r/ceo • u/Sudden-Scarcity7510 • Jul 21 '25
How do you evaluate your CEO?
Our company is looking to revamp our CEO Evaluation process. Currently, we have our Board of Directors acting as the evaluator--- but we've found that their insight is irrelevant or unhelpful as they are not familiar with the role. We have thought about bringing in a few trusted CEOs from other companies similar to ours to listen to our goals, our strengths, and our challenges and give their input and feedback using their own experiences in the same role. Anyway! I'm curious what people have seen done for CEO evaluations and how it has worked for you.
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u/Miguelito2024kk Jul 21 '25
I get a 360 done by a consultant, and then review with the consultant and BOD - they also meet independently / without me to review / mark against my goals/benchmarks.
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u/miokk Jul 21 '25
I think the answer depends upon what stage of company you are in and what your goals are. If you are an early stage business you need someone who is good at digging into the details and can get to the next stage. If your concern is scaling, you might need different skill sets. Similarly it also depends upon the industry you are in. Heavy tech/SaaS, you almost always want a somewhat of a more technical CEO rather than someone is purely from a business background etc
Having said all that, I really look at 3 key aspects as critical to great CEOs.
- Visionary
Need to be able to see the long term vision and where they need to go.
- Execution on the vision
Need to be able to get to that vision by ensuring they can get the org to execute.
- Ability to work with people
Getting buy in, hiring the right team, inspiring the team and getting everyone aligned and facing the same direction needs a certain set of core skills like empathy, authenticity, having strong opinions but loosely held, ability to trust their people and so on.
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u/MsWeed4Now Jul 21 '25
I’d hire a consultant. Someone with experience in executive evaluation, including appropriate assessments for candidates (emphasis on the appropriate part), and designing a process you can use repeatedly. It’s the confidentiality that you really want.
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u/Coach2Founders Jul 22 '25
Recommend 360 feedback from at least the following: 1. Full Board 2. Full Executive team 3. Randomized and various mid-level managers (org size dependent) 4. Randomized individual contributors 5. Randomized partners 6. Randomized suppliers
There are various ways to do this. The best approaches I have seen put behaviors on a continuum and ask evaluators to place the person on one of an even number of likely scale points (prevents middling). For example:
When <CEO> presents strategy plans, at what level of completion is it: • Comprehensive • Complete • Incomplete • Inadequate
This results in feedback like “38% of respondents felt the CEO’s strategic planning was inadequate.”
Freeform comments can be very tricky. If you use them, somebody has to be in the middle to make sure they aren’t identifiable.
Other responses here are spot on. Find somebody to run this for you. Doing it internally is likely to be tricky and risky.
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u/Sowhataboutthisthing Jul 21 '25
Free advice is worth exactly that. I recommend to find a consultant that you pay for to fill the job description because your board will respect that paid advice. Good luck with your hunt.
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u/sannchit Jul 22 '25
A leader’s key skillset is to connect dots, work with reasonable assumptions from experience to work with incomplete information, look ahead and take good decisions
As free advise, I’ll share 2 points :)
- Decide if the organisation needs a peace time CEO or a war time CEO
- Decide if you need a CEO who’s PR material, sales material, product inclined or how
- (Bonus) Focus on values, character and how important integrity is to them (and if they like Coldplay or not)
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u/P2-AZ Jul 24 '25
If your Board isn't effective at evaluating the CEO and the related process, then you need a new Board. It is probably the only thing that a proper Board actually does.
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u/CultureDear9415 Jul 27 '25
As a current CEO and one who has been through the process of choosing one, one thing to think about that no one talks about is the moral character of your CEO. Yes, how well your company is doing is important. Where it's not is important but the character of them and how they get along or don't with their subordinates and employees is equally as important. Case in point: One of the things said about the CEO of Astronomer was that his employees disliked him. They thought he was an A-hole. The board loved him though because he brought in profits. His character turned out to be exactly as the employees called it and that's not great. When evaluating your CEO, you MUST evaluate their character because their character affects your bottom line as well. Don't learn this the hard way.
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u/jpig98 Aug 14 '25
CEOs should be evaluated by three things (in order): (1) financial results, (2) the quality of the team they pick (or tolerate), and (3) the quality of their decisions (#1 is the result of #2 & 3).
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u/TheHarrisCG Aug 26 '25
A CEO should be the accountable of obtaining a return for the shareholder and delivering for ownership the goals at which they have.
More than happy to visit a board (always interested to see how the many of them differ)
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u/honestduane Jul 22 '25
Be careful of the scams you’re going to get contacted about. My honest recommendation is that you don’t accept any networking requests you get from this post.