The Top CEO Skill

Earlier this year, a young man named Michael joined Gateway X as an unpaid intern.

Let me brag about him a bit. He was a college baseball player turned Ivy Leaguer who then went on to work at McKinsey.

He caught my attention by sending a cold email that said "25-Year-Old Jesse."

He's smart, he's humble and he's got a fire in his belly.

He more or less came to work with me for 3 months, for close to nothing, between finishing his tour at McKinsey and starting a private equity job this summer.

At every turn, he's blown me away. Great work, super coachable, and a joy to be around.

As I do, I introduced him to Conscious Leadership and the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. He astutely asked me in a recent 1x1, where do I focus across these 15 commitments?

I didn't have to think: Candor. It's commitment 4. Here's how it reads:

Download the full pdf here

Here's a helpful video for it as well.

Note that candor isn't just giving honest feedback (although that's a huge part of it), it’s also REVEALING vs CONCEALING.

Most people (and leaders/founders) are a 5/10 at this. They withhold information from their teams.

They don't share their honest feedback with their team. They try to manipulate outcomes.

Not only do I find this unpleasant, I believe it's ineffective.

Candor and Feedback are one of those "core" skills (like self-awareness, which I wrote about here) that improve EVERY other skill.  Still skeptical?

Let's use a really simple analog: My adopted NFL team, The Kansas City Chiefs, is going to the Super Bowl.

Can you imagine if their head coach, Andy Reid, never gave his team feedback?

If he watched Mahomes throw with bad form? Or his receivers kept making a mistake in their route running? Or if his defensive backs ran a slow 40? And he said nothing?

Or he wasn't direct and it was difficult for the player to understand what he was saying? Or if he was worried about a certain play and didn't share that with the quarterback?

What do we think would happen to a team where Candor wasn't practiced by the head coach?

It seems so obvious. They wouldn't play at their best and they'd likely lose more games than they'd win, REGARDLESS of how good the talent was.

They wouldn't get better and they ultimately would not succeed.

Candor levels up your team and (when you solicit it), levels YOU up! It's a skill that improves all other skills.

But Candor isn't easy. It’s easy to chicken out or to come across as overly harsh. It's easy to share it with some team members and not others. It feels like extra work!

Here are 5 of my favorite tips for improving candor in your organization:

In my first formal board meeting (after bootstrapping Ampush for 5 years), our business was a disaster. 2 big clients had churned, and we were overspending on tech.

Ric Elias stared at us and said:

We nodded.

Then for about an hour, he told us all the things we were doing wrong! Mismanaging clients, not tight on budgets, moving too slowly.

Was it intense? Sure. But it was SO helpful and we took it in stride.

It’s easy to feel like feedback is personal but that small caveat is effective as a leader to allow you to be honest and improve an issue.

It is even more effective if you share TLC with the person despite the problem. When I landed home the next day, Ric called me for 15 minutes to ask about my pregnant wife and young son.

I could FEEL he cared about me as a person which further built trust for him to coach me on the problems!

This is my favorite tool for new managers. The hardest part of giving feedback is that discomfort in your body that shows up RIGHT when you want to be honest with someone.

Getting the words to come out of your mouth is just… weird. Especially when it’s new.

Enter stems. Here's a full list.  My favorite 3 are:

I'd find you more powerful if…

I notice my energy goes (up/down) when you do…

I'd love it if you did…. more.

This is another huge learning from the Conscious Leadership group. I first learned its power in my marriage.

When planning our weekends, my wife and I would always argue. I'd say, "We should go out with Nick and Susie for dinner this weekend."

She'd respond, "No, we should really go for a hike." Quickly, we'd be arguing about which one was "right."

After learning Unarguable Language, I shifted: "I'd like to go to the gym this morning." She couldn't respond and say "No you wouldn't like to!" The language is… inarguable.

I wrote a whole post about the power of words.

Language that’s usually inarguable:

• Facts

• Feels

• Sensations

• Beliefs

How does this show up in business feedback? Well look at the stems above - can you argue any of them? Could someone tell you what your energy does? Or what you'd love?

Nope.

Quick Story:

One time, in a heated negotiation, I used Unarguable Language and it worked super well. I said, "I looked over your redline and felt a bit nauseous."

I was not being dramatic.

While I let that hang out, the other side started apologizing and conceding on various terms.

As a leader, modeling behavior is always the most powerful way to shift the culture.

Candor and feedback are easy. Rather than GIVING, ASK for it:

• "How much do you like your job, 0-10? Why?"

• "How am I doing as a CEO, 0-10?"

• “How effective was that meeting, 0-10? What would have made it better?”

Not only will you get amazing feedback for your own learning and growth, you will show how much you value feedback and almost always, your team member… after giving you feedback, will solicit it as well.

Weeks later, candor and feedback are flowing everywhere and the company is beating its goals.

One reason feedback can become so uncomfortable is because it is "rare" - the reason it seems so normal on sports teams is because it’s CONSTANT.

Any company I'm a part of, I encourage this from the first meeting.

If you looked around Gateway X, you'd notice after any client/external meeting, we circle up. Takes < 5 minutes.

"Everyone say 0-10 how that went, 2 things you liked and 2 that would make it a 10." We do that and everyone gets better.

By baking it in, it becomes the "norm" and starts showing up everywhere.

In the subject, I chose the word SKILL very purposefully. Because often people call "candor" a trait.

Some have it, some don't. I call bullshit. Anyone can learn it when it's viewed as a skill and an organization can as well.

Commit to candor today.

jesse