MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Why Modern Executives Are More Susceptible to Hubris Than Ever

Today’s CEOs are much more visible than their predecessors from the 1950s. The executives of our parents’ and grandparents’ times, who were mostly unknown and unrecognized by anyone outside the company, shunned the press, speaking only in sentences crafted by PR departments. Today’s executives, in comparison, are front and center on every social media platform. They blog, Tweet their own opinions, post on Facebook, and comment on LinkedIn. Modern CEOs write books, hire publicists, promulgate personal philosophies, and give spontaneous interviews. Even the ordinary citizen with little interest in business or entrepreneurship recognizes these big-name executives, now celebrities in their own right. Their faces adorn billboards and magazines everywhere, and they appear on every public stage (even at the edge of space), opining on issues that shape our public and personal agendas.

About the Author

Benjamin Laker (@drbenlaker) is a professor of leadership at Henley Business School at the University of Reading. He is coauthor of the new book Too Proud to Lead: How Hubris Can Destroy Effective Leadership and What to Do About It, which will be released in the United States on Aug. 24, 2021.

Learn more about MIT SMR.