These Are The Typical Character Traits Of Today's CEOs. Prepare To Weep
What does it take to reach the pinnacle? High BS ability, perhaps?
I’ve met quite a few CEOs in my time.
Many fancied themselves as having presence. Of one sort or another.
But today’s tech-dominated, data-driven world has surely thrown up some vastly different characters, ones whose presence seems to signify a particular absence of what might be called human consciousness.
Invite Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos to a party and it would have all the boisterous atmosphere of a single-person yoga retreat.
In a Carmelite monastery.
At first glance, the modern techworld CEO is the epitome of machine learning with a little humanity sprinkled on top.
I was moved, therefore, to spasms of acid reflux on hearing that this may not quite be the full picture.
The Economist poked me towards recent research, among which was a study conducted by Steve Kaplan, he of the University of Chicago and Morten Sorensen, he of the Tuck School of Business.
They sought to examine what traits were possessed by those who aspire to the most exalted positions of the capitalist hierarchy.
Here’s a glorious sentence: “Where aspiring chief financial officers are more analytical and focus on the detail, would-be CEOs score higher on charisma, on getting things done and on strategic thinking.”
You knew that already, didn’t you?
Except for the charisma part.
And the strategic thinking part.
And the “have you ever seen Tim Cook?” part.
Where was the part that measured “skill in taking credit for other people’s work.”?
As I may have already mentioned, too many current tech CEOs come across as mere vessels.
They’re vassals of the big machine, being directed by it almost as much as they’re directing it. (Is this a good moment to mention China?)
But here’s another eye-quivering sentence: “By tracking the subsequent careers of candidates, the academics find that people who were applying for a different position but had ‘CEO-like’ characteristics were more likely eventually to wind up in the top job.”
If it looks like a boss, sounds like a boss and BS’s like a boss, then it must be a boss.
The research insists, though, that companies are indeed looking for a greater grasp of so-called softer skills.
In some circles these might be better described as “signs of actual humanity.”
The gloriously manipulative emotional intelligence industry claims to have subtle answers to gaining so-called emotional intelligence, so that you, too, can become a big-shit CEO.
In truth, the emotional intelligence industry has risen merely to satisfy the identification of actual human behavior in a prickly haystack of championing success by any means.
You can really lose your humanity when you’re grasping for every large-numbered dollar bill you can.
You’ll tell me that at least the likes of Pichai, Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are more human than their famed predecessors.
I’ll tell you that my large orange coffee mug is too.
Shortly before I remind you that Steve Jobs was a touch more charismatic than Tim Cook.
Shortly before I tell you that those who have done business with him tell me that Cook isn’t quite the nicest, most friendly type when he’s agreeing to a deal.
Do you really think that Zuckerberg and Bezos are isolated cases of founders without feelings?
I still emit a painful chuckle every time I remember that Bezos went up into space and then thanked all those who had toiled for a pittance to finance his ability to do it.
“You guys paid for all this,” he said.
They certainly did.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. (Oddly, this has never happened before.)
Perhaps it’s merely founders who are humanity-free and their successors who are somehow more decent. (There’s little evidence of that at Amazon.)
Oh, but The Economist points to another bracing piece of research, this time from Stanford — home to so many of the more successful tech types.
Hark at this: “As many as 18 percent of bosses are considered narcissists by their own board members, a prevalence rate perhaps three times that of the general American population.”
But no, no. Please don’t think that these up-themselves egos are entirely selfish.
“The researchers also find that firms with narcissistic CEOs tend to have higher scores for their environmental, social and governance policies,” says The Economist.
You see, they need to appear caring to bolster their own egos.
This CEO business is very difficult.
You have a lot of people to please.
Most of them live inside your head.