What CFOs want in a CEO.

• Position: Chief financial officers - Panel Discussion

Does your CEO have a habit that drives you mad? A leadership quality you try to emulate? Maybe both? It seems like every CFO has a story about his or her CEO, whether it's love 'em, hate 'em or somewhere in between. Here, seven CFOs give us their recipes (with variations) for the perfect CEO.

PARLEZ: What characteristics do you as CFOs want to see in your CEOs? Is it people skills, creativity, familiarity with finance, willpower, charisma, brains or all of the above?

APPLEGATE: I think leadership is extremely important for the CEO. He should be able to demonstrate through example that he can lead his people, guide them into the future and make the company successful.

PARLEZ: How would you define leadership, Tom?

APPLEGATE: The ability to anticipate activity in the marketplace that the company needs to react to or plan for, the ability to assess critical situations from a business standpoint and make a decision, and being there when people need him, so that he's really walking the walk rather than just talking the talk.

STANFORD: A leader is inspirational to the people working for him or her, and he or she makes CFOs and other supervisors want to perform at the highest level possible. That person is a visionary and can create a team.

GREEN: But does a CEO need charisma? I think it's more important to have clear vision. Charisma sometimes gets in the way of being a good business person. I'm looking for a consistent vision, not one that's changing all the time. It's difficult to do your job if the vision is not articulated or is inconsistent.

STANFORD: You used an extremely important word - articulate. I've found that communications in both directions are really important to the whole process, and the ability to listen is a problem with a CEO who's dynamic and visionary and out on the leading edge. The CEO often isn't able to hear and understand what the CFO and other team members are saying. It's important to be able to do that, because the CEO who can assimilate all that information and weed out the unimportant stuff can actually make better decisions.

ROSSINI: Sometimes the CEO doesn't appear to be a good listener because he may already have his mind made up, so he doesn't hear all the underlying facts when he's presented with another opinion. Some CEOs will listen and consider new evidence, but others have the attitude "I want you guys to give me some facts to support this decision we've already made."

McMILLAN: Certainly you'd like the CEO to be a good communicator and a good listener. But I have a CEO who listens too well to everyone and anyone with a new idea. We joke that we have quality improvement du jour. It's just too much activity. He actually is a pretty good CEO, but I'd like him to be a bit more focused in some of the things he does. Good listening skills carried to the point of changing tactics too frequently is confusing.

STANFORD: Mine was just the opposite problem, so I guess you need to have a balance.

PARLEZ: If he's continually changing his mind, there's no consistency.

McMILLAN: He wants people to try too many things, so they're confused about whether he's changing his strategy. Young people especially are new to the business and aren't sure exactly what they're supposed to do, so it's often difficult to make sense of changes in tactics and direction. I'd rather have the CEO take a strong stance on some very fundamental things, instead of trying so many different new ideas that he confuses the message.

GREEN: My CEO likes to toss ideas against the wall to see if they stick. That's fine, as long as you think through the ramifications to the organization. Often a CEO's ideas are totally contrary to the way we do business. Now that's good, because you need to do out-of-the-box thinking. By the same token, you should be conscious of the impact you'll have on your company. Generally, successful companies have developed the systems, procedures and policies to do something very well. If you throw these things out the window, you get off on a tangent, and then you can't do well.

APPLEGATE: That's why knowledge and wisdom are key. When I say knowledge, I mean a broad base of knowledge about the company - the individual generally understands all aspects of the business. The CEO doesn't necessarily have to be an expert in every area, but at least he or she should know that if you've got a balloon filled with water and you push it here, something's going to happen down at the other end. On the wisdom side, the CEO should be insightful - able to take what somebody says and look through it, because people don't always say what they mean in meetings; they're somewhat guarded. You need to sift through the verbs and the nouns to really comprehend their underlying meaning.

My situation is perhaps a bit different because my CEO happens to be Japanese. True to Japanese management style...