More than professional
The CEO pay ratio is calculated by dividing the CEO’s compensation by the pay of the median employee, meaning half of a company’s workers make more and half make less. In ‘19, the CEO of Wells Fargo made 550x more money than the median Wells Fargo employee.
The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest decoration in the American armed forces, reserved for the highest acts of valor.
There’ve been just 3,508 recipients since it was created in 1861.
One of those recipients is US Army Lieutenant Colonel William Swenson, who earned the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty” while serving in Afghanistan.
Here’s the short version of what happened that day in 2009.
Captain Swenson and his small combat team were escorting Afghan coalition leaders who’d arranged a meeting with some village elders.
They were walking toward a small village together as the sun was rising.
And they were ambushed.
150 Taliban fighters surrounded them on three sides and opened fire with machine guns.
Captain Swenson immediately returned fire and tried to call in air support on his radio. Planes. Combat helicopters. Anything.
But the Army leadership said, “Sorry Captain Swenson, you’re too close to that village. We can’t risk killing civilians.”
Bullets flew. Americans and Afghan allies were hit.
At first, Captain Swenson took cover. But as he watched his comrades fall, he ran deep into live fire again and again to rescue the wounded and pull out the dead. The fight lasted hours.
An American medevac helicopter eventually appeared in the sky, and Captain Swenson guided it to land. One of the medics happened to be wearing a GoPro on his helmet, and the footage shows Captain Swenson rescuing soldiers and carrying them to safety.
Upon landing, the GoPro footage shows Captain Swenson and another soldier carrying a wounded soldier toward the helicopter. Sergeant Kenneth Westbrook had been shot in the neck.
They placed the wounded sergeant in the helicopter, and then Captain William Swenson does something unexpected. He bends over and kisses Sgt. Westbrook.
Then he turns around and returns to the fight to rescue more.
Valor.
Why did William Swenson risk his own life so brazenly? Why did he kiss his injured sergeant?
That’s more than professionalism. More than duty.
That’s leadership. Even love.
Among the 1,000 biggest companies in America, CEOs make an average of 144x more than their median employee each year. These numbers feel ridiculous to many of us. Even criminal.
But the main reason we get so frustrated with CEO comp isn’t because of the numbers. Not really. It’s not just the numbers.
We get frustrated because we don’t trust most of them as leaders. We don’t believe they really care about the rest of us. We certainly don’t believe they love us.
If we did, maybe we’d feel differently about their compensation.
“Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi?
How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa?
Do we have an issue with that? None at all.
Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.”
- Simon Sinek
… they’d sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.
Leadership isn’t a rank or title. It’s a behavior.
Leaders face danger first. They take risks they don’t expect us to take. They eat last. They don’t ask us to do things they wouldn’t do. They make sacrifices so their teams can feel safe and protected.
They behave like Captain William Swenson.
When we believe a leader loves us… that they’d run into danger to rescue us, and even kiss our foreheads. We’re willing to do the hard work. We wake up early. We spend our organization’s money wisely. We want to help bring their vision to life.
When leaders are more than professional, we trust them.
We’re willing to make sacrifices of our own.
Because we know they’d do the same for us.
