Profiles of Top-Performing CEOs: Rising above the rest

The Harvard Business Review has released its annual list of the world’s top Chief Executive Officers for 2019. Topping this year’s list is 56 years old Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA an American technology company. In the words of Robin Sharma “Leadership is not about a title or designation. It’s about impact, influence, and inspiration.” What makes the 100 men and women that make up these top-ranking lists unique is the fact that they have faced an array of outside forces-demanding customers, profit hungry investors, savvy competitors, political and economic turmoil. Nonetheless, their companies have managed to perform remarkably well.

According to Stephen
Hahn-Griffiths of the Reputation Institute (a reputation measurement and
management services firm involved in coming up with the ranking of the top
CEO’s), one of the qualities that pushed up some CEOs in this year’s rankings
is the issue of corporate responsibility. He goes on to say “There was a time
and a place when it was good enough for leaders to deliver on financial
performance, new products, and innovative agendas, but that paradigm has
changed,” he explains. “Social responsibility, employee responsibility, and
environmental responsibility—that’s 32% of the weight of reputation of any
given CEO.” In a Forbes article of May 2019, an example is given of one CEO who
has been able to rank high again this year, Estee
Lauder CEO, Fabrizio Freda. On becoming CEO of Estee Lauder in 2009, Freda
was faced with a big branding challenge, which was convincing millennials that
Estee Lauder has something to offer them. He realized that re-branding would
not yield the results they wanted so he implemented a global reverse-mentoring
program to promote perpetual learning and development for employees and
prioritised the hiring of more Millennials, who now reportedly make up 67% of
the Estée Lauder workforce. Such shifts have enabled the company to make
attention-grabbing moves on the global stage.

Another top performing CEO, is Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, not only is a
top CEO but he is one of the richest men in the world and has managed to make
Amazon the second most valuable company in the world. His success can be attributed
to the risk he decided to take when he was 30 years old. It was while serving
as a vice president at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw in the 1990s that Bezos came
up with the idea to sell books over the Internet. Doing so, though, would mean
taking a significant risk and perhaps sacrificing his stable job. A risk which
he ended up taking with the willingness to either fail or win without any
regrets. Other world renowned top ranking
CEOs that you may be familiar with are the following (in no particular order):

1. CEO of Tesla & Space X-Elon
   Musk
2. CEO of Apple- Tim Cook
3. CEO of Walmart- Doug McMillon
4. CEO of Alibaba-Jack Ma
5. CEO of Berkshire Hathaway-Warren
   Buffet
6. CEO of Facebook-Mark Zuckerberg

What are the qualities of a good CEO?

The question now is what these
top CEOs could possibly have in common that sets them apart from other CEOs.
According to Forbes, the following
are 7 personality traits every CEO should
have in order to remain successful in the long run:

1. Curiosity- According to Cameron Herold,
   one of the leaders in the world of business growth and C-suite leadership, “The
   smartest CEOs are vulnerable, open to hearing what they don't know, and are
   always trying to learn.” In order to be a great CEO, one must be curious and
   willing to learn new things and move away from the norm.
2. Purpose- According to McKinsey, CEOs tend to show a greater
   sense of purpose and passion for what they do than other members of company
   leadership. A good CEO is driven and ensures that they uphold standards and
   their duties as a leader.
3. Risk-A great CEO is not afraid to
   take a risk. Successful CEOs have been seen as being able to embrace risk in a
   way that differs from other leaders in an organisation. According to a study
   conducted by Harvard Business Review a willingness to take risks was found to
   be a dominant trait for those playing the role of CEO.
4. Organisation- CEOs must be organized in their
   approach to problem solving in the organisation. Without organized thinking, a
   CEO can fail to lead and may fail to address core issues.
5. Communication- According to a Navalent study,
   top executives share an ability to remain consistent in their forms of
   communication. They are able to convey information in a language that keeps
   parties neutral, does not cause or instigate conflict and is easily
   understandable so that effective action can be taken.
6. Realistic Optimism-Great CEOs are able to draw the
   line and remain curious and grounded at the same time. They are able to tell
   how certain moves will affect the position of the company and are also willing
   to consider solutions others might consider as unconventional.
7. Vision- Without vision, a CEO is merely a
   celebrated facilitator. The
   greatest CEOs find ways to continue exploring and nurturing their vision. They
   remain open to feedback so that they are better able to refine and nurture the
   vision. In order to
   be an effective CEO, you have to be both confident in your abilities and
   willing to admit your faults. Great CEOs are dedicated to their vision and
   continue to ask questions and look at possible outcomes.

Becoming a great CEO takes hard work
and dedication. The ones we admire did not just wake up great but it took
dedication and in some cases failure in order to reach the great heights they
have reached.

Tatenda
Sayenda-Havire is a consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a
management and human resources consulting firm. Phone +263 4 481946-48/481950
or email: tatenda@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at
www.ipcconsultants.com