After the Shooting, a New Reality for Leaders

Every evening after work, the CEO of a large firm would walk home from his office… until last week. After a prominent healthcare leader was shot and killed, security professionals convinced him to take a car instead.

The shooting on the streets of New York has become the dominant issue in boardrooms and C-suites around the country. Even though an arrest was made this week, organizations have eliminated photos and biographical details of executives from their websites and assigned them security teams. But experts also worry that the shooting could, in ways large and small, fundamentally change how executives—and potentially many more employees—think, talk, and act. “A real-world leadership challenge now is keeping people safe without losing our human touch,” says Kevin Cashman, vice chairman of Korn Ferry’s CEO and Enterprise Leadership practice.

Protecting executives has been a topic of increasing importance for boards for the last couple of years, says JP Sniffen, practice leader of Korn Ferry’s Military Center of Expertise who recently helped launch the firm’s new security practice. Organizations might be rethinking which events—whether it’s a conference or even a dinner with employees and clients—a leader really has to attend. Plus, they’re assessing whether CEOs should have more bodyguards, be guarded for more hours, or both. Physical protection is not cheap. The average S&P 500 company spends about $100,000 a year on security for its CEO, according to Equilar, but multiple firms spend $2 million or more.

Besides physical security, directors have emphasized keeping executives safe from threats, online or offline. That’s one reason many organizations are now rethinking how much personal information to publish about their leaders. “These things don’t have to be violent to be dangerous,” Sniffen says.

The killing of the healthcare executive, who wasn’t even his company’s top leader, might make some organizations rethink security not only for the CEO, but also, potentially, for nearly everyone else. Indeed, in some cases, it’s the public-facing employees or lower-level executives who travel extensively who might face greater risk than executives.

Violence is the third-leading cause of deaths at workplaces in the United States, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, 14% of the more than 5,300 workplace fatalities involved intentional injury by another person. That figure doesn’t include other instances in which employees were targeted outside the office because of who they work for. “Employees want to know that the company has their back,” says David Vied, global sector leader of Korn Ferry’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics practice.

Experts say that organizations need to clearly define who makes the security decisions. In many organizations, human-resources and security divisions may go back and forth about who has the final say. “Both want to solve the issue,” says Dan Kaplan, senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Chief Human Resources Officers practice. At the same time, leaders run the risk of changing behaviors too much in the name of security. Directors have made clear they want to balance protecting the CEO with maintaining access to them and the rest of the leadership team, Sniffen says.

Plus, in this era of transparency, employees, customers, and investors might not embrace leaders who are always behind a wall of security guards, only speak in platitudes, or are never seen in person. Changes to security procedures won’t eliminate the need to answer tough questions, says Peter McDermott, senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Corporate Affairs Center of Expertise. Organizations in general, and leaders in particular, will need to devote more time to considering how they answer those questions and how the answers impact their brands.

Ultimately, experts worry that as the emphasis on security grows, the pipeline of future leadership candidates could thin out. Kate Shattuck, a Korn Ferry managing partner, points out that younger employees, concerned with their own work-life balance, have already shown less willingness to become managers. Now a new consideration—personal safety—may loom large in the minds of many future leaders.  “Is physical bravery now a requirement for public company leadership?” she asks. And if so, “will people want to be CEO anymore?”

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