Sublime

GINNI ROMETTY Former Chairman, President, and CEO, IBM

(1) power and status differences, and (2) cooperative or competitive interdependence.

When I talked with my former VP of HR Jessica Neal about this, she said a great thing about what a company’s culture should be: “Culture is the strategy of how you work. And if people believe it is a strategy and that it is important, they will help you think about it deeply and try things.”

The use of self:

Before you try to move people to your position, make sure they feel that you understand where they are coming from, what they are feeling, and what they are dealing with.

Above all else, they are cheerleaders who suppress their own egos in the name of the institutions they head.

Now, that said, your job as CEO or founder is to help them be successful. I think taking the obligation personally and doing everything in your power to make your new executive successful is part of your job. And some founders don’t do that. They just assume, “I’ve hired this person and this person will get up to speed and start doing things.” But

Different people have different things to learn, and by the end of the term, my aim would be for people to have learned a lot that was relevant to them in regard to their own capacity to mobilize their communities or their organizations to make progress on the hardest of problems, which is what I think leadership is about—mobilizing people to make