Temptation #1: Being more interested in protecting your career status than you are in making sure your company achieves results.

Advice: Make results the most important measure of personal success.

Temptation #2: Wanting to be popular with your direct reports instead of holding them accountable.

Advice: Work for the long-term respect of your direct reports, not for their affection. View them as key employees who must deliver on their commitments if the company is to produce predictable results.

Temptation #3: Ensure that your decisions are correct.

Advice: Make clarity more important than accuracy…your people will learn more if you take decisive action than if you always wait for more info. It is your job (as CEO) to risk being wrong.

Temptation #4: The desire for harmony.

Advice: Tolerate discord.

Temptation #5: The desire for invulnerability.

Advice: Actively encourage your people to challenge your ideas…don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and trust them with your career/reputation and ego.

A nifty diagram– get a copy online–that appears in the book looks sort of like this:

Choose trust over invulnerability–>
Choose conflict over harmony–>
Choose clarity over certainty–>
Choose accountability over popularity–>
Choose results over status.

Find out more by reading Patrick Lencioni’s Five Temptations of a CEO. Worth the read!

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure