It's no fun being a CEO these days. Signing pink slips, trimming costs and steering a company smoothly through a recession is a tough gig.
Still, if you're the one making those tough calls, you're not getting much sympathy. These days, your CEO title might as well be a scarlet letter and who do you have to thank? The (former) big guns on Wall Street, perhaps, or the top denizens of the auto sector?
Wherever the finger is thrust, experts say it's time to shed a tear for the average chief executive officer. They're being painted with the same brush as corrupt business leaders blamed for crippling the global economy, and that's adding insult to injury for the majority of business leaders forced to make challenging calls to keep their companies viable.
“A lot of CEOs are pretty lonely at the top anyway, even in good times,” says Alfred De Pew, an executive leadership coach in Vancouver. “[Now] they feel it's really hard work, they feel sometimes like they're having to betray people they really trust by laying them off, they're having to make some very hard decisions. They're feeling … a lot of pressure.”
The perception that all CEOs are villains is unfair, especially since most North American business leaders with the CEO tag are not leading multibillion-dollar companies, says Melissa Raffoni, president of Boston-based Raffoni CEO Consulting. In a recent article she wrote for the Harvard Review of Business called “Those Poor CEOs. No, Seriously,” Ms. Raffoni said company leaders are dealing with a “a serious paradox” – the need to cut costs while trying to make long-term investments.
“The CEO has a very hard job. It's harder than any other job within the company because the buck stops with them,” she says, noting that stress has been aggravated by an uncertain economy.
CEOs are diffusing that uncertainty by attending peer groups, such as one run by Ms. Raffoni. The group of 30 corporate leaders, hand-picked in a selection process, bring their business quandaries to meetings and receive unbiased advice and feedback. The groups help CEOs make objective decisions and also makes them feel less isolated, she says.
Though anxieties are sometimes discussed, she says, these chief executives don't spend their time commiserating.
“They don't talk about themselves, they don't talk about the negative rap that CEOs are getting in the market,” she says. “They talk about ‘Everybody's working so hard and I can't push them any further, what do I do?'… or ‘I've had this manager for 30 years, he's not effective any more, but his 401k just got squashed and he has no money for retirement, what do I do?' This is what I hear every day.”
Aside from help with business decisions, being part of the peer group helps alleviate that “lonely at the top” feeling leaders often have, says member Jim Bourdon, CEO of Accounting Management Solutions based in Waltham, Mass.
“There's tremendous bonding … You feel close to these guys because you understand what they're going through.”
Another member, Beran Peter, says the bad rap has indeed tarnished the image of his peers, but it only makes his business peers strive to become better leaders.
“It gives other CEOs more responsibility to disclose more and maybe be more open book than in the past,” he says. When Mr. Peter, the leader of Associated Environmental Systems, an environmental test equipment manufacturer in Ayer, Mass., was recently forced to cut costs, he took the same pay cut as his employees – a move his staff applauded.
While the stigma and challenges are greater for American CEOs, Canadian business leaders are also looking inward as they deal with a changing economic landscape, says Joanne McLean, president of Soulzatwork, a Toronto-based leadership and team-coaching company.
