Q: You hear the term “heroic CEO” a lot lately. Has the way CEOs are perceived changed over the last few decades?
Q: Like Ozymandias?
A second cluster of factors has to do with recognition of others, concern for the welfare of employees, knowing who’s around you. It goes beyond interpersonal emotional intelligence to a sort of collective empathy. A third factor has to do with authenticity, and what came out on that dimension was the moral model that they set and their credibility, the proverbial walking of the talk. Then the fourth category has to do with setting inspirational goals. It is stretching people, setting higher standards. The fifth and last one, which is an especially problematic one in recent years, is what we called boldness—prudent risk-taking. Swashbuckling recklessness created such problems recently that we now see boards are excessively cautious and we have historically unrivaled hoarding of cash. Neither extreme is ideal.
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