Survey: These Companies Set the Standard for Leadership

In case you’re looking for a company from which you can pluck your next association CEO, you probably couldn’t do better than Procter & Gamble. That said, if you have to settle for IBM or General Electric, that’s still a pretty good problem to have.

So says a new report from Chally Group Worldwide  (opens in a new tab) ranking the top companies for leadership. The fourth annual Global Leadership Research initiative, a survey of more than 3,000 C-level and human resources executives, ranked that trio as the top organizations from which to recruit among public companies with more than $1 billion in revenue. (These three companies also scored a similar ranking last year, though the second-place IBM and third-place GE switched places.)

What can you learn from these companies? Read on:

A focus on training: In an article summarizing the results, Chief Executive magazine notes that the three companies differ slightly in their approach, but each has an executive training program of some kind. In top-ranked P&G’s case, the process involves offsite training sessions and careful vetting  (opens in a new tab). IBM has a Basic Blue for IBM Leader program, which guides new employees along career paths. And GE has a training facility of its own, the John F. Welch Learning Center in Crotonville, New York  (opens in a new tab). “Chances are, a lot of people have great ideas for growth and innovation,” GE CEO Jeff Immelt told the magazine. “It’s up to us to develop a disciplined process to sort them out and encourage our talented people to generate them.”

Other companies doing it right: Chally cites a number of other companies that have shown signs of success in recent years. Number 4 with a bullet on the list of large, public companies is Accenture, which wasn’t even ranked a year ago; the same can be said for Unilever, listed directly behind it in fifth place. Both have executive leadership programs of their own. And in the sphere of private companies, Deloitte topped Chally’s list, which Chief Executive credits to the firm’s strong focus on recruiting millennials  (opens in a new tab).

The full list of top companies in both the public  (opens in a new tab) and private sectors  (opens in a new tab) is available on the Chief Executive website, and the full report will be made available by Chally  (opens in a new tab) later this month.

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