From Founder to CEO Podcast Episode 185: What 3000% Growth Taught This CEO About Encouraging Others

You can’t ignore it. Your style as a Founder & CEO can help or hinder the growth of your company. Krister knows this first hand. This podcast originally appeared on From Founder to CEO. Listen to the podcast here, From Founder to CEO.

At age 42, Krister retired as CEO of a 3,000% growth company and founded Courageous Growth as a platform to mentor CEOs and give back to the community. It was during his tenure as CEO that he was confronted with feedback that was new and disconcerting to him. And it led him on an entirely new journey of self-discovery and helping others that you will definitely want to listen to in this very candid episode.

CLICK TO TWEET Your CEO style matters! Just ask @kristeru, CEO of a 3,000% growth company who discovered his style wasn't working https://fromfoundertoceo.com/?p=2970

 Name: Krister Ungerboeck, Founder & CEO

Company: Courageous Growth

Headquartered In: St. Louis, Missouri

Powerful Promise of Value: Courageous Growth works exclusively with owners, CEOs, future CEOs or 2ICs (2nd in Command) to accelerate their business and personal growth. The company typically works with technology and growth businesses with 50 – 500 employees seeking to double in size within the next 3-5 years. In addition to technology companies, Krister and his team also work with family businesses of all sizes seeking to accelerate the development of family leaders, future CEOs or 2IC (2nd in Command).

Seven Secrets To Survive Under A Toxic Boss

Krister Ungerboeck stops by to share seven ways for people to cope with toxic leadership in the workplace.

Does Your Mean Boss Cry Himself To Sleep At Night?

New study reveals that angry bosses are actually unhappy and unfulfilled. This article originally appeared at HR.com. To read the full article, visit HR.com.

A new management study has just uncovered something surprising: ‘Mean’ bosses often feel sad and empty at the end of the workday. The study, which was published by the Academy of Management Journal, also found that bosses who believe themselves to be powerful and commanding are the most likely to go home feeling unfulfilled.

This study has revealed what many of us have suspected for a long time, especially those of us who work with these types of leaders for a living. As a CEO coach, I have often found that the bosses who most crave power and control over others are almost always suffering from a great deal of insecurity and personal pain.

It might be hard to believe, as tend to imagine that highly-successful people must naturally be quite pleased with themselves. However, the opposite tends to be true. CEOs are often so successful because they are driven by their own feelings of inadequacy and their own fear of being ‘unmasked’ as an unworthy person.

So how can employees try to win over an angry, impossible-to-please boss?

Understand his point of view. The key is to realize that your ‘mean’ boss is actually a victim in his own head. He has no clue that he is the one in the wrong. As this study showed, your mean boss sees himself as a victim.

Again, I know this sounds hard to believe, but as a CEO coach I have witnessed this, every time. The most critical and aggressive bosses often come to me and complain that their employees are ‘ungrateful’ and that they don’t appreciate him. Although the thought of him as a victim might sound laughable to you, it’s crucial to understand your boss’ POV if you want to survive and thrive under his leadership. Of course, this doesn’t mean that your CEO’s behavior is okay (it certainly is not), but as Sun Tzu says, “Know thy self, know thy enemy.”

Mirror his statements. Victims feel empowered when they are heard. Help your boss feel empowered (and ergo less likely to lash out) by mirroring his statements. If he is highly stressed about a deadline, you can say “I hear that this project is really important to you. You really need me to finish this quickly,” rather than just saying ‘Okay’ or ‘Sure.’”

Don’t ask questions that begin with ‘why.’ When you ask a question that starts with why, it tends to put people on the defensive right away. they feel a burden of proof, a need to give you answers and explanations. This will trigger your boss’s victim persona. Instead, use declarative statements like, “I could use some guidance on this particular issue” or “I wonder if there is another approach we could take.”

Don’t overdo your presence. The recent media dustup over Steve Harvey’s memo demanding space from his employees highlights an important issue: Many CEOs and managers simply feel overwhelmed from constant questions and needs all day. Try to corral all of your questions, ideas and concerns into one face-to-face with your boss, rather than popping in and out randomly to ask questions as they arise. Pretend you’re George Costanza—always leave ‘em wanting more!

Be careful about emails. Studies prove that emails are less persuasive than in-person interactions. So, if you’re asking for a vacation day or you need to leave early, ask in person. Other studies show that emails with succinct subject headers get opened more than those with long subject lines. Keep it short, sweet and face-to-face if you want to stay on your mean boss’s good side.

Silicon Valley has idolized Steve Jobs for decades—and it’s finally paying the price

Steve Jobs has been called the greatest businessman the world has ever seen and the best CEO of this generation. This article originally appeared on Quartz. To read the full article, visit Quartz.

But he’s also the same man who would allegedly yell at people for 30 minutes straight, cut in front of his employees at lunchtime, berate hospitality and restaurant staff, park in handicapped spaces, said all HR personnel have a “mediocre mentality,” and told his staff how much they “sucked.”

Whether it’s the 19th-century railroad industrialist George Pullman or Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons, CEOs have always been a surly bunch. But in recent years, it seems that being an asshole has become an aspirational trait.

It’s no wonder. Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs didn’t just create a Hollywood hit: It created a manual for any bosses seeking a hall pass for their temper tantrums. Along with recounting Jobs’s blistering behavior and his “perverse eagerness” for putting people down, Isaacson remarks that “people who were not crushed ended up being stronger” and that those employees who were most abused by Jobs ended up accomplishing things “they never dreamed possible” thanks to his harsh treatment.

In other words, it’s okay to tell your employees that their work is shit and to park your Mercedes across two handicapped parking spaces—as long as the end result is a successful product.

No wonder we now have people like Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos making numerous headlines for their tempestuous behavior. Several Uber executives have left the company, while investors have publicly criticized Kalanick, saying that there are “toxic patterns” in the Uber workplace. Meanwhile, Amazon has a reputation for being a “bruising workplace,” the kind of office where people regularly break down at their desks, and where grown men leave the conference room with their faces covered to hide their tears.

Silicon Valley decided that internet connectivity matters more than human connectivity.

Somewhere along the way, it seems that Silicon Valley decided that internet connectivity matters more than human connectivity; that a surfeit of technical intelligence can make up for a dearth of emotional intelligence. After all, if it worked for a genius like Jobs, it can’t be that bad.

Except it is. While this management style might work in the short-term, employees can’t flourish for long under a narcissistic, demanding boss. As recounted in the Isaacson’s biography, Jobs’s acid tongue eventually caused his employees to burn out. After working 10 months of 90-hour workweeks, one employee finally quit in exasperation after Jobs walked into the room and told everyone how “unimpressed” he was with what they were doing. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said “some of the most creative people in Apple who worked on the Macintosh” left the company and refused to ever again work for Jobs again. Because of Jobs’ nasty temper, Apple lost out on impressive talent.

New research bears out these experiences. Studies have shown that hyper-critical leadership not only leads to unmotivated employees and office in-fighting but can also lead to serious issues like depression, high blood pressure, weight gain, substance abuse, and even premature death.

But can we really blame Jobs for this legacy of emotionally lethal (and perhaps literally lethal) work environments?

“Managers who try to emulate Mr. Jobs by just being rude or aggressive are missing the point,” Issacson says. “Mr. Jobs was striving for perfection.” But within this justification lies the problem. Of course Jobs wanted perfection—all CEOs do. But why is bullying considered an effective, let alone acceptable, way to motivate your team to perfection? Jobs was famous for the way he would obliterate his staff, often in public, which maximized their humiliation by making it a spectacle rather than a private affair. Are we to believe that shaming employees is what made Apple great?

Recent research on shame and the devastating impact it can have on a person’s motivation, creativity, and behavior would say otherwise. Shame has been linked to depression, alcoholism, obesity, violence, and even recidivism in inmates. As author and shame researcher Brené Brown says, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

It’s simple: The worse we feel about ourselves as people, the less we are able to make good choices and perform to our highest potential. Making your employees feel terrible about themselves isn’t just an ineffective leadership tool: It’s also just plain lazy. It takes no special skill to scream at someone, and it’s easy to lash out when you are angry or disappointed. But to lead with dignity, composure, kindness, and self-awareness? That takes effort. That takes maturity. And it doesn’t come naturally to most of us.

Whether or not it comes easily, emotional intelligence ought to be the foremost requirement for our companies’ leaders. These skills can be taught, CEOs can change, and we can demand better. A boss in Silicon Valley who isn’t an asshole? Now that would be “thinking different.”

Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

Humble Introverts Make Great CEOs

Picture the Hollywood stereotype of the successful American chief executive officer. This article originally appeared in the Journal Sentinel. To read the full article, visit Journal Sentinel.

For many, he’s a middle-aged, cigar-chomping, hard-driving, demanding, greedy corporate titan who places a higher value on the financial bottom line than the human condition.

To be sure, plenty of those fellows exist. However, a far-reaching new study may go a long way to shattering that perception.

The CEO Genome Project recently compiled a 10-year database of assessments, including comprehensive performance appraisals and extensive biographical information of 17,000 C-level executives, including 2,000 CEOs.

Researchers from ghSmart, a Chicago consulting firm, examined the data and made some rather surprising conclusions, which recently were published in a report titled “What Sets Successful CEOs Apart” in the Harvard Business Review.

The researchers identified four essential behaviors common among the most successful CEOs:

1. Deciding with speed and conviction. “They make decisions earlier, faster and with greater conviction. … In our data, people who were described as ‘decisive’ were 12 times more likely to be high-performing CEOs,” the report said.

2. Engaging for impact. “Once CEOs set a clear course for the business, they must get buy-in among their employees and other stakeholders."

3. Adapting proactively. “Our analysis shows that CEOs who excel at adapting are 6.7 times more likely to succeed. CEOs themselves told us over and over that this skill was critical."

4. Delivering reliably. “Mundane as it may sound, the ability to reliably produce results was possibly the most powerful of the four essential CEO behaviors,” the report said.

I asked consultant Krister Ungerboeck to extrapolate the most important revelations from the study. Ungerboeck is a St. Louis CEO coach whose family-owned business provides software that helps destinations such as the Monona Terrace convention center and the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison manage their special events.

He said the conclusions of the study defy the CEO stereotypes, but they confirmed what he already knew: that the best company leaders tend to be humble introverts.

“It aligns with my experience. It’s about listening and asking questions,” Ungerboeck said. “To grow a business, the CEO needs to make a fundamental change in style from a talking style to a listening style and a question-asking style.”

Ungerboeck cited four common characteristics of CEOs who are humble introverts:

1. They know when to shut up. “You might think that the world’s top leaders would be gregarious, talkative extroverts, but the study findings showed otherwise,” he said.

2. They don’t problem-solve — they problem-find. “This allows them to identify patterns in the workplace and to find out where improvement and innovation is needed. They then delegate the problem-solving to the appropriate employees and trust in their ability to perform,” he said.

3. They realize how much they matter. “Nothing sets the tone for a workplace like a boss. This is a hugely powerful lesson that employers everywhere need to learn. When you walk into your office, you are impacting everyone around you in an immediate and immeasurable way. Your attitude is directly inspiring not only how hard everyone is working, but also how creatively they think and how cooperatively they act,” he said.

4. They are comfortable being uncomfortable. “You might think that it is wise to avoid areas where you don’t feel as experienced, but those are exactly the areas that could end up being the key to your success. For some, that might mean going to an anger management class. For others, that might mean spending the days on the sales floor and making cold calls for the first time in decades. A true leader isn’t afraid to risk failure, because they know that the only true failure is refusing to admit one’s flaws,” he said.

“If you are self-aware, engaged and truly willing to work on yourself as a person and as a leader, your improved management style will have a direct and positive impact on your employees and your bottom line,” Ungerboeck said.

Steve Jagler is the business editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. C-Level stands for high-ranking executives, typically those with “chief” in their titles. Send C-Level column ideas to him at steve.jagler@journalsentinel.com.