I think we need to look at this from economic theory point of view. Being nice and being asshole - both have its own cost and ultimately how you should behave d

I think we need to look at this from economic theory point of view. Being nice and being asshole - both have its own cost and ultimately how you should behave depends on what gives you the most gain. The general theory that being nice always works and has zero cost is probably an emotional view. Sometime back it was in believed that founders ruthless and openly asshole personality often won the business wars. Everyone wanted to be CEOs like Gates, Grove, Bozos, Ellison and Jobs. And it actually worked for them. Despite of them being assholes (as per various well documented anecdotes) they attracted great talents and they pushed people to do seemingly impossible. But surprisingly it didn't worked for vast majority of other founders. I have often thought about this and my theory is that successful "asshole" CEOs had accumulated lots of credit in fame and money. They would frequently be features on covers with giant headline praising them as super humans. This is the credit that shielded them from consequences of being an asshole. Being always nice has a price: You might end up creating environment where mediocre is perceived as being tolerated, transparency gets some hit, the cultural values you want to push doesn't get as much traction as you hoped and you must constantly find creative ways to wordsmith your statements as opposed to just be honest with plain language. As a CEO you want to reduce this price and shortest path to that is just say and do what you think is the right thing regardless of how other person will feel. Obviously doing this has its own cost. The bottom line is that you can pay the cost of being an asshole if you have accumulated tons of media credit by getting featured on cover stories and tons of PR behind you. But otherwise this can sink you.