4-Step Secret to Success from Top CEOs

  • 0 min read
Meaning

 

shutterstock_330095525In my executive coaching of 30+ years I’ve worked with over a thousand chief executives from eighteen different countries and in every industry. Once a week someone is asks my take on the secret to success in business. I can answer with four points.

1.Smile

2.Ask questions

3.Make decisions

4.Take blame

Smile because you have to look and act confident. An open expression engaging your eyes and your attitude work universally. Lips turned upward make you look awake, alive, and approachable.

Ask questions because everyone dislikes a know-it-all and know one does know it all. You empower people when you ask their opinion, experience, advice, etc. and when you empower them they respect and trust you.

Make decisions before someone makes them for you, because they will. And they likely won’t be the decisions you want. It takes courage to put a stake in the ground and decide but again, someone’s going to do it and it might as well be you.

Take blame early and often when things don’t go well. Do not have a whiff of blaming others even when it was their fault. Find out why they failed and help where you can so it doesn’t happen again. But if you blame them for mistakes you’ll never get their trust or respect.

Successful people take the responsibility to look confident and comfortable so as to make others feel that way around them. Then they ask questions to fill in what they don’t know or confirm what they do so as to make better decisions, sooner. And when things go wrong they take responsibility; when things go well they always give credit to others.

 

Picture of Debra Benton

Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

A Pew Research survey found 64% of American adults still choose print over e-books — and the reason has less to do with nostalgia than attention span

A Pew Research survey found 64% of American adults still choose print over e-books — and the reason has less to do with nostalgia than attention span

Global English Editing
For a while we assumed the slow cooling of a long marriage was just the price of time — until researchers found that couples who spent about seven minutes, three times a year, describing their worst fight the way a neutral outsider might see it simply stopped sliding apart

For a while we assumed the slow cooling of a long marriage was just the price of time — until researchers found that couples who spent about seven minutes, three times a year, describing their worst fight the way a neutral outsider might see it simply stopped sliding apart

The Vessel
When researchers had people confide something painful to a friend sitting right beside them, the ones whose blood pressure climbed the highest weren’t leaning on someone difficult — they were turning to a friend they genuinely love and still, just slightly, hold their breath around

When researchers had people confide something painful to a friend sitting right beside them, the ones whose blood pressure climbed the highest weren’t leaning on someone difficult — they were turning to a friend they genuinely love and still, just slightly, hold their breath around

The Vessel
The writers whose work reads as unmistakably human aren’t the ones avoiding AI on principle — they’re the ones who never stopped writing like themselves in the first place

The writers whose work reads as unmistakably human aren’t the ones avoiding AI on principle — they’re the ones who never stopped writing like themselves in the first place

Global English Editing
Some of the loneliest people you’ll meet are the ones everyone describes as easygoing, agreeable, and low-maintenance, they learned long ago that having needs was the fastest way to be left out

Some of the loneliest people you’ll meet are the ones everyone describes as easygoing, agreeable, and low-maintenance, they learned long ago that having needs was the fastest way to be left out

Global English Editing
People who go quiet in group conversations aren’t always shy or withdrawn, many simply stopped expecting anyone to follow up on what they said

People who go quiet in group conversations aren’t always shy or withdrawn, many simply stopped expecting anyone to follow up on what they said

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore