became CEO of Siemens USA last year, after a decade of executive positions.She learned that there is no correct way to be a leader, as long as you utilize your strengths to drive results.is a collection of exclusive interviews with leaders of the world's largest companies.
"I had leaders communicate to me all the time in my mid-career, 'Hey, Barb, we really like you and you make great contributions — you're just not executive material,'" Siemens USA CEOHumpton became CEO of the German engineering conglomerate's American branch last June, after a decade of executive roles at various corporations. She credits her career success to recognizing that the whole idea of"executive material" was a lie.
She's naturally an optimist, she said, and is energetic and enthusiastic. The bias was also linked to overt sexism: As she told Time last year, a leader at IBM once said in 1990 that she had to choose between being a mother or being an executive. But even if someone had the best intentions with their advice, the prevailing wisdom of the day was that Humpton would have to be more stern and suppress part of her personality."In the first 20 years of my career, management theory at the time was they wanted to teach us how to correct our deficiencies. 'We want to teach you how to be the leader that you need to be and so we're going to send you to school,' and I wasn't one to fit the mold.
The mold certainly didn't equate with good leadership. As business consultant Marcus Buckingham noted in his best-selling management guide from 1999,"
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