The Changing Role of the Chief Executive

Traditionally, the role of Chief Executives is to provide leadership to their organizations. However, there is good reason to believe that this role is changing to one of steward, manager, coach, catalyst and facilitator. Chief executives are also figureheads and customers. One of their primary tasks is to foster leadership in others.

Leadership Without Leaders

If Chief Executives perform a variety of roles that, in themselves, do not constitute leadership, it may be better to reframe leadership from role to occasional act. We can see something similar happening with sailors and seamanship. People in formal roles run ships today without sails. Those who operate sail boats today do so for fun or sport. So, we could say that there are no longer any sailors but there is still seamanship – having the skills to operate a sail boat. Sailing is now an occasional, informal activity, not a formal role. Similarly, leadership means promoting new directions or setting an example, occasional acts, no longer a role.

Complexity and Leadership

The world has become too complex and fast changing for any one person to provide more than occasional leadership. Innovation driven businesses in particular need leadership from all employees. This is thought leadership, the promotion of new products and services or better processes. It can be shown upwards as well as down and sideways. Front line knowledge workers with a better idea can show leadership in this way even if they lack the skills or inclination to take charge of a group, formally or informally.

What Chief Executives Do

It is increasingly recognized that Chief Executives need to operate as facilitators or catalysts. In his popular book, Good to Great, Jim Collins developed the idea of “level 5” leaders who have sufficient humility to acknowledge that they don't have all the answers. To develop new strategies, they get their best people together and use probing questions to draw ideas for new directions out of them. But it's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic to call this activity leadership. It preserves the status quo vision of the CEO as leader but at the cost of destroying the fundamental meaning of leadership which has always had something to do with providing direction. Coaching and facilitating should not be seen as leadership simply because the person in charge is doing it.

The Chief Executive as Customer

In businesses driven by innovation where new ideas rise to the surface from below, Chief Executives operate more like customers than leaders. More precisely, they are buyers who represent their shareholders who, in turn, trust them to make sound investment decisions. On this view, the Chief Executive is an investor who decides what new ideas to back and what ones to ignore. Real leadership is shown everyday by all employees on a very small, episodic, occasional basis.

The Chief Executive as Figurehead

All groups need someone to turn to during times of anxiety, uncertainty and conflict. Having one strong person in charge creates a court of appeal when there is conflict that cannot be resolved by the parties concerned. But this activity can be seen as management. We only needed to call it leadership when we were committed to seeing the top person as a leader. Chief Executives can still show leadership, but it will be occasional actions, such as promoting a new strategy, advocating better ethical or environmental standards.

The Chief Executive as Coach

In a sports team like hockey or football, players on the field show leadership. The coach sits on the bench and makes key decisions, but is more of a facilitator and enabler than a leader. Much the same is happening with the CEO. Because the world has become so complex and fast changing, Chief Executives have ceased to be players, much as have Army Generals. Instead, they are on the sidelines cheering others on and resolving disputes. Real leadership is shown on the field. In business, this means occasional acts of promoting a better way of doing things.

Chief Executives still perform an essential role but only some of what they do should be counted as leadership. They are not leaders simply by virtue of being effective. Much of their success is sound management. This is an essential shift in perspective if we want to understand leadership in the 21st century.

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