Confessions of a trusted counselor

Advising CEOs sounds like a dream job, but doing so can be perplexing and perilous. At times, the questions you must ask yourself-about your own motivations and loyalty-can be thornier than the organizational problems that clients face. David Nadler knows, because he has been asking himself such questions for a quarter century while advising the chiefs of more than two dozen corporations. If you're an adviser to CEOs, recognizing the pitfalls of your role may help you sidestep them. And understanding a problem's nuances and implications may help you uncover a solution. The challenges facing consultants include the following: The loyalty dilemma: Is my ultimate responsibility to the CEO, who pays for my services, or to the institution, which pays for his? Today's shorter CEO tenures and greater board oversight have diminished the top leader's power and autonomy; it's now routine for a CEO adviser to have conversations with directors about the CEO's performance. To defuse loyalty issues, the adviser should raise them with the executive at the outset of the relationship. The overidentification dilemma: How do I immerse myself in the CEO's worldview without making it my own? CEOs can be enormously persuasive, but if you don't push back, you're not doing your job. The trick is to ask probing questions without shaking the CEO's confidence that you fully comprehend the forces that shape her views. The friendship dilemma: If the CEO and I like each other, can we-should we-become friends? A successful, long-term advisory relationship with a CEO requires a strong personal connection; in some cases, that becomes a friendship. But the best relationships are characterized by the participants' clear-eyed recognition of each other's frailties-tempered, of course, by genuine affection and easy rapport.