The “New” 5 Questions for Leadership Effectiveness

I recently had breakfast with one of the business leaders in the world I admire most, Kevin Sharer.

I admire Kevin for 3 principal reasons:

1. He was a massively successful business leader. Kevin was the CEO of Amgen, the world’s largest biotech company, from 2000 to 2012 and had been the company’s president for eight years before that. Today, Amgen is a $139 billion market value company and Kevin led a series of breakthrough investments and innovations that doubled the share price and led a spectacular CEO succession to today’s CEO, Bob Bradway, leading to a further tripling of the company’s market value the last 7 years. He has also served on the boards of directors of Chevron, Northrop Grumman, and 3M. Before Amgen, Kevin was an EVP at MCI Communications, GM of several GE business units and a McKinsey consultant earlier in his career.
2. Kevin is generous of spirit and time and has given back in multiple ways. In 2012, after his CEO career, he joined the faculty at Harvard Business School, teaching corporate strategy and leadership. He is also philanthropic, serving on the board of the US Naval Academy Foundation (a Naval Academy graduate he was a nuclear submariner) and was for a decade Chairman of the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Kevin has recently taken up the role of CEO mentor, helping a selection of current and potential CEOs understand what it takes to get the job of CEO and how to thrive once in the role.
3. At age 71, Kevin is a role model of fitness, vitality, creativity, and impact. He looks about two decades younger than his age, exudes energy and optimism, is passionate about what he does, keeps fit with intense daily physical training, is an avid skier and sailor, and is writing a new book on business leadership. His coauthor is Adam Bryant of Merryck & Co., whose work includes 525 Corner Office columns for the New York Times.

I first got to know Kevin in connection with my 2005 book, You’re in Charge, Now What?, which is all about how to get off to a great start in the first 100 days of a new leadership position.  The section of the book that has consistently gotten the most positive feedback was on the 5 questions a new CEO should pose to his/her team to create an agenda for active listening. In December 1999, Amgen announced that Kevin would succeed CEO, Gordon Binder, at the annual shareholders meeting in May 2000. That day, Kevin sent out a note to the top 100 Amgen leaders saying that he would schedule one-on-one meetings with each to have discussions centered on five key questions:

The Original 5 Key Questions – For Getting Off to the Right Start

1. What are the five most important things about the company we should be sure to preserve and why?
2. What are the top three things we need to change and why?
3. What do you most hope I do?
4. What are you most concerned I might do?
5. What advice do you have for me?

Having sent out the 5 questions ahead of time and made it clear that he expected each of the Amgen executives to prepare their thoughts, Kevin sat quietly and listened for an hour with each person as they shared their views on these open-ended questions. “It goes against the grain to sit there quietly and listen,” he said, “but it’s a really powerful technique.” Kevin then analyzed and tabulated the results of the 100 sessions and distributed them throughout the company the day before the annual shareholder meeting. The results became the foundation for his strategy and transformation plan which shaped his actions and decisions throughout his first year as CEO. 

Over the past 15 years, scores of new CEOs have told me that they have applied and customized this approach for active listening. The results have been remarkable. Not only have those who have done this gotten great ideas, insights and direction about how to lead their organizations, but they have often established new norms for engaging with, respecting, and soliciting the views of others. As a significant by-product of this process, when CEOs listened to what their executives thought in a structured and encouraging way, they were able to quickly establish who were the thought leaders and potential change leaders of the organization, and who were likely to be the blockers to the strategic and culture change agenda and that needed to go.

At our breakfast, I shared with Kevin how consequential his 5 questions have been to so many leaders. He was delighted. But not missing a beat, he quickly added that he had developed a set of 5 new questions and has encouraged the CEOs that he mentors to apply them to ongoing leadership development.

The New 5 Questions - For Leadership Effectiveness

This is an annual exercise that a CEO can do with his/her team, ideally in conjunction with a CHRO partner. The CEO asks the leadership team to get together for a meeting, without the CEO present. Confidentiality is assured. The CHRO facilitates a conversation around these 5 questions posed by the CEO:

1.  What am I doing that you like and that I should continue doing?
2. What am I not doing that I should start doing?
3. What am I doing that I should stop doing?
4. What am I doing that I should change?
5. What other advice do you have for me?

The conversation is designed to be safe in terms of anonymity of commentary, positive in spirit, oriented towards creating beneficial changes, and specific in the quest for tangible feedback to provide to the CEO. The CHRO then synthesizes the input and shares them with the CEO. After having digested the feedback the CEO then hosts a staff meeting in which he/she thanks the team and discusses what changes he/she will work to change.

There are several benefits to this approach. First it works. Getting genuine feedback is a gift, as we all know, but it is difficult to solicit from those with whom you work and often even more difficult to receive. This process reduces many of the barriers. Secondly, this is leadership by example. If the CEO shows that she/he is truly open to change, it says that we should all be open to change too. In some of the companies where CEOs have instituted this, other direct reports of the CEO have gone on to do this same exercise with their staffs, leading to a flywheel effect of positive feedback, trust, and change.

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Hopefully these new 5 questions can have as positive effect if you're striving to maximize your leadership effectiveness as the original 5 questions may have helped you get off to a strong start in your first 100 days.