Narrator: What if the person best suited to run a multi-billion dollar company wasn't the charismatic Ivy League graduate with a flawless resume, but the person who used to drive your garbage truck? In 2005, Don Slager was the COO of Republic Services, a waste disposal giant. He’d started his career driving a garbage truck at 2:45 A.M. every day, had no college degree, and never saw himself as CEO material. Yet, when the top job opened up, leadership advisors saw something others missed: a set of behaviors that marked him for success. Slager eventually took the role, and under his leadership, the company's market cap nearly doubled to $22 billion. His story shatters our most cherished myths about what a leader looks like.

This is the central puzzle explored in The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People into World-Class Leaders by Elena Lytkina Botelho and Kim Rosenkoetter Powell. Drawing on a massive dataset of 17,000 leadership assessments, the authors dismantle the stereotype of the corner office and reveal a data-driven truth: greatness in leadership isn't about pedigree, but about a specific set of learnable behaviors.

Narrator: The book’s core finding is that successful CEOs are not defined by their background, education, or personality type, but by four specific, observable behaviors. These are not inborn traits but skills that can be developed.

The first is Decisiveness. High-performing CEOs make decisions faster and with greater conviction. They understand that a wrong decision is often better than no decision at all. For example, when Steve Gorman became CEO of Greyhound Lines in 2003, the company was losing millions. His team was paralyzed by analysis, debating endless options to fix the bus network. Instead of waiting for perfect data, Gorman made a swift, bold call based on a simple satellite map showing population density. He restructured the entire route system around high-yield regional networks. It was a huge risk, but his decisiveness broke the stalemate. Four years later, the company went from a $140 million loss to a $30 million profit.

The other three behaviors are Engaging for Impact, which is the ability to rally stakeholders to drive results, not just to be liked; Relentless Reliability, the practice of consistently delivering on commitments, which the data shows is the only behavior that doubles an executive’s chance of being hired and succeeding in the role; and Adapting Boldly, the courage to navigate uncertainty and let go of what worked in the past. Together, these four behaviors form the "CEO Genome," a blueprint for effective leadership.

Narrator: The journey to the C-suite is rarely a straight, predictable climb. The authors found that the fastest-rising leaders use what they call "Career Catapults"—specific, career-defining moves that dramatically accelerate their trajectory. There are three primary types.

The first is The Big Leap, which involves taking on a role that is a significant stretch, often one you feel underqualified for. This forces rapid learning and demonstrates immense potential. The second is Go Small to Go Big, a counterintuitive move where a leader leaves a large, prestigious company for a smaller role at a smaller organization. This provides broader, hands-on experience, such as P&L responsibility, that is often hard to get in a corporate giant.

The third, and perhaps most powerful, is The Big Mess. This involves volunteering to clean up a major problem—a failed project, a struggling division, or a full-blown crisis. Bruce, a former Marine on the executive track at an aerospace company, saw an ad for a chief administrative officer for a bankrupt county. It was a high-risk, high-visibility disaster. He took the job, faced intense political opposition, and engineered a complete financial turnaround. This success put him on the map, leading directly to C-level offers and eventually the CEO role at a Fortune 500 company. These catapults show that a career is not a ladder to be climbed, but a portfolio of experiences to be built.

Narrator: One of the book's most critical lessons is that getting great results is only half the battle. To advance, a leader must also get noticed for those results. The authors stress that your career trajectory is the output of two factors: your performance and your visibility.

This requires a deliberate strategy for becoming known. The story of Christopher, an Australian executive, perfectly illustrates this. He had a stellar track record, running a billion-dollar division and consistently delivering results. Yet, he was stuck. He kept making the short list for CEO jobs but never closed the deal. When he sought advice from the authors, they told him his problem wasn't his performance, but his network. He was underinvesting in getting known by the people who could hire him.

Taking this advice, Christopher reengineered his time. He joined an influential industry board, built a "kitchen cabinet" of senior advisors, and proactively reached out to decision-makers at private equity firms. Within a year, a recruiter called with the perfect CEO opportunity, a role he secured because he was no longer an unknown quantity. Visibility isn't about shameless self-promotion; it's about strategically building relationships with sponsors who can advocate for you when you're not in the room.

Narrator: The final hurdle—the CEO interview—is a psychological game. The authors reveal that boards, often anxious about the high cost of a bad hire, don't always pick the candidate with the highest potential upside. Instead, they gravitate toward the "safe choice." Your job as a candidate is to make yourself that safe choice.

This involves projecting both competence and likeability, a combination the authors call the "Happy Warrior." It also means demonstrating that all-important behavior: relentless reliability. However, the book uncovers a fascinating bias. An investment firm once hired a CEO for a struggling company. They bypassed candidates with direct, relevant experience in turning around mid-market businesses and instead chose an executive from a massive, brand-name corporation. He seemed like the safe bet. But he was too slow, too accustomed to a large support system, and the company continued to bleed cash. The board had confused a prestigious resume with a safe choice. True safety, the authors argue, comes from a proven track record of delivering results in a relevant context, not from the logo on a past business card.

Narrator: Getting the CEO job is one thing; succeeding in it is another. The role comes with five hidden hazards that can derail even the most promising leaders.

First is "The Ghouls in the Supply Closet," the hidden problems in the business you inherit. Second is "Entering Warp Speed," where the sheer volume and pace of demands force a complete rewiring of how you manage your time. Third is "Amplification," the reality that a CEO's every word and action is magnified and scrutinized. Tom Monahan, former CEO of CEB, once made a casual, nostalgic comment about his childhood in Boston during a visit to the local office. Years later, when the company was consolidating real estate, he was shocked to find Boston wasn't even considered for closure. His team had assumed the office was untouchable because of his offhand remark.

The fourth hazard is forgetting your role is a "Smartphone, Not a Calculator," meaning you must use all the levers of the business—culture, finance, diplomacy—not just the functional skills that got you there. Finally, the fifth hazard is "The C-Suite Is a Psychological Thunderdome," a place of intense pressure and loneliness that requires deliberate self-regulation to survive.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The CEO Next Door is its powerful democratization of leadership. Success is not a destiny reserved for a chosen few with perfect pedigrees. It is the outcome of mastering four specific behaviors—Decisiveness, Engaging for Impact, Relentless Reliability, and Adapting Boldly—and making strategic career choices to build a portfolio of experiences.

The book's true impact is that it replaces myth and anecdote with a data-driven roadmap, making the path to the top more transparent and attainable. It leaves us with a profound challenge: to stop self-selecting out of leadership roles because we don't fit a stereotype, and instead, to start intentionally cultivating the behaviors that truly define a world-class leader, right where we are today.