How to Embrace and Overcome Common Fears of Being a CEO: The Corporate Culture You Have vs The corporate Culture You Want
CEOs often lose sleep over concerns with employees they have and employees they need to hire. This can be especially troubling when concerns involve direct reports. It is not uncommon for a CEO to second guess whether or not they have employees with characteristics that match their corporate strategy, pre-hire selection criteria, and corporate culture. But CEOs do not need to lose sleep questioning:
- “Do I have the correct employees for my company…and what if I don’t?”
- “How long before I know?”
- “What corporate culture do I want compared to the culture I am getting?”
Corporate Culture, Hiring, Firing. Establishing and maintaining a desirable workplace culture is an absolutely critical leadership skill that successful CEOs master. Your corporate culture is the personality of your company. You MUST understand that a workplace culture will always form one way or another and a bad culture will form in the absence of something better. Successful CEOs do NOT let their corporate culture develop by chance. Ok, but what does corporate culture have to do with hiring….and firing?
Corporate Culture and The Employees You Need. The culture you and your employees exemplify is a most powerful tool for recruiting, engaging, and retaining the talent you want and need (the “correct employees”). A strong, infectious, corporate culture embraced by all employees and visible to everyone coming through the door drives your success. As Vistage member Joe Galvin stated, “It repels employees who don’t align with its tenets, and it attracts like-minded people who want to be part of that culture.“ When an employee is not aligned with your culture, let them go. Employees who embrace the workplace culture want more employees like themselves. Trust their input. Be a CEO who:
- develops well-defined mission, vision and core values that are understood by all employees;
- continuously and visibly models the behavior and culture you want your employees to embrace every hour of every day;
- creates a trusting workplace that supports and values employee participation;
- is accessible, provides support to anyone who needs it, and celebrates every single success!
The key to being a successful CEO is possessing the Leadership skills you can depend on. If you are asking yourself the “fear” questions, Yarger Executive Coaching can help. In founding and successfully growing 2 startup companies, we were once exactly where you are now. How might we serve you?
