Building on our study findings that CEOs who lead through influence were the most effective, we followed up by conducting interviews to learn about the development advice and training these leaders had received. We asked leaders to describe how they made the journey to becoming the highly effective leaders they were. What emerged is that a leader’s evolution generally proceeds in iterative cycles, with steps forward often followed by backsliding into old habits and then a renewed effort at change. It’s a process of trial and error, and often of fits and starts, as the daily grind of immediate demands diverts attention from one’s inner work. Those who continue to progress in the journey typically go through a three-phase cycle.

First, they are confronted with a necessity for change either because they took on a new challenge that reveals the shortfalls in their leadership or through feedback from their higher-up, colleagues, or mentor.

Prior board experience can also be a great accelerator for incoming CEOs in developing relationships with their directors.

But these pulls on time can be siren calls, treacherous in their allure and taking too much time away from core responsibilities. Richard Anderson, former Delta and Amtrak CEO, warned that leaders can “easily go spend 20 to 25 percent of time on extracurriculars,” if they’re not vigilant. The cost versus benefits of these commitments must be weighed carefully. In the Launch stage, with such a press of competing priorities, setting strict limits is vital.

There are going to be surprises no matter how well you know a company. Learning about them early is challenging because employees, even at the highest levels, are reluctant to share troubling information. Learning what you need to know requires rigorous questioning while conveying in a compelling way that you absolutely want people to speak openly.

A CEO coming in from the outside needs to emphasize getting a good fix on the full range of business operations, the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership team, and the nature of the culture.

In the year ahead, he surveyed the broader employee base as well as customers and learned that “we didn’t have that same emotional connectivity with our guests.” Or with Hyatt colleagues out on the front lines. Hoplamazian dedicated time to meeting with many of them. Through his own and others’ probing into the colleague experience, he realized that the company evaluated employees largely based on their compliance with an elaborate set of rules and that “we tracked success in our hotels by compliance with a list of brand standards, not guest feedback.

In all cases, an essential truth is that the CEO is still the one primarily in charge of running the company. The PE firm provides an idealized model of the transformation process, and the CEO brings the wisdom of experience in how to actually manage the messier, human process of execution.