Why is it so hard to be CEO?
The CEO is the person who is always giving feedback. Always. And that’s an extremely unnatural thing to do. I know it might sound easy, but there’s nothing stranger for us humans than to be constantly giving feedback to everyone about everything.
Take an easy example: you’re at a party and the host is showing photos of their vacation. Everybody just laughs along, points out funny things, says “Awwwww!” at the right moment. It’s natural, that’s how we fit in and go along.
A CEO’s job is to develop an instinct where it’s absolutely normal to say, “I mean, really you’re taking half of your photos with the sun behind you, you can’t see any detail. And in that fourth one, you’re using the wrong angle, it would’ve been better from the left. And seriously, I mean, what are we doing here, this is boring!” Being a great CEO who gives feedback all the time means you risk not being invited to many parties.
We spend our lives not saying what we think, because that’s the normal, polite way to live in a society. And that’s fine, we don’t want to be in a world where everyone’s saying exactly what they think, that would be horrible! As humans, we don’t really know how to take feedback in a way that isn’t personal, that doesn’t affect us.
The key to giving feedback is its being authentic and steady. You can’t try to guide your reactions, taking into account people’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can’t let things go sometimes just because it’s a detail. You need to be consistent and truthful, because the competent people who are (hopefully!) working for you have built-in bullshit detectors. They can learn to work in a feedback culture, but it needs to be one that’s clearly put above any feelings or emotions, including yours as the CEO.
A good way to make sure feedback will be given and taken well is by ensuring that you really love everyone you give feedback to, and the ones who you don’t love need to be fired. If someone always needs feedback, to the point where there’s never anything that impresses you and makes you love having them work for you, there’s a fundamental problem. Feedback can’t magically improve people’s underlying skills; it can just make them see things the way they need to be seen in your startup.
Feedback can’t be personal. You can’t expect people to change who they are via feedback. Humiliating someone for some unchangeable part of their personality is never going to be productive. And that goes double when it’s in public. Management via terror doesn’t work. If you have something difficult to say to someone, say it in private.
This doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes in giving feedback. It happens, you’re human. But when you hear stories like those about Steve Jobs completely destroying someone in public, it’s not something that should be put in their “plus” column. It’s not to your credit to have that happen, and the people like Jobs who do it feel horrible afterwards. You don’t need to quit and go live in a cave because it happens sometimes, but you do need to understand that it isn’t a standard to be emulated.
One last thing about feedback: it shouldn’t be a monologue, but a dialogue. You have to listen when people explain what they were thinking, why they made X mistake, what pushed them to do Y. But there’s a big difference between listening and understanding people’s reasons and accepting any excuse. Your job as CEO is understanding that difference and applying it consistently.
Now, go open your mouth...
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