CEOs Who Get It

Much like a head coach in professional sports, CEOs are the first to be toasted for the success of their organization or roasted for its failures. It's a pressure-cooker position that must make way for the bottom line, while cultivating a company's personality, culture and stature in the community. It's leadership. It's team building. It's managing the management. Above all, it's recognizing that a sound, professionally versatile workforce is the best defense against the countless challenges of the marketplace.

In our third installment of Training's annual Movers and Shakers issue, we shift our focus from training visionaries to where the buck stops. With so many CEOs falling from grace lately—going from paragons to pariahs—it's easy to lose sight of those who capably lead their companies with integrity and imagination.

In the following pages, we celebrate 11 top executives who extend those qualities to the realm of training and development. While setting the tone as leaders and voices of their companies, these CEOs also get their hands dirty in the minutiae of daily business operations. They do more than approve training programs; in many cases they design, initiate and deliver them. They not only promote mentoring and coaching, they are mentors and coaches. Above all, they put into practice the greatest form of inspiration: They lead by example.

Collectively, these 11 CEOs have a quarter of a million employees at their charge. We applaud them for giving them all a face.