#100: Ego in leadership: Why two CEOs aren’t the answer

Speaker A: Costas, once again, good to see you. Welcome to Stepsero.

Speaker B: Thank you, Matthias. It's good to be on.

Speaker A: Let's jump straight into things. You shared this article with me from the Financial Times. The article is titled why CO CEOs Might Suit Our Tumultuous Times. It's a short article. It describes how uh, some large companies appointed two CEOs instead of one. It's still not too common to see something like this these days, but it does happen now and then. And it may suggest that in some cases two CEOs are a good solution to dealing, let's say, with the pressure of modern leadership. I know you have a few thoughts about that. What do you want to tell me?

Speaker B: Yeah, no thanks. Mattel. Uh, I saw the headline and it really piqued my interest because I was curious to understand the uh, reasoning for this suggestion. And by the way, when they talk through the data, I think less than 1% of publicly listed companies have co CEOs. But the premise they talk about I honestly find quite difficult, if not offensive. Uh, and uh, I've been careful here. Obviously the author had a view and the author only offers it carefully. Says maybe, maybe co is the right answer for these tumultuous times. But the premise is something that's very close to my heart. And the premise is that given the extent of uncertainty and the extent of challenge, not only in terms of the various technological and other, uh, disruptors, right, the modern leaders are facing having an ego, she says, or he says. I think having an ego is a dangerous thing to have in the culture of an organization. And therefore maybe having a co CEO keeps your ego in check. So the premise, I couldn't agree with you more. As you know, I've often talked about the importance of managing ego as a leader and why it's important to do that in order to empower your people. But the answer, I firmly believe is not to have co CEOs. So I like the headline, but I disagreed with the conclusion.

Speaker A: Okay, then let's address the topic from both points of view if that's okay with you. So let's kick off with the idea of ego. I know that you coach a lot about ego and the fact that uh, leaders should manage their own ego. Let me then ask you, I understand that ego is a core uh, issue in leadership. What does a leader's ego look like in practice? And I'm not necessarily talking about some, something too obvious or necessarily dramatic. But how does ego show up in a day to day? How can it be spotted and what can be done about it if not having two CEOs?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. I think there are two sides to that coin. I mean the first sign is, and we've all had leaders like this is when leaders kind of tell you what to do, they don't really explain it, they don't really feel that you need to understand it, but they set the direction and they dictate what you're responsible for. And again, there are some interesting articles we've both looked at around what uh, accountability means. It's not something you sort of subject people to, it's actually something that people should pick up on on their own. And they do that if you empower them. So I think there are two sides to this ego challenge of CEOs. Either because they act like they know it all, they tell you what to do and expect you to do it. But the other side, which I think is equally dangerous, is that they lose control of their own either emotions or calmness when things go wrong. When things go wrong and then they blame other people rather than take some responsibility themselves, either because the process wasn't well implemented or because the guidance they gave wasn't sufficient or frankly because their goals were not clear. So primary sort of expect, uh, experience of ego. I think we've all had it is leaders who don't really include you, explain to you, empower you in the decision making, simply give a diktat, give a desired outcome and lead you to it. And the other side of that is when things go wrong, they are incapable of managing their own defensiveness and taking the blame and casting the blame elsewhere rather than their own leadership.

Speaker A: On this second point, I'm curious. So let's say not being able to in a way manage your emotions, letting ego get the best of you, what does this do in case there's two of them, two egos clashing. So we're talking about a potential setup where there's two CEOs, two CO CEOs. If they both have an ego and they're not that uh, trained or used to setting it aside for whatever reason, what happens to the organization? What happens to the people below them?

Speaker B: What happens, uh, okay, technical term, it's a shit show, right? I mean I've seen it. I've been a co head of a group, I've coached co heads by definition. This is why the answer, uh, given in the article is so again, I use the word offensive quite aggressively is so unacceptable to me because again, if the two people who have egos and haven't themselves been able to manage them are put together. Right. What it creates is even more disruption, even more dislocation between what they're trying to set as the agenda. Often a split amongst the whole team below them. Yep. Some people will form a view that one CEO's view is the right one. The others will think the other is one is undermining the other, either overtly or covertly. And the worst situation, and I've seen it for myself actually, stalemate is stalemate. Imagine a team leadership group has to make a decision and there are two CEOs, both with egos, who are insistent that their point of view is the right way forward. But the decision has to be made jointly. I've been there. Yeah. Stalemate, stalemate. So, again, this idea of managing ego by putting two people with egos together to make decisions, I think is laughable. What you need is to coach, and I obviously I'm slightly biased in that because that's what I do now. But to coach leaders to manage their own ego and to empower others, and that way they achieve the same outcome. But you don't need CO CEOs, you need COs, COOs, CROs, CFOs, whatever it is, chiefs of staff, other C suite leaders who have clearly defined responsibilities, who have clearly empowered positions, and who therefore can speak up to the CEO, uh, challenge the CEO, uh, because their ego is one that they can manage and therefore deal with direct challenge in an open, inclusive, and ultimately more successful, successful way. So the answer is not putting two egos together, it's coaching people to empower and to embrace difference of views and making better decisions.

Speaker A: Now, your position is very clear. Let me entertain for one extra minute the idea of two CO CEOs, and then there is definitely something that I want to ask you to elaborate on when it comes to empowering people, in case two CO CEOs, it doesn't have to be CO CEOs, it can be just two leaders at, at the top, at any level, in case there is a stalemate, and in this case, there is no one above you to somehow help you solve that, you are the one at the top, together with your partner. Is there a healthy way to navigate a stalemate? Is there a way to avoid that becoming personal or political or these days they would say toxic.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. I think there's always somebody above you. There's other board of directors that supervise, uh, senior executive leadership teams. Right. So there will often be somebody above you, the board or other colleagues. Um, and I think it's important for those colleagues actually to have the skills that are needed to effectively mediate, to effectively mediate between two positions. You know, ultimately it can become, it can become toxic. I've seen it and I've experienced it myself. But again, if I may say so carefully, that was due to a lack of leadership above those situations, the inability of those above them to make a decision. This is why I have an issue with the premise. In my experience, and by the way, I'll talk about situations where I think co CEOs work very effectively, but in my experience, especially financial services, by the way, because I was a co head of a group, when people don't want to make decisions, remember we've talked about this concept of not making a decision or they don't upset someone's ego and there's clearly one person they'd rather be the head of an organization or a team, they make them co heads because you know what? I don't upset either one. Yeah. So for me, having a co CEO structure sometimes feels like an abrogation of your responsibility to choose and back the key leader that you want to run the direction of the business. And that's why I think I have a sort of slight, uh, reaction, uh, to it. Because now it can work effectively if they have very clearly defined areas of responsibility. The article talks about it. Oracle and Comcast and Spotify, you know, one, in one case, one of them had an external set of responsibilities, one had an internal set of responsibilities. You know, one dealt with stakeholders and shareholders, one dealt with the internal management team. Conceptually, Matteo, maybe, and I've seen by the way that sort of structure work, but again, it needs two CEOs who are uh, themselves able to manage their ego. Because the challenge then becomes what if one area of responsibility becomes more meaningful to the firm than the other? What if suddenly they're having to talk to external stakeholders more often because they're doing something strategic? Or what if suddenly there's a turnaround or a, uh, transformation that's needed to be done internally and the internal role is more important. Again, egos then play an interesting role in that dichotomy. So it can be done, but it can only be done effectively if the two people made co CEOs already, this is the point, are already able to manage their own egos and then I think it can work very, very well.

Speaker A: Now back to the what do you think is the alternative to co leading, which is essentially making sure that the people around you are empowered to speak up to, in a way bounce ideas with you on an even level playing field, what does truly empowerment actually feel like? And the reason I ask this is I believe there's a lot of people that are at the receiving end of this empowerment. Uh, but sometimes that just happens on paper, not in practice. So what does that kind of empowerment look like in practice?

Speaker B: Yeah, in practice. And I go back to Nancy Klein often, and in fact I had a conversation with a very senior leader. Exactly. About this point just yesterday. In practice, the mind tends to prefer to think rather than obey. This is Nancy Klein who wrote the book Time to Think. The mind tends to prefer to think rather than obey. So if you've got a bunch of very senior, experienced people in your C suite and you're the CEO and your approach is to get them to obey. Yeah. Which is what we started with Dictat. This is what we need to do, guys. The chances are they don't feel as accountable, as responsible for the, for those outcomes because they've been dictated to them. They've been asked to obey. Okay, so the construct is actually one of the HBR articles as well that we have both looked at talks about this. The power of co authorship. If you can facilitate as a CEO a conversation that is based on some intellectual humility. Guys, this is where I think we need to go. This is what I believe the company can stand for. This is how I'm thinking about outcomes. Yeah. And you facilitated a conversation that says, right. What do you guys actually think? And you allow everyone to be heard. And even if they arrive at the same outcome that you yourself as the CEO, uh, had predetermined in your mind, the fact that they've thought about it, been heard, and a decision has been arrived at together. Yeah. They will feel that they are the co authors of that decision. And if they feel co authorship, they will actually be more likely to feel accountable, feel responsible, and focus on driving those results. But there's a degree of humility that you need. And again, a few articles touch on this. Doesn't mean you don't have a vision. Doesn't mean you kind of say, oh, no, you know better. No, no, no, you, you point to direction, but you facilitate real conversation. And I think that's the foundation of it. That's the foundation of it. Another comment I read in one of these recent articles around this theme, uh, before we got on air, suggests that you should make curiosity contagious. I love that. I love that. Right. What does that mean? It means you as the leader, don't know the answers. I wonder. Matteo, I Think that we should do A, but I wonder if B or C are better. What do you think? I'm going to be giving a talk to Nottingham University students in, uh, a couple of days. I'm giving a slight snippet here, but this will be published after that talk, so they won't know. But I often ask, when I'm giving some of these, uh, talks on leadership and on ego management, what question do you wish your leaders had asked you? If you're trying to help a leader, think about how to be inclusive, how to do the things you talked about, how to empower people properly. How does it look like? Ask the question. The question I have always said you should ask is, ask your people, what do you know that I don't know that you think I should know to make us more successful? And the second question, if you're brave enough, uh, and by the way, Matteo, if you were the CEO, what would you do about it? Right? Such a powerful question. In the article I read, the similar question was, what are you currently stuck on? Great question. Same thing. What is it currently that's frustrating us, that's imposing obstacles in our progress that I should kind of know about? Okay, so again, making curiosity contagious. Asking what's going wrong? Asking what is it that I should know? That we should all know, actually, by definition, requires a degree of humility and a degree of vulnerability that some CEOs are incapable or haven't been coached or mentored, uh, to show. And if you're able to show those things, people will actually fight harder for you. They will feel more ownership of the decision, uh, and they won't feel as though they're being kind of micromanaged or undermined or frankly dictated to, because the mind prefers to think rather than obey.

Speaker A: I wouldn't sit right with me if I finished this conversation without asking you. How many leaders have you encountered in your journey, in your career, that actually do that?

Speaker B: I hate to say this, because I have a lot of mentors who I value, who saved my careers, who have been important to my journey. I don't think any of them have asked me that question, though. Uh, but I don't think I asked that question when I was a leader, not in the way that I hope today with, uh, some of the education I've had as a coach, I would do. But certainly I've seen humility, certainly I've seen people ask for my view and believed that it was valuable. But I would say I can count them on the fingers of one hand, but that's not a bad hand. Given that I've had several careers, it's not a bad hand. And again, as I think we said before, Matteo, I think it's easy to be unkind to leaders, especially if they haven't been shown or helped to understand this data, because the pressures of being a CEO or any leader are enormous. Uh, you cannot always discuss your vulnerabilities, your concerns, your challenges, uh, with those below, below you, or even above you sometimes. So it's hard to then be all empowering all the time. We all get it wrong at times. But I think I can think of three or four people that I have certainly reported to where I felt heard, where I felt valued, and for whom. For whom I would work all hours. Not because they mandated it, not because they said, you got to do this, but because I felt that I was part of the process of getting to an outcome and that my view was appreciated.

Speaker A: Well, on this note, I don't think there is any other feedback that would feel good to a leader as good as this one. Kostas, thank you for making the time and, uh, hopefully see you soon again.

Speaker B: Thank you, Matteo. I enjoyed it. Look forward to the next one.