A CEO search for a big-brand public company. A name comes up, and the chairman of the nominating and governance committee shuts it down. He knew that person 20 years ago, and that person was a jerk. A reputation from two decades back, settled in one sentence, in a room the candidate never saw.

Kelly O. Kay, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles and co-author of Show Up to Win, was working that search. He tells his six kids never to chase money, and he tells executives never to chase a title. Chase the CEO title and you'll get it, at a company you won't want to run.

I break down more field-tested decisions about trust, selling, and growth inside C.R.E.A.M. One useful experiment, playbook, teardown, or take each week. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

We get into why saying yes to a conversation while you're happy isn't disloyal, and why competitive leaders win the process and then can't say whether they want the job. I tell Kelly about the job I took for the title and the money, and hated. His answer: they question your judgment, so call out what you missed. Do that, and a short stint stops being a hole in the résumé. His advice for a role you've never held sounds like weakness and reads as strength: ask for a coach as part of the negotiation.

If this made you question whether your next move is built around your edge or around a title, get on the Easy Mode waiting list for book resources and updates: https://ryanhanley.com/easy-mode

Connect with Kelly O. Kay:

Heidrick & Struggles: https://www.heidrick.com/en/people/k/kellyokay
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokay
Show Up to Win: https://www.heidrick.com/en/pages/show-up-to-win-book

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Follow Ryan:

Website: https://ryanhanley.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Never Chase a Title (and what you should chase) | Kelly O. Kay