Whether a first-time CEO or stepping into a visible leadership role, you will face a number of high stakes decisions during the critical first months of the role. Given the high risk of executive transition failures (estimated to be nearly 50% by some experts), you are understandably cautious.

For our book, the CEO Next Door, we analyzed 2,600 executive assessments conducted by our leadership advisory firm ghSMART to discover the essential behaviors strong CEOs share, and the unexpected lessons senior executives learn during their first year. We assumed their biggest challenges emanated from the myriad expectations of the Board, Wall Street analysts, investors, or employees. However, we learned that their primary regret was making seemingly safe people decisions that turned out to be anything but.