What makes you a great leader and communicator, whether you are “the” CEO or a solopreneur?

Adam Bryant writes a column, “Corner Office”, for the NYT every Sunday for a decade answering this question. In his 525 interviews with CEOs he asks the unobvious.

His queries are NOT about their companies, but about how they’d hire someone, what their parents were like, what shaped them, and life advice they give or wish they had received.

After a decade of these concise and insightful interviews, Bryant summarizes the lessons learned from these leaders in the corner office.

3 recurring themes for those people who get the top job

• Applied curiosity. “They tend to question everything. They want to know how things work, and wonder how they can be made to work better. They’re curious about people and their back stories. … Rather than wondering if they are on the right path, they are wringing lessons from all their experiences.”
• Discomfort is their comfort zone. “CEO’s seem to love a challenge.”
• Management of their own careers on their way to the top. “They focus on doing their current job well and that earns them promotions. That may seem obvious, but many people can seem more concerned about the job they want than the job they’re doing.”

The most important communication quality for effective leadership

Bryant shares, “I would put trustworthiness at the top. … We can sense at a kind of lizard-brain level whether we trust someone.”

Readers of this blog – you know that “trust” is the bottom line theme of our Speak For Yourself® philosophy. Without trust you have no relationships. Without relationships you have no business. How do you convey trust? It’s all in how you communicate.

Your voice. Your business.