“They had a private bar on the top floor!”: The good, bad and ugly of management role modelling

The newly announced CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol, hit the headlines in August after it was disclosed that he intended to commute 1,000 miles from his home in California to the company HQ in Seattle on a private jet. 

How is this consistent, people asked, with the lofty statement in the firm’s Global Impact Report, stating a “decades-long commitment to find solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change”? Answer: it isn’t. So what is good management role modelling? What is bad? And what’s just plain ugly?

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“A great example of positive role modelling came from the new CEO for Vodafone Pacific,” says Dr Stacey Ashley, an adviser based in Sydney, Australia, who helps “future proof” CEOs by helping to develop their leadership skills. 

“The organisation had an exceptionally poor meeting culture. This CEO was a busy individual, yet he was never late for a meeting, was always prepared, always contributed and finished his own meetings on time. If someone else’s meeting ran over time, he excused himself and went to his next meeting, so he was on time. 

“Within the space of six weeks, the meeting culture had changed for the better, and he had not said a word about it – he had simply role modelled.”