If you are looking for an easy read that has some real meat to it, The Five Temptations of a CEOby Patrick Lencioni, is a great choice. It provides a context for those who find themselves in leadership positions to self-assess. It is even more relevant now than when it was initially published over 20 years ago, not just for CEOs, but for anyone who manages others, anyone who is a boss.

Lencioni, through the course of his consulting work with “a handful” of CEOs from various organizations found that it was the same five issues that were giving these leaders most of their troubles.

The book goes into detail and gives examples of how each “temptation” causes trouble and how to avoid it by following a nervous CEO through a group of lessons he gets from an old man on a BART train. 

While I would recommend reading the book, it is delightful and a very quick read, here is a very brief summary of the Five Temptations and advice from the author on avoiding them: 

Temptation #1 – Choosing status over results

“Simple advice for CEOs: make results the most important measure of personal success, or step down from the job. The future of the company you lead is too important for customers, employees, and stockholders to hold it hostage to your ego.”

Temptation #2 – Choosing popularity over accountability

“Simple advice for CEOs: work for the long-term respect of your direct reports, not for their affection. Don’t view them as a support group, but as key employees who must deliver on their commitments if the company is to produce predictable results. And remember, your people aren’t going to like you anyway if they ultimately fail.”

Temptation #3 – Choosing certainty over clarity

“Simple advice for CEOs: make clarity more important than accuracy. Remember that your people will learn more if you take decisive action that if you always wait for more information. And if the decisions you make in the spirit of creating clarity turn out to be wrong when more information becomes available, change plans and explain why. It is your job to risk being wrong. The cost to your company of not taking the risk of being wrong is paralysis.

Temptation #4 – Choosing harmony over conflict

“Simple advice for CEOs: tolerate discord. Encourage your direct reports to air their ideological differences, and with passion. Tumultuous meetings are often signs of progress. Tame ones are often signs of leaving important issues off the table. Guard against personal attacks, but not to the point of stifling important interchanges of ideas.”

Temptation #5 – Choosing invulnerability over trust

“Simple advice for CEOs: actively encourage your people to challenge your ideas. Trust them with your reputation and your ego. As a CEO, this is the greatest level of trust that you can give. They will return it with respect and honesty, and with a desire to be vulnerable among their peers.

The interdependency of these five is described by the author as follows:

“Instilling trust gives executives the confidence to have productive conflict. Fostering conflict gives executives confidence to create clarity. Clarity gives executives the confidence to hold people accountable. Accountability gives executives confidence in expected results. And results are a CEO’s ultimate measure of long term success.”

Some questions you might ask yourself: 

1. Do you see others in your organization falling prey to any of these temptations? How is it impacting the organization?
2. Maybe you are seeing yourself falling prey? Which one(s)?

Here are some self-diagnostic questions provided by the author (more in the book) to help determine your susceptibility to falling prey to one or more of the temptations:

1. Would it bother your greatly if your company exceeded its objectives but you remained somewhat anonymous relative to your peers in the industry?
2. Do you consider yourself to be a close friend of your direct reports?
3. Do you pride yourself on being intellectually precise?
4. Are your meetings often boring?
5. Do you have a hard time admitting when you’re wrong?

 So, following that self-reflection, what are you going to do about it?  What actions are you going to take to resist or overcome your own temptations? 

Dena Zavier