5 Ways to ‘Read’ Your CEO

If you’re an employee, it would be pretty helpful to know exactly what the CEO is thinking and intending. For one thing, you’d get a great sense of where the organization is going. You’d also be able decide how best to help the firm get there. Alternatively, knowing how the CEO is going to steer the ship can help you decide whether you actually want to stay on board.

Of course, not all CEOs are going to be transparent. Some bosses hold back their intentions for competitive reasons. Others do it to keep their teams on their toes. But a surprising number aren’t transparent simply because they’re just not that outgoing. Indeed, multiple studies indicate that 30% to 40% of top bosses are reserved, less social, and more introspective, says Kevin Cashman, Korn Ferry’s vice chairman of CEO and enterprise leadership, who has worked with CEOs for decades.

Whether CEOs are talkative or not, there are ways to “read” them. If you’re high enough on the corporate ladder, you could just ask them about their intentions. “You will need to question and inquire more to help make the CEO’s implicit messages more explicit,” Cashman says. But almost anyone in an organization can learn to study the CEO. Here are a few options experts suggest.

Watch how the CEO spends their time. 

Bosses might obscure their strategy verbally, but most aren’t going to waste time on projects and initiatives they don’t see as essential to the company’s success. Throughout the 2010s, professors at four major business schools around the world tracked the work-related activities of more than 1,100 CEOs in six countries—meetings, factory visits, lunches, and nearly everything else. The results were clear: How the CEOs spent their time correlated closely with the firm’s performance, far more than any statements they might have made along the way. “Never trust what is said, only what is done,” says Jane Edison Stevenson, global leader for Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Succession practice.

Follow the money.

Cash is always a limited resource, and it’s ultimately the CEO who decides where to allocate it. A boss doesn’t want to waste money (just as they don’t want to squander time) on a non-essential strategy. “Watch what’s being funded and what’s not being funded,” Stevenson says. An employee can see where the CEO thinks the business opportunities are. Of course, the fact that a CEO is spending billions on a project while ignoring something else doesn’t mean they’ve made a good decision.

Another way to follow the money is to look at the compensation of senior leaders. A publicly traded company in the US has to disclose who its highest-paid employees are in annual proxy statements, says Alan Guarino, Korn Ferry vice chairman for board and CEO services. Just as important as base pay are potential earnings from stock-based compensation. “If the company is using performance shares, then critical things that are important to the company and CEO will be in there,” Guarino says.

See who’s getting hired.

Who is being brought into the C-suite or being elevated to senior vice president? The backgrounds of new top-tier hires can often signal the CEO’s agenda. Bringing in a COO or CFO known for "lean" operations and restructuring often signals an imminent cost-cutting or the preparation of the company for sale. Alternatively, hiring a chief product officer from a high-growth tech firm suggests a digital transformation or major marketing shift may be coming.

Listen to what gets explained—and what does not.

Transparency can be selective. Some CEOs might lean toward overexplaining a controversial decision because they know some persuasion is required. On the other hand, a CEO who relies on saying “trust me” (or the equivalent) might not be someone to put much trust in. What the CEO discusses with existing and potential stockholders can be another signal: While leaders may be vague with staff, they have to be more specific with analysts and institutional investors on quarterly earnings calls.

Find out what the CEO’s direct reports think.

Only a select few people talk regularly to the CEO. That small circle should be able to clearly convey the CEO’s strategy. If they can’t (or won’t), it can say a lot about their confidence in the direction the leader wants to take the company. Sometimes these senior leaders will express their thoughts in memos. Other times they’ll speak candidly with employees who approach them at meetings, lunches, or other corporate events. A few have even been known to post comments (often anonymously) on organization-review sites such as Glassdoor. “Look at what the senior team feels about the boss,” Stevenson says.

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