Skip to content
Technology & Innovation

The Humble CEO

Charismatic, forceful leaders have a tendency to produce volatile company performances, writes David Brooks. He imagines an alternate executive model: the "humble hound leader."

David Brooks points to research indicating that charismatic, forceful leaders with excessive self-confidence tend to produce volatile company performances. “These leaders swing for the home run and sometimes end up striking out.” Instead, Brooks imagines another model of corporate leadership based on humility: the “humble hound leader,” who is more thoughtful, deliberate and careful — and spends a lot of time on metacognition. “If this leadership style were more widely admired, the country could have spared itself a ton of grief,” writes Brooks.


Related

Up Next
Scientists have found a couple of 1.9-million-year-old skeletons in a South African cave that may be "a Rosetta Stone for defining for the first time what the genus Homo is."