IBM‘s CEO spent hours in the cafeteria with junior employees.

When Mr Arvind Krishna became CEO of IBM in 2020, he inherited a company that had 19 consecutive quarters of shrinking revenue. IBM was the only major US tech firm to have shrunk in market value over the previous eight years.

Most new CEOs would have started with a restructuring memo. Arvind Krishna started by listening.

On a trip to India, he walked into the IBM cafeteria and sat down. He stayed for hours, chatting with whoever approached him, answering questions, sharing market insights, socializing with team members, sometimes until early morning.

Krishna had joined IBM in 1990 as a researcher and spent 30 years climbing through labs and cloud divisions. Colleagues describe him as soft-spoken, relaxed, and accessible.

He wasn’t the loudest voice in any room. He had one habit that separated him: he genuinely listened.

That listening led to the boldest bet in IBM’s recent history. When a researcher presented early work on large language models in 2021, a full year before ChatGPT, Krishna recognized the shift and redirected investments into AI and hybrid cloud.

The result? IBM’s stock hit record highs.

Leadership presence isn’t about commanding a room. It’s about being fully in it, impacting them in a profound way.

The smart CEOs I work with learn and enhance the same lesson Krishna demonstrated – listening deeply, being fully present.

A CEO Coach could help CEOs here.

About the Author:

PK Narayanan is a CEO Coach based in Bengaluru, supporting CEOs, Founders and Business Owners Scale-up their Leadership Impact.

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