Page 21 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

2 • CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization

A 36-second statement like this, said by the right person at the right
time, can propel you to the top. But remember, it only takes one of these
two-second statements to sink you: “He lies.” “She doesn’t listen.” “He
blames others.” “She demeans her team.”
A lot of organizations have formal guidelines using a proficiency
model to evaluate and advance people around job experience, emotional
competencies, interpersonal skills, decision making, and leadership style.
But all organizations have informal, colloquial, anecdotal, abstract, idio-
syncratic, and not-well-constructed methods to evaluate and advance
people.
People like to think that adhering to the formalized six steps or seven
tenets provided by human resources and sent out to every employee in a
four-color brochure will ensure their advancement. But that’s unrealistic.
It’s not that neat and direct. In fact, it’s muddy, murky, and amorphous.
Personal opinions by people of influence are formed, spoken and
unspoken, on what you do and how you behave in the tangible and intan-
gible areas. Every move is observed. Fewer actions go unnoticed than
you’d like to believe. And honestly, by most C-suite executives’ admis-
sion, the informal trumps the formal.
Note to readers: All italicized quotes in this book come verbatim from
a conversation with one of the CEOs I spent time with.

Conversations go on continuously trying to fill gaps and deficits in
our people.

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It’s not a pool to choose from, more like a puddle. We’re talent starved.
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First, you are separated on performance, but there are a lot of good
performers. The differentiating beyond that gets messy.
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In our formal system you’re evaluated on the results you deliver
and how you did it against company criteria of character, competence,
and ability to thrive in a team-based environment. And that’s true
for internal candidates as well as people from the outside. Search