CEO Qualities: Who Will Rise to the Top?

The Society of Independent Show Organizers has two main meetings: one in the spring for CEOs, and another in the summer for senior executives.

It was thinking about the difference between the two meetings that gave Tradeshow Week editors the idea for this and the other stories that follow in our special section for SISO's Executive Conference at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers Aug. 1–3.

One way of looking at it is that the attendees at one meeting (the Executive Conference) are the future attendees of the other (the CEO Summit). The question we had was: Which ones? If someone was to survey the crowd of executives gathered in New York City, could he or she pick out those who are destined for the 2012 CEO Summit? And what are the qualities that lead to that conclusion?

As Contributing Editor Diane Taylor details in her story about education (Page 12), it doesn't necessarily have to do with formal training; at the same time, our readers' poll (Page 18) illustrates that there's a lot the former heads of industry associations wish they'd known before they were handed the reigns. The profiles of people we predict will move up (Page 6) further suggest that top positions in the exhibition industry are gained by savvy and a certain personality type, rather than a prescribed path that anyone can follow to the CEO's chair.

It all makes finding and grooming future tradeshow leaders more of an art than a science.

John McGeary of Reed Exhibitions said the company has stopped using recruiters, preferring instead to rely on referrals, often from within the industry.

He called it "building the bench" and described the process like this: "In a lot of cases we've hired someone for an entry-level position in a group called event support. They support all the teams in the building, from marketing to operations to sales. They do a lot of the day-to-day administrative work for the team. Since they touch on so many different departments, they get a chance to see where they want to take their career."

Often the bench-warmers are right out of college and get training along the way, he added. To test their skills and advancement potential, superiors will give them opportunities to help with more important tasks.

McGeary estimated that 20 out of the 320 people in his office have come to the company in that way.

Stephen Pia, media sales trainer and founder of CoachMedia, said he'd like to see a little less recycling of people already in the industry and an infusion of creativity from outside.

He believes that for tradeshows to continue to succeed, some things — like too much focus on exhibitors and not enough on attendees — will have to change, and CEOs will have to have the vision that inspires those changes from the top down.

"Any emerging CEO in the event industry has to have some digital knowledge," Pia said. "Community-building is almost entirely digital-based now. I can think of 10 to 12 CEOs in the business right now, and none of them have that background. They've come up through the old school. You can't fake that understanding. You have to start investing in the training."

Something else Pia said he'd like to see less of is CEOs with a background in finance. Too often, he added, "they don't have a creative bone in their body, yet you throw a spreadsheet in front of them and they get all excited."

The emerging CEO has to be strategic, not tactical. "Leave the spreadsheets at the door," Pia added. "That's what you hired your COO for."

McGeary added that the willingness to take risks is more important than it used to be. "Those in charge today are risk takers, but in order to grow, we're going to have to take even more risks in the future," he said.

McGeary and Pia, along with Dan Cole, vice president of sales for the Consumer Electronics Assn., were on a panel presentation titled "The New Breed in Executive Sales Management" Aug. 2, at the SISO Executive Conference.