How to Become a Successful CEO
The following article was written by Steven Kaplan, the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship & Finance at Chicago Booth School of Business and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center, and originally published in Crain’s Chicago Business on September 15, 2025. Read the original article.
There are many anecdotes and stories about who becomes a CEO and who succeeds as a CEO. One was visionary and charismatic; someone else was strategic; another was empathetic; yet another was tough. You get the idea. There is very little systematic, large-sample, empirical work that is predictive. It is very hard to get the right data.
In several studies, Morten Sorensen, an associate professor of finance at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and I use detailed evaluations of almost 5,000 CEOs and other top executives to answer the questions of who is likely to become a CEO and, once hired, who is likely to succeed. The assessments come from GHSmart, a firm that specializes in assessing top management candidates. The companies seeking to hire the executives varied from publicly traded firms, to those owned by venture capital or private equity, to other privately owned companies. We have augmented this research with CEO assessments and performance from a prominent executive search firm.
The assessments are based on structured interviews with candidates of roughly four hours. They are usually 20- to 40-page mini-biographies that include detailed information and assessments of the candidates’ careers.
Who becomes a CEO?
The first factor looks at general ability or talent. Executives who scored high on talent tended to score high on many different characteristics. CEOs tend to be more talented.
The second factor, execution, is perhaps the most interesting one. Holding talent constant, this factor contrasts execution skills with interpersonal skills and being agreeable. High-execution executives score high on “aggressive,” “moves fast,” “proactive” and “holds people accountable.” Low-execution/high-interpersonal executives score high on “treats people with respect,” “open to criticism,” “listening skills” and “teamwork.” CEOs are high-execution, not high-interpersonal/agreeable.
The third factor looks at charisma. Candidates high in charisma have high grades for “enthusiasm,” “persuasion,” “aggressive” and “proactive.” CEOs are charismatic.
The fourth factor is creative/strategic. Candidates high in this factor have high grades for “strategic,” “creative” and “brainpower.” CEOs are creative/strategic.
So, CEOs are indeed different. Relative to other executives, they are more talented, more execution-oriented, more charismatic and more creative/strategic.
If you want to be a CEO, what should you do? Work on execution — getting things done. And work on being charismatic — try to be more outgoing, speak up.
Who succeeds as a CEO?
The next question is, which of those skills and factors make executives more likely to succeed once they become a CEO?
We used a subset of our assessments to answer this. Performance was positively related to the execution factor. Individual variables that mattered included execution-related variables like “efficient,” “persistent,” “proactive,” “sets high standards” and “holds people accountable,” as well as creative/strategic variables like “analytical” and “brainpower.” Performance was not related to interpersonal or agreeable variables like “treats people with respect,” “open to criticism,” “listening skills” and “teamwork.” We obtained similar, consistent results using a sample of executives from an executive search firm.
So if you want to be a successful CEO, the most important thing is to execute and get things done. A surprising number of CEOs do not.
It also helps if you think strategically and creatively.
It is worth noting some of the best-known CEOs of recent years — Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Satya Nadella — were three extremely successful, but very different CEOs with very different personalities. Bezos and Jobs were not considered to be unusually agreeable. All three, however, have been very effective at both execution and strategy. And their companies benefited immensely.