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

About this episode

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