5 Life Lessons from CEOs

Here are 5 chief executives and the lessons their leadership can offer the average business owner, employee or entrepreneur. By Joe Mont from The Street The average person may never have to appease shareholders, appear before a congressional panel or pull the trigger on massive layoffs. But how CEOs handle success, adversity and all manner of corporate curveballs does offer some insight for the working men and women who may never be household names. Here are 5 chief executives and the lessons their leadership can offer the average business owner, employee or entrepreneur. 1. Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Be irrepressible. That advice may suit Ballmer well, as he seems to be perpetually on defense against those who remain unconvinced of his ability to fill the massive shoes he inherited from Bill Gates. In May, during a commencement speech at the University of Southern California, Ballmer stressed what he considers three vital ingredients for success. No. 1, great ideas matter. No. 2, find passion. And No. 3, be tenacious, be irrepressible. Microsoft was founded on a single good idea that Bill Gates and Paul Allen had that nobody else had had. 2. Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford Thrive in the face of adversity; fortune favors the bold. To say that the last few years were not kind to the auto industry is a massive understatement. The iconic Ford brand, like its competitors, was in dire straits. Today, bold moves and shrewd negotiations have made the carmaker not just viable, but profitable. In 2006, Mulally leveraged nearly all of Ford's assets to secure a loan of nearly $24 billion. Viewed with negativity and suspicion by investors and industry watchers at the time, the move proved nearly psychic given the recession that soon followed. That massive loan also served as a catalyst for events that reshaped and saved the car company. While General Motors(GM) and Chrysler went bankrupt during the rough economic climate of 2008, Ford was stabilizing. That progress -- which allowed Ford to avoid the necessity of a government bailout -- was aided by such bold moves as cutting loose assets that were not part of the Ford brand, including Jaguar, Volvo and Aston Martin.

Even the powerful United Auto Workers union was on board with the changes made under Mulally's watch, agreeing to wage reductions and other concessions. Last month, Mulally was named 2011 Chief Executive of the Year by Chief Executive magazine, an honor determined by reader-submitted nominations and a review panel of industry leaders. "The success he showed in the face of incredible difficulty was just extraordinary," said James Turley, chairman and CEO of Ernst & Young. "The foresight he showed throughout the process, the courage he showed in making some tough decisions on popular brands, the global mindset he showed and, above all, the statesmanship he showed when two major competitors were on the public dole shows he was thinking for the good of the country as well as his company and industry." 3. Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga Simple can be better. In a world where bigger, faster, and flashier are vital buzzwords, Zynga has proven that there is still a place for simple pleasures. The Facebook-anchored game is decidedly low-tech and undeniably a hit with the U.S. public. Just one of Zynga's many social media fueled games, FarmVille has close to 80 million players and is the foundation of a company that, valued as high as $20 billion by some analysts, is preparing for a $1 billion IPO. 4. Larry Page, CEO, Google Know your limitations; keep your ego in check. Silicon Valley is filled with companies that suffered because their brain trust failed to realize that being a technology genius doesn't necessarily equate with business savvy. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google, the two had the foresight to realize their skill set was not necessarily in line with the value a top-notch CEO could bring. So they brought in tech veteran Eric Schmidt to provide the adult supervision needed to make Google the corporate powerhouse it is today. In January, Schmidt tweeted that his supervision "was no longer needed" and that Page would reassume the top post. All involved, as well as the company itself, are better off for these ego-suppressing decisions -- including the possibility Schmidt was made to recognize his own limitations after a series of public gaffes started creeping people out a bit. 5. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook Think long term, not immediate gratification.

There were numerous times Zuckerberg could have turned a quick buck selling his social media monster to eager suitors. He held out, believing the future held bigger and better potential. He was right. Many analysts have pegged Facebooks valuation as high as $100 billion.

6. Rupert Murdoch , CEO, News Corp. Keep an eye on the kids. Let's assume, for the sake of argument and fairness, Rupert Murdoch had no idea his British newspapers, in particular the scandal-hungryNews of the World, were bribing public officials and hacking into voice mail accounts (going so far as to delete messages left on the line of a missing teen). Even so, the Australian media mogul has blood resulting pain (the News of the World has shuttered, there is a parliamentary investigation in the U.K. and SEC, Congressional and FBI reviews are in the works in the U.S.). Whether running a Fortune 500 company or a small, family-run business, you need to be as close to omniscient as possible. It is better to be a jack of all trades than let the masters you hire hang you out to dry. You may think it is beneath you, but even at the top of the food chain you need to be a babysitter, keeping an eye on all aspects of your business to root out incompetence and illicit activities. The corner office cannot be a soundproof chamber; everything that happens below the C-level suites is your business. 7. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Be a visionary. There is good reason Jobs is given godlike status among Apple fanboys and investors (his daily blood pressure readings are nearly enough to move the stock price). Apple's success is almost entirely attributable to his vision. Proof of his value to the company he co-founded comes from how it did after he was ousted in 1984. His successors -- John Sculley, Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio -- all brought considerable talents to the company but, under their watch, the company floundered. Since returning to the post in 1997, Jobs has had an uncanny ability to score on multiple levels, in large part by providing what his replacements lacked: a forward-looking vision of what was possible. He gave an artistic aesthetic to the product line and created

crave-worthy products that command a greater price point than those of competitors. The company's retail stores are among the nation's most successful and Jobs has crafted a drool-inspiring ecosystem that has wrapped the company's universe of products, accessories and services (from Mobile Me to iTunes and App Stores) into an impenetrable package.

8. Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE Lesson: Life is filled with tough decisions; face them head-on. In February 2009, GE(GE) shareholders got some relatively shocking news. In a move intended to trim more than $9 billion from its books, the company cut its quarterly dividend 68%, down to a dime from 31 cents. In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose that aired on PBS, Immelt described the move as "the hardest decision I ever had to face, or make." "We said, 'Look, we need more capital,' so we made that decision," he said. "The dividend hadn't been cut since 1938. I've been on the job long enough that I personally know a lot of the big individual shareholders and the people that really count on that. I can't even tell you how hard it was. I felt, personally, that I was letting all our investors down." 9. Jamie Dimon , CEO, JPMorgan Chase Lesson: Learn from your mistakes and failures. In a 2009 address at Harvard Business School, Dimon stressed that learning is a lifelong process, and not just in an academic sense. "I'm always hesitant to give advice because it sounds like I did it all right," he said. "I did not. What I am going to tell you is that I learned from the mistakes." "When you fail, it is OK to get depressed. It is OK to cry and go home. It is OK to blame others for a while," he said. "But eventually you have to get over it and move on. The greatest people who ever walked this planet -- people like Nelson Mandela and Lincoln - constantly had setbacks in life and failures. It happens all the time in business, and some of your success will be how you deal with failure, not how you deal with success." Reflecting on his previous job, Dimon added: "I tell people that Citigroup was my net worth, not my self-worth. I was able to move on."

10. Tony Hayward , Former CEO, BP Lesson: Words have as many consequences as actions. There is a reason corporations spend thousands upon thousands of dollars a year on inside and external PR teams: It is all about the talking points. In every press release that trips the wires and every interview an executive gives, extreme caution is given to ensure everything stays "on message." Leave improvisation to the comedy clubs. A good CEO can't speak off the cuff, especially in a time of crisis. Anyone whose personal or professional life requires the ability to suppress their internal monologue can learn a lot from Hayward's fate-sealing gaffes. While BP(BP) was at the center of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he was complaining that he "wanted his life back," playing the victim before heading off to a yacht race. The insensitive remark was, to say the least, not well-received. Notice Hayward is a former CEO. Hayward isn't alone in setting an example of why silence is golden. Goldman Sachs(GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein shook off a question about the firm's role in the financial crisis by suggesting, with a straight face, that they were "doing God's work." And Steve Job's pithy email response to an iPhone owner's complaint about the device's antenna and reception issues -- in essence that he was holding it wrong -provided plenty of head-shaking and NSFW punch lines.