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Ken Chenault assesses business leaders by evaluating the outcomes of their leadership, how those outcomes are achieved, and whether or not the leader has “follower-ship.” Chenault, CEO of American Express, said that “in many companies you may find some very high-powered people who have achieved business outcomes but don’t have a follower-ship” during the Distinguished Speaker Series presented by the student-led Graduate Business Council at the Charles M. Harper Center November 28. The discussion was moderated by dean Edward Snyder.
“That’s your first clue you have a problem from a leadership standpoint, if, in fact, you can say, the high-performing people in my firm don’t have a strong follower-ship,” Chenault said.
Because business leadership must be linked to a company’s strategy and values, the first thing Chenault looks for in a leader is integrity, he said. “If you don’t stand for integrity, I don’t know how you build a base of trust in a company,” Chenault said. “To have integrity in a company context means you have to have consistency between words and actions. Being honest is not enough.”
The other two traits are the ability to think non-traditionally and the ability to inspire, he said. “Lastly, the role of a leader is to define reality and give hope,” he said. “That’s a very simple definition, but it’s very challenging in an organizational context.”
American Express asks employees to rate their leaders in order to integrate the company’s values into performance, he said, and a critical part of the evaluation requires leaders to share the feedback with their staffs.
“The first time we did this about 18 years ago, I thought I was doing pretty well,” he said. “People said, ‘Ken is very goal-focused and we’d like him to listen a little bit more. He gets so charged up on ideas that if he thinks you’re not saying something of merit, he’ll just turn off.’ I saw that I could be a far better active listener. From a behavior standpoint, even though I was not being overtly rude, that needed to change. There are things you learn from that feedback that make an incredible difference.”
To prepare for leadership, Chenault urged students to determine their beliefs and values early in their careers. “A number of highly talented people have had the chorus telling them all of their lives, ‘You’re terrific,’” Chenault said. “They don’t really have to think about who they are and what they stand for. Then they go into a firm or corporate environment and get hit with a lot of pressure. They start to take their self-worth based on what happens on a daily basis in a firm or company. That is a big mistake.”
Chenault was very honest and realistic about the performance of the financial markets over recent weeks, said first-year student Emily Pan. “He mentioned integrity and said you need to be consistent with what you say and your actions,” Pan said. “He talked about how we can develop ourselves as business students when we are put in this environment later. That really helped me think about how I can develop myself, my potential contributions, and my self-worth in this big picture.”
- Phil Rockrohr