Long before someone takes the corner office, they need to build the skills and rapport that will help them thrive once they move in. That CEO journey is the focus of this episode of The McKinsey Podcast with McKinsey Partner Blair Epstein, Senior Partner Carolyn Dewar, Partner Julia McClatchy, and Senior Partner Vik Malhotra. They share their collective insights with Roberta Fusaro, McKinsey editorial director, about how CEOs should prepare for the role, navigate those critical early days, sustain personal and organizational performance, and continue to evolve their leadership styles.
The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Becoming CEO
Roberta Fusaro: Let’s start before day one—before the title, before the spotlight. What distinguishes leaders who actually make it to the CEO role? Here’s McKinsey Partner, Blair Epstein.
Blair Epstein: The people who end up in the CEO chair have done a few things really specifically. They’ve thought deeply about what’s required for the CEO role, and then with ruthless objectivity, they’ve held up the mirror on their own readiness. It takes real humility to be able to say, “I’m not perfect.”
Roberta Fusaro: That kind of self-awareness doesn’t happen overnight.
Blair Epstein: It allows them, over the course of years—not months, not weeks—to round out their profile and move closer and closer to readiness.
Roberta Fusaro: And even as they prepare for the next role, they can’t lose sight of their current one.
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Blair Epstein: You cannot get lost in politics. You can’t stop delivering in the job that you’re in today. The folks who are ultimately successful are the ones who are able to hold those different paradoxes and deliver on both those time horizons.
You cannot get lost in politics.
Roberta Fusaro: And they stay laser focused on what’s most important.
Blair Epstein: They are deeply connected to a purpose that is bigger than themselves. They aren’t looking to get the [top] job because they want to be the big boss, because they want to be in charge. They look at the CEO role because of the impact it can have.
Roberta Fusaro: That combination—self-awareness, performance, and purpose—sets the foundation. But even before they step into the role, great CEOs are already building habits that will matter later.
Blair Epstein: These leaders were really deliberate about getting feedback, having coaches, and finding their kitchen cabinet of truth tellers.
Roberta Fusaro: Building this support system is important for maintaining the leader’s humility and willingness to learn—both qualities that can help a CEO get off to a fast start. McKinsey Senior Partner Carolyn Dewar explains.
The first moves
Carolyn Dewar: Employees are looking for clues on who you are as a leader. The best CEOs really start not by just declaring “I have the answer” but by listening and tuning into the organization. In those early months, they will tell you things that they won’t tell you later. Here’s what’s working well, here’s what’s not. Here’s what we might have been afraid to tell your predecessor. You can learn so much about what the organization really thinks.
Roberta Fusaro: Beyond connecting with employees, CEOs also need to quickly establish a strong relationship with the board.
Carolyn Dewar: Suddenly you have 12 bosses. How do you work with them? The goal is to have no surprises. You don’t want to surprise your board.
Roberta Fusaro: And as CEOs engage with the broader world, another capability becomes central.
Carolyn Dewar: You have to be the chief storyteller of the company.
Roberta Fusaro: That story needs to be clear—and consistent.
Carolyn Dewar: You can’t have a laundry list of 13 ideas; you need a short list of ideas.
You have to be the chief storyteller of the company.
Roberta Fusaro: And you need to repeat the story, so that you’re—
Carolyn Dewar: —saying the same thing over and over again.
Roberta Fusaro: But even CEOs who get off to a strong start face a different kind of challenge over time. Success itself can become a risk, according to McKinsey Senior Partner Vik Malhotra.
Vik Malhotra: Success breeds complacency, and complacency breeds failure.
Roberta Fusaro: The best CEOs avoid that trap by continuing to learn.
Vik Malhotra: They really do care about and build a learning culture for themselves and for the organization. ... We always want to be learning from our customers, from the external world, from other institutions.
Roberta Fusaro: They also challenge their own assumptions.
Vik Malhotra: They think like outsiders … if [another company] was to own them at this point, would they continue to do what they’re doing, or do it differently?
Roberta Fusaro: And just as we heard earlier, they gather people around them who will keep it real.
Vik Malhotra: They surround themselves with truth tellers. They look to people who are actually going to tell them honestly and quite openly, what are some of the gaps going forward. So when you do some combination of all of that, you can avoid the sophomore slump.
Roberta Fusaro: Sustaining performance also means making difficult calls. In fact, nine out of ten of the CEOs Vik has talked to say their biggest regret is they—
Vik Malhotra: —didn’t move fast enough on talent.
Roberta Fusaro: At the same time, leaders have to keep their organizations energized.
Great leaders find a way to renew their energy.
Vik Malhotra: Fatigue is a real thing. The organization wants a little breathing room, right? What many of the very best CEOs do is create a really bold next vision that people can get excited about and embrace so that they can go beyond the vision.
Roberta Fusaro: And they pay attention to their own emotional state as well.
Vik Malhotra: Great leaders find a way to renew their energy. One of my favorite stories is a somewhat introverted CEO who said, I’m happy to work 14 hours a day, but I can’t be around people 14 hours a day. So my assistant blocks two hours in the middle of the day for me so that I can renew and refresh myself, and I can go into the second half of the day with the right energy. They work a lot on energy management as a way to make sure that they’re out there with their best, authentic self so that they can really make a difference in leading their organizations.
Taking a bow
Roberta Fusaro: Great leaders also recognize when it’s time to step down and pave the way for their successor. In fact, many CEOs don’t last long in the role, says McKinsey Partner Julia McClatchy.
Julia McClatchy: Thirty percent of all CEOs, at least within Fortune 500 companies, only last under three years.
Roberta Fusaro: So it’s critical to get leadership transitions right.
Julia McClatchy: You know, a trillion dollars of market value is erased every year from publicly traded companies through poorly managed CEO transitions.
Roberta Fusaro: That’s a big number but maybe not so surprising when you consider how many CEOs feel unprepared for the role.
Julia McClatchy: Almost 70 percent of CEOs say that they were unprepared for the role. I think it just underscores why it’s so high stakes, because of the fragility of it, really. Even though it’s funny to say the word fragility when we’re talking about, you know, some of the most revered, some of the smartest, most experienced people in the world, but I think nobody’s prepared for the CEO role. And that’s a bit of the punchline.
Roberta Fusaro: Julia says there are two major ways to set up a CEO for success. First: early preparation.
Almost 70 percent of CEOs say that they were unprepared for the role.
Julia McClatchy: Making sure that the board is really aligned on the strategy-backed view of what the organization is going to need from its next CEO. And are we developing at least a slate of internal candidates using really personalized journeys to say, “OK, how are we helping them have the best chance of success?”
Roberta Fusaro: The second piece is paying attention to the two transitions happening simultaneously: the entering and exiting CEO.
Julia McClatchy: They dovetail one another. It’s a real careful orchestration—the transitioning, exiting CEO leaving in the best possible way and setting the stage because we know that about 30 percent of the new CEO’s success is predetermined by their predecessors.
Roberta Fusaro: And that transition is affected by whether the candidate is internal or external. Internal CEO candidates, of course, have the advantage of an impressive track record, varied experience at the company, and insider knowledge. The trick for the internal candidates is thinking like an outsider.
Julia McClatchy: The toughest thing is being really respectful to honor what has made the company so successful. And then also charting your own course, which is complicated when the outgoing CEO steps into the chair role, which is pretty common but also can be pretty tricky because part of the imperative for a new CEO is being able to say, here’s what’s going to remain the same, and here’s what I need to change.
Roberta Fusaro: Here, again, is where humility and a willingness to learn can pay off for both the exiting CEO and the new joiner.
Julia McClatchy: They recognize that they have not done everything perfectly, and they say proactively, let’s jointly talk about what I’ve done and what you’ve done, and let’s have that handover so that not only is it that I’m giving you this opportunity to have a clean break, but the whole organization and all of our stakeholders hear that that’s what’s happening.
Roberta Fusaro: For CEOs coming in from outside the organization, it actually might be easier to get candid feedback.
Julia McClatchy: So, there’s the idea that you should have a really well-designed listening tour that is used to leverage this unfreezing moment, which is inherent in the fact that a transition is occurring. So, the organization knows there’s going to be change. They’re ready for change. And so how do you capitalize on that through your listening tour and ask questions that, frankly, an insider CEO couldn’t ask, like, “What are people not telling me that I need to hear?”
Roberta Fusaro: And of course, it’s important to honor the company’s legacy at the same time.
Julia McClatchy: You really need to be a student of the organization. It doesn’t mean you have to carry forward that legacy but just appreciating it and showing that you care about learning.
Roberta Fusaro: Across all these stages, a few themes stand out: self-awareness, adaptability, and continuous learning. Becoming CEO isn’t a single moment, it’s a series of reinventions tackled with discipline, humility, and commitment. For more on the CEO journey, explore A CEO for All Seasons.
