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It's probably not going to be a popular sentiment around here, but other helpful factors are being tall, a full head of hair, and charisma. Unfortunately it oft
by M_Grey 10y ago
It's probably not going to be a popular sentiment around here, but other helpful factors are being tall, a full head of hair, and charisma. Unfortunately it often seems those qualities, while not the active ingredients in a good CEO, are the ones most often found in CEOs.
- ared38 10y agoAlso, have the luck to work on successful projects, as individual impact is impossible to measure.
- M_Grey 10y agoVery true, although you can probably enhance luck with canny political wrangling and the like.
- 0x8p97yc0s 10y agoSeems like charisma would be pretty valuable for anyone delegating or making external deals.
- M_Grey 10y agoIt is, but it can unfortunately blind people to a lack of other qualifications. Of course, I don't mean that "charismatic people are unqualified". Obviously Steve Jobs was quite charismatic and did impressive things for his company. Bill Gates meanwhile, I like a lot more as a person, but I'd find it hard to argue for his "classical" CEO creds of charisma and imposing presence.
- MusaTheRedGuard 10y agoAlso being white and male.
- quonn 10y agoTrue, but let's not forget that in California 70% of the population is white. 6% are black. Most of those are at a disadvantage early on (parents, location/city, schools) before they may even start working. So it is not surprising that many CEOs are white, too. The problem is not at the C-level ...
- gxs 10y agoGood on you for trying, but people expect to see 50% black CEOs, Oscar winners, and government officials even though that's not how our population is distributed, nevermind population of colleges and certain majors.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe 2010 census [0] gave different numbers. Are you using a different source? [0] http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/p...
- djcapelis 10y agoWell! That settles it I guess. It's a good thing our state isn't 50% women or else we'd have to consider systemic issues! Wait. Shit!
- quonn 10y agoCharisma is hard to quickly measure and height might be a bit more work, but I sampled 10 of the CEOs of the largest German companies [0]. Most of them did _not_ have a full head of hair. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorstandsvorsitzender#Liste_der_Vorstandsvorsitzenden_der_DAX-Unternehmen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorstandsvorsitzender#Liste_de...
- galago 10y agoAll men.
- quonn 10y agoCorrect. The post I replied to did not talk about possible gender issues, but about certain (physical) characteristics that CEOs supposedly have.
- bsder 10y agoGermany also has a much longer tradition of promoting engineers rather than sales, marketing, and finance types.
- M_Grey 10y agoThis hurts to admit, but when I searched to find where I had gotten that idea... it was a survey on USA Today! I'm ashamed. In fact what I did find was a bunch of CEO's expressing a total willingness to be spear bald if it they could gain a few inches of height. So please disregard the hair comment, I was wrong.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoLike this [0] guy? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
- paulddraper 10y agoClear case of success via good looks.
- M_Grey 10y agoChecks height 5'8" damn it. Well at least you have to admit that he's a latter day Adonis. Ok, maybe he's the exception that proves the rule? Kidding aside, "not all" has to be implied in any broad description of a group like this. Bill Gates would be another example of someone who enjoyed incredible success without those qualities.
- erpellan 10y agoBoth of those guys became CEO by founding the company. You want to look at CEOs who were hired/promoted to the role.
- avindroth 10y agoThat's certainly true, and if you can, you should improve your first impressions (plastic surgery, fashion, and later genetic cosmetics I hopefully imagine). Of course charisma also includes a whole lot of other things (psych, NLP) and that is quite a rabbit hole, but a worthwhile one. But for things you can't change, I wouldn't quite worry. Because you can't change it. There are too many things you can change, why worry about being taller? For statistical analysis, you are absolutely right. For personal growth, that statistic is probably irrelevant.
- M_Grey 10y agoThat's pretty much true, and even when it isn't there's no way to tell except in hindsight. It's best to give your full effort and as you say, try to relentlessly self-improve, because that at least has some hope of working. Unless you want to be a female F500 CEO, then you're out of luck, which is a sad thing to be saying in in this millennium.
- sokoloff 10y agoOut of luck is a bit strong. 22 of the S&P 500 companies have a female CEO. While that's far from balanced, it's also far from "out of luck", IMO.
- M_Grey 10y ago>Unless you want to be a female F500 CEO, then you're out of luck... Of which, only 4 are female, and that's what I explicitly was talking about, as opposed to S&P. To be honest though, 4.4% of S&P CEO's, when women are a bit more than 50% of the population is almost as ugly as .8%.
- danmaz74 10y agoAbout charisma, I found this book really useful: http://foxcabane.com/book/ http://foxcabane.com/book/