Lekking by CEOs: Why You Should Be Worried?

Is your CEO all over your company’s social media and print media? Your company may be doomed even if you are being paid a high bonus now.

In a study of over a hundred CEOs in the IT industry, strategy professors Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick found that the CEOs who used self-glorifying language and over-sized pictures of themselves in their annual reports put their organizations in trouble in the long run. Many of these self-obsessed people had brought both bigger wins and bigger losses in the short run.

Commenting on this research, Adam Grant called the behavior of these leaders ‘lekking,’ a competitive display of grandeur by male animals in a courtship ritual. Male members of many animal species, including birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and insects, gather together and indulge in peculiar courtship behaviors, which may include displays of ornamental body parts or singing and dancing rituals. Grant says the self-glorification of CEOs falls into the same category.

People in positions of power can quickly lose that power if they project overconfidence, thus alienating potential allies, says Jeffrey Pfeffer, an organizational psychologist. He cites Enron and many similar cases to prove his point.

If you fill your Facebook page with flattering and boastful pictures of yourself, you are on the road to becoming a narcissist (the researchers found this). Humility will serve you better.

Humility, when combined with unwavering professional commitment, characterizes what Jim Collins refers to as 'Level 5 Leaders'. These modest and humble leaders prioritize building institutions over their own egos and have led some of the most successful companies in Collins' study.

Forcing people to be humble can improve their decision-making and performance. When a hospital insisted that doctors follow a checklist to reduce the rate of infections and empowered the nurses to enforce this checklist at every procedure, the rate of infections reduced dramatically—from 11% to zero. The fifteen-month experiment went on to save at least one life apart from reducing several costs.

There are two conceptions of humility: a negative one, in which one has a low opinion of oneself and tends to be insecure and submissive, and a positive one, marked by a lack of egotism and self-obsession, coupled with an accurate assessment and acceptance of one’s strengths and limitations. The latter has higher levels of pride, self-esteem, agency, and enduring happiness. This is the ‘confident humility’, the mark of the L5 leaders.

A person with confident humility can have faith in their ability to achieve goals, but could still question whether their methods are adequate. Studies of leadership effectiveness conducted in the US and China show that high-performing teams were led by leaders who scored high on both confidence and humility.

One study found that in organizations, the humility of employees predicted performance outcomes more than general mental ability, conscientiousness, and self-efficacy, and this effect was more for people with less mental abilities. Humility improves curiosity, the breeding ground for a ‘growth mindset’ – a belief that abilities can be improved through dedication and hard work. Across different domains, a large set of research shows that a growth mindset improves performance outcomes, although the impact varies.

According to Jonathan Haidt, a social scientist, humility and viewpoint diversity are the cure for confirmation bias. Pioneering companies have taken note. For example, Google announced that it would be looking for people who combine intellectual humility with passion.

Humility will serve you better, whatever your position.