“A Chief Executive Officer who has ‘friendships’ within the company… cannot remain impartial.”
Rarely has a chief executive of an American corporation been as respected and revered as Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., was at General Motors during his long tenure at the top. Many GM managers felt a deep personal gratitude to him for this quiet but decisive acts of kindness, of help, of advice, or just warm sympathy when they were in trouble. At the same time, however, Sloan kept aloof from the entire management group in GM.
“It is the duty of the Chief Executive Officer to be objective and impartial,” Sloan said, explaining his management style. “He must be absolutely tolerant and pay no attention to how a man does his work, let alone whether he likes a man or not. The only criteria must be performance and character. And that is incompatible with friendship and social relations. A Chief Executive Officer who has ‘friendships’ within the company, has ‘social relations’ with colleagues, or discusses anything with them except the job, cannot remain impartial—or at least, which is equally damaging, he will not appear as such. Loneliness, distance, and formality may be contrary to his temperament—they have always been contrary to mine—but they are his duty.”
ACTION POINT: Focus on your employees’ performance and character, not on whether you like them.
Management Cases
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker