Play nice in race to the top

Among many reasons Julie Sweet was named Accenture chief executive was that she excelled at praising rivals for the top job.

Julie Sweet’s rise to chief executive of Accenture is attributed in part to her praise of colleagues also seeking the job.

Julie Sweet won a recent internal race to take command of consulting giant Accenture for many reasons. Among the most unusual: she excelled at praising colleagues she competed against for the top job, an individual familiar with Accenture says.

Getting along well with your peers counts for a lot when you vie for the same plum promotion. Your management career may benefit even if you lose the race. Yet it can be hard to co-operate and compete at the same time.

More corporate boards are scrutinising whether internal chief executive prospects play nicely with each other, directors and executive coaches say. Chief executive succession contests at big businesses such as Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Walt Disney can be hotly contested and take years.

Moving up has long represented the most popular path to the corner office. About 73 per cent of the heads of S&P 500 companies who were selected last year came from within, compared with 69 per cent in 2017, according to executive ­recruitment firm Spencer Stuart. This year BMW, Schlumberger and Vertex Pharmaceuticals tapped insiders as their next chief executive.

Employers now prefer to elevate highly collaborative executives. “Today, inclusion and col­laboration are the declared values of a lot of large organisations because those qualities demonstrate effective leadership,’’ Waterman Hurst founder and chief executive Janice Waterman says. The provider of leadership career services often counsels executives about how to work with competitors for higher-level spots.

Sweet previously ran Accenture’s North American unit, which accounts for almost half of the company’s revenue. During the race to be chief executive, though some internal criticism surfaced of her unit and her performance, she stayed positive, the person with knowledge says.

An Accenture spokeswoman declined to comment. Sweet ­declined to be interviewed about her advancement, which took ­effect last month.

Senior managers frequently discover that a promotion competitor subtly undermines them, such as by stealing credit for their accomplishments. Leadership specialists suggest asking an influential internal mentor to confirm this mistreatment and alert decision-makers. Your mentor also “can be a sounding board for managing your emotions”, says Noah Eisenkraft, a visiting scholar at Duke University who has studied workplace rivalry. “You have the stress of competing for the management promotion.”

You may reduce that stress by speaking to associates and agreeing to not denigrate each other when you pursue the same promotion. The strategy succeeded for several executives advised by Paul Winum, co-head of board and chief executive services for leadership development firm RHR International. “Addressing the elephant in the room can help diffuse some of the tension that naturally occurs in these competitive situations,” he says.

Rachel Moniz used a different approach to compete co-operatively with a colleague of HEI ­Hotels & Resorts, which runs 83 US hotels, as they each were considered to become its next executive vice-president of operations.

Moniz says she sought to avoid any impression that she was sabotaging her rival during their succession contest. For example, she worked on projects for him and his group rather than assign those duties to her staff members.

“By not delegating, I made sure his region was properly attended to,’’ she says. Moniz won the promotion, and began her new role in January. She urges ambitious executives to focus on forging strong bonds with possible internal competitors “even prior to raising your hand for a promotion”.

That’s exactly what Charles Urbain and Kasper Jakobsen did before they competed to lead Mead Johnson Nutrition, a baby-food maker whose products ­include Enfamil infant formula. The pair had worked well together since 1998, when Jakobsen joined as a marketing middle manager and Urbain already was a seasoned Mead executive.

“I helped him a lot to find his feet (there),” Urbain says.

“Mutual respect followed and allowed us to develop a close friendship,’’ Jakobsen says.

During the subsequent horse race, both promised to work for the victor or keep the loser. Jakobsen ­rose to chief executive in 2013.

Urbain says he felt disappointed but didn’t quit because he loved his long-time employer and Jakobsen needed him.

“In my experience, runners-up for CEO rarely stay beyond an ­elegant transition period,” Spencer Stuart’s North American chief executive practice head James Citrin says. “They usually leave to take the top job elsewhere or ­because they didn’t quite mesh with the new CEO.”

Four years ago, Jakobsen chose Urbain to be his chief operating officer. The executives left Mead following its 2017 acquisition by Reckitt Benckiser.

The Wall Street Journal