17:15] Leadership looks so simple on paper, but the moment you're in the field and practicing it on real people, the results really do vary. [19:40] Leadership has gotten harder. Adam explains why. [24:15] Adam recommends some of the best ways leaders should be thinking about strategy. [25:15] Here's a quick one-page exercise you can do to really narrow your focus and get everyone centered on strategy. [27:35] We're losing the beauty of writing. Everything seems to be so quick and bullet-pointed. [32:00] In Adam's experience, a lot of leadership teams are simply too close to their business and are not able to see their own downfalls because they view themselves as the “expert.” [35:45] Leaders really need to take some priority and time off just to think about the big picture. They need to step away from being in the business. [38:25] Adam wonders why CEO tenures are so short. [41:35] Leaders are often good at solving problems, but it doesn't appear that many are rewarded for preventing problems from occurring in the first place. [43:35] Adam talks about “the art of the good dumb question.” [46:35] Listener challenge: Who is the best listener you know? Listening well is a lost art and a very underrated leadership skill.   Quotable Quotes   “There are challenges that all leaders face that are similar regardless of their rank.” “We tend to focus on really simple questions, but what I've come to understand about business and leadership, the simplest questions are the hardest.”   “In terms of the challenges people have, the biggest one for leaders is very often there is a gap between how clear something is in their own head vs. how clear it is to everybody else.” “Leadership is so dynamic and this is part of the trap of leadership. In these theoretical frameworks, it makes a lot of sense, but 30 seconds later you encounter human beings.”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by: Pass-life.com. Coupon Code: Duty. Connect with Adam & his new book, The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders Adambryantbooks.com & Adam on LinkedIn TV show: Ted Lasso Dinesh Paliwal

There are certain occupations that most of us would agree take a good deal of skill to perform. Neurosurgeon comes to mind. Airline pilot. Cirque du Soleil performer. And then there's the kind of job that everybody thinks they could do, if only they weren't too busy doing something more important. For example, hosting a radio show. Or writing a book. Everybody can write. And most people believe they've got at least one great story to tell. But if you've ever actually sat down to write a piece of fiction, or even non-fiction, you very quickly discover it's not as easy as it looks. And if you do have the discipline and perseverance to write an entire book - whether it's a serious examination of the role of leadership in business, or a whimsical examination of the inner life of cats - you then have to traverse a minefield of publishing-politics to get anyone to read it. Then, if everything goes right and you're a published author, one of the glamorous things you get to do is go on a radio show and podcast about business, and share your first-hand insightful observations about the state of the publishing industry. That's the situation both of Peter's lunch guests find themselves in on this edition of Out to Lunch. Adam Bryant is a New Orleans resident and creator of the popular New York Times column, The Corner Office. Adam wrote the column as part of his 18-year career at The Times. Adam is also the author of three books. They're all based in some way on his interviews and consulting work with business people, including his most recent, THE CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, which was published in March 2021 by Harvard Business Review Press. Jim Gabour has been a columnist for the British newspaper, The Guardian. He's also a producer and director of music videos, filmed live concerts, and long-form documentaries that literally span the music world, from Spinal Tap to Nora Jones. Living in New Orleans for most of his life, and sharing his home with cats, Jim hit on an interesting thought. When New Orleans was originally settled by French people, they brought their cats with them. Eventually, the French humans were outnumbered by people of other nationalities. But the French cats remained, well, French. The result of this observation is a book called Meow Monsieur: The French Felines of New Orleans, which was published in March 2021 by Pelican Publishing. If you walked into a teenager's bedroom any time in the past 50 years you would see photos pinned to the wall - of pop stars, rock stars, sports stars, movie stars, and today TikTok and YouTube stars. But you would have to visit a lot of bedrooms to find fan photos of authors. What's statistically interesting about this observation is that in 2020, over 750 million books were sold. And that's not including e-books which account for another 300 million-plus sales. Maybe in the future, A.I will write books, but for now, every one of these billion books that were sold in the last 12 months were written by somebody. And yet, despite this enormous popularity – authors are generally not celebrities in our society. For that reason, you can get to meet extraordinarily talented authors at book signings at your local bookstore. And for a couple of slices of pizza they'll even agree to come on a radio show. For which we are very grateful. Find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, recorded over lunch at NOLA Pizza, at our website. Here's more lunchtime conversation about newspaper and app publishing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adam Bryant is Managing Director at Merryck & Co, as well as Senior Advisor to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. He is the former “Corner Office” columnist for the New York Times. His recent book, The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make Or Break All Leaders, is a practical playbook for executives of all levels, sharing the seven key reasons why leaders succeed or fail in their roles. He joins Marcel Schwantes today to discuss his book and how leaders can apply its principles in the workplace. Adam says that the Corner Office came from his interest in CEOs as humans. “What I realized [from years of interviewing CEOs] is that [CEOs] in the business press are always interviewed in the same way, as strategists” he shares. “The more time I spent with them, the more I became intrigued with them as people.” [4:40] If leaders want to build a good culture, they need to start from the ground up. Company values should be addressed, discussed, and implemented at every level. People become cynical if company behavior contradicts its stated values, and cynicism can be cancerous to an organization, Adam explains. [12:13] “You cannot tolerate the high-performing jerk.” Regardless of someone’s extreme competence in their job, they cannot be made an exception to the values of an organization. “If you don’t let them go [you allow] the cynicism to creep in.” [14:09] Often leaders overlook the fact that they are responsible for setting the tone and rules when a team is dysfunctional. Leaders must be intentional about stating their role and the roles in a team, as well as the expected behavior, Adam states. This eliminates the creation of silos, Marcel adds, which causes competition rather than collaboration. [19:20] “The higher up you go in the [organizational] hierarchy, the less accountability you receive,” Marcel cites. “The reason is obviously because you’re listening to less and less people the higher you go. Those of us that are just command and control [oriented] are not going to want to listen to many different perspectives.” [23:47] Adam lists the different aspects of leadership. Leadership is about humility, but you also have to be confident; leadership is about being compassionate, but you need to hold people accountable; leadership is about patience, but it also involves urgency. [27:02] “I think American society is a pendulum that swings back and forth… I’m hoping [the pendulum] can get back to us seeing each other as human beings,” Adam shares. “Listening… is a lost art in our society… not only is it a superpower for leaders, but I think it sets you apart in your career.” [33:06] Resources Adam Bryant on LinkedIn | Twitter AdamBryantBooks.com The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make Or Break All Leaders

Today I talked to Adam Bryant about his new book (co-authored with Kevin Sharer), The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders (Harvard Business Press, 2021). Adam Bryant is managing director of Merryck & Co, a leadership development and mentoring firm. Before then, Adam was a journalist for 30 years, including at the New York Times where he authored the “Corner Office” column. He's a speaker, teacher, and frequent contributor on CNBC. This episode is rooted in the seven parts of what a good CEO needs to master, from a simplified game plan that rank-and-file employees can follow to not trying to artificially resolve the various paradoxes intrinsic to being a leader, such as Creating Freedom and Structure and to Be Compassionate and Demanding. Along the way, the conversation delved into creating a company culture where there's no daylight between what leaders say and do when it comes to values that define the organization. Also of note, why do so many leaders find it hard to coach the people around them to improve? And what are leaders missing that accounts for so many Mergers & Acquisitions not working out? Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Adam Bryant about his new book (co-authored with Kevin Sharer), The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders (Harvard Business Press, 2021). Adam Bryant is managing director of Merryck & Co, a leadership development and mentoring firm. Before then, Adam was a journalist for 30 years, including at the New York Times where he authored the “Corner Office” column. He’s a speaker, teacher, and frequent contributor on CNBC. This episode is rooted in the seven parts of what a good CEO needs to master, from a simplified game plan that rank-and-file employees can follow to not trying to artificially resolve the various paradoxes intrinsic to being a leader, such as Creating Freedom and Structure and to Be Compassionate and Demanding. Along the way, the conversation delved into creating a company culture where there’s no daylight between what leaders say and do when it comes to values that define the organization. Also of note, why do so many leaders find it hard to coach the people around them to improve? And what are leaders missing that accounts for so many Mergers & Acquisitions not working out? Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

I'm delighted to have Adam Bryant on Breakthroughs today to discuss some key insights from his new book, “The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders” . ADAM BRYANT is managing director of Merryck & Co., a leadership development and senior executive mentoring firm.  Prior to this role, he was a journalist for 30 years, including at The New York Times, where he created and authored the massively successful “Corner Office” column for which he interviewed more than 600 CEOs and other leaders.  He is the author of two previous books and is the senior adviser to the Rueben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. Adam recently partnered with Kevin Sharer to write a leadership book distinctively different from others applying the breadth and depth of their experiences sharing wisdom that could be applied across industries. Sharer was Chairman/CEO of the biotech company Amgen, where he led its expansion from $1 billion in annual revenues to nearly $16 billion. He spent seven years on the faculty at Harvard Business School and has served on many boards (including Chevron, Unocal, Northrop Grumman, and 3M). He's a sought-after mentor for CEOs of global companies. In his roles as an executive, director, and mentor, He has been involved with more than 20 successful CEO transitions, and he continues to advise CEOs of global corporations. Kevin is a naval academy graduate and served on to attack nuclear submarines. Leaders at all levels can learn from Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer as they aim to speed up the learning curve in their new book, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders (March 2, 2021). If you are an aspiring leader looking for insights from hundreds of veteran CEO's, this episode is for you! If you find the Adams insights useful, check this out: The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break A... https://www.amazon.com/dp/163369951X/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_imm_Z9H6Y1CAG6DX9ZY9MM1D