What does it take to prepare for the CEO role?

Specific skills are required in today’s world.

A CEO I worked with, recognising how much time was taken by regular 1:1 decided to stop them all. At once. What a relief for his agenda! And what a push-back from his team! How In her article: “The Skills and Habits Aspiring CEOs Need to Build” (link in the first comment below) Vasundhara Sawhney, senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, shares perspectives from three leadership heavyweights: Ginni Rometty (former IBM CEO), Nitin Nohria (former Dean of the Harvard Business School), and Gary Burnison (CEO of Korn Ferry), on what skills upcoming leaders need to hone, to become tomorrow’s CEOs.

The skillset for leading at the top, in this era of AI disruption, geopolitical shocks, and constant ambiguity is shifting profoundly. It’s no longer just about mastering financials, operational excellence or market savviness. In fact, Vasundhara says that “the standard management playbook is ill-equipped to address the current context". Now, it is about who you are as a leader, how you learn, and how you navigate complexity.

So, what are those shifts?

1. From knowing to learning:

Ginni Rometty speaks about becoming an “Olympic learner. The way an Olympic athlete approaches their training—constantly iterating, stretching, and seeking input”. When IBM faced massive tech transitions, she didn’t cut learning; she led their monthly learning sessions personally, teaching the first hour for 4 years. “Organisations must cultivate curiosity and create space for reflection, co-creation, and experimentation.”

2. From transactions to trust:

Relationships are at the core of your resilience system. Rometty highlights how trust built over years became vital in moments of crisis: “Invest in people, with authenticity, long before you need them. During moments of crisis, it wasn’t just my preparation or mindset that carried me through. It was the team, and broad circle of people, around me. People I had built trust with over years.”

3. From knee-jerk reaction to the art of proportionality:

Nitin Nohria argues that great leadership is ultimately an art of triage. Not every problem needs urgent intervention. Sometimes, the best question you can ask is: “How much can I delay reacting in order to gather more information?” He suggests we all need to become better “Bayesians: curious, circumspect, and constantly updating their understanding of a situation as new data emerges..”.

4. From certainty to integrative thinking:

Gary Burnison underscores how decisions interlock across the business. It’s about zooming out, then zooming back in—and holding both views at once: “Integrative thinking is all about considering multiple and even opposing ideas and synthesising them into a new solution.” Zoom in, zoom out, and integrate.

When I coach upcoming leaders, we often explore, beyond the more classic Leadership skills and expertise, their mindset. The next level of leadership isn’t about adding more skills. It’s about evolving how you think, learn, decide, and relate.”