What Sets Successful CEOs Apart

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Our findings challenged many widely held assumptions. For example, our analysis revealed that while boards often gravitate (被吸引) toward charismatic extroverts, introverts are slightly more likely to surpass the expectations of their boards and investors. We were also surprised to learn that virtually all CEO candidates had made material mistakes (重大错误) in the past, and 45% of them had had at least one major career blowup (崩溃) that ended a job or was extremely costly to the business. Yet more than 78% of that subgroup of candidates ultimately won the top job. In addition, we found that educational pedigree (or lack thereof) in no way correlated to performance: Only 7% of the high-performing CEOs we studied had an undergraduate Ivy League (长春藤联盟) education, and 8% of them didn’t graduate from college at all.

And when we compared the qualities that boards respond well to in candidate interviews with those that help leaders perform better, the overlap was vanishingly (难以察觉地；趋于零地) small. For example, high confidence more than doubles a candidate’s chances of being chosen as CEO but provides no advantage in performance on the job. In other words, what makes candidates look good to boards has little connection to what makes them succeed in the role.

But our most important discovery was that successful chief executives tend to demonstrate four specific behaviors that prove critical to their performance. We also found that when boards focus on those behaviors in their selection and development processes, they significantly increase their chances of hiring the right CEO. And our research and experience suggest that when leaders who aspire (渴望；立志；追求) to the CEO’s office—87% of executives, according to a 2014 survey from Korn Ferry—deliberately develop those behaviors, they dramatically raise the odds that they’ll become high-performing chief executives.

The Four Behaviors

It’s rare for successful leaders to excel at all four behaviors. However, when we dug (挖，翻土（dig的过去式和过去分词）) through our data, looking at the ratings our consultants had given candidates when evaluating them on fit for a CEO job and performance on 30 management competencies (能力，胜任特征) (for example, holding people accountable (负责任的) and the ability to motivate a team), we found an interesting connection. Roughly half the strong candidates (who had earned an A overall on a scale of A, B, or C) had distinguished (区别，卓越的) themselves in more than one of the four essential behaviors, while only 5% of the weak candidates (who earned a B or C) had.

The behaviors we’re about to describe sound deceptively (看似；不像看上去那么；比实际更显得) simple. But the key is to practice them with maniacal (疯狂的，狂热的) consistency, which our work reveals is a great challenge for many leaders.

See you tomorrow