2. Launch

Indeed, in a recent global survey of 422 CEOs, 68 percent shared that they believed they hadn’t been fully prepared for the role. They believed they had the required strategy and operations skills, but the gap in their preparation lay in what they discovered is unique to the CEO role: how unexpectedly emotionally challenging it is and the great intellectual agility it requires. They had underestimated how different the job is from any other leadership role they’d had in ways that are profoundly disorienting in the early days.

Ebel’s routine of five annual field visits speaks to how important it is to do this deep and broad discovery work not only in the early days but also throughout your tenure. The time has proven so valuable that many leaders incorporate various listening and observing practices into their ongoing agendas. Chris Nassetta said, “I am talking to customers and our team at all levels all over the world all the time to make sure that I’m learning and understanding what’s going on inside our business.

By establishing a set of ongoing listening practices in your first year, you build trust that you’re not just putting on a show of wanting input. Over time, as people see you acting on their input, you will encourage leading by listening throughout the organization.

In the past, primary emphasis was placed on financial and operations acumen— still, obviously, important— but today the vanguard of innovators in the sector increasingly appreciate a CEO’s people leadership skills for achieving the above-market returns investors expect.

Improving the performance of companies that are performing fairly well is now the predominant objective, and PE firms have learned that a CEO’s people leadership abilities are the vital complement to strength in finance and operations for this new frontier of performance improvement.