CEOs rely heavily on their direct reports

A CEO’s direct reports are the company’s most senior executives and include some of its most skilled managers. They span all the key elements of the business and offer CEOs the greatest opportunity for leverage. The leadership team, working together, can be the glue that helps the CEO integrate the company and get the work done. In our study about half (46%) of a CEO’s time with internal constituencies was spent with one or more direct reports, and 21% of it was spent only with direct reports.

The total time spent with direct reports ranged from a low of 32% of time with internal constituencies to a high of 67%. When we explored that variation, we found that CEOs were more likely to spend time with their reports present when they had greater confidence in them. We found that it’s critical for each member of the leadership team to have the capabilities to excel and earn the CEO’s full trust and support.

Any weaknesses in this group significantly reduce the CEO’s effectiveness, because dealing with work that reports should have handled, and cleaning up after them, eats up valuable time. In fact, when our CEOs gathered as a group across cohorts to see how things were going after they had been in office awhile, their No. 1 regret was not setting high-enough standards in selecting direct reports. Many CEOs told us this was because they focused too much on the present and not enough on the future when they first stepped into the role.

Direct reports who could manage the status quo were often not the ones who could help the CEO take the company to a new level. The more CEOs can delegate to their leadership team, the better they generally feel about their use of time. It eases the burden of needing to get personally engaged, following up and asking others to report back. Since CEOs see their direct reports so frequently, it is also easy to stay in touch with how things are going with matters they are handling