The Tell by Matthew Hertenstein

Author:Matthew Hertenstein [Hertenstein, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465069880
Publisher: Basic Books

Response of the left amygdala when subjects viewed CEOs who led the most profitable companies.

Let’s turn then to our second question: is there an objective measure of CEOs that will predict their success in running a company? One team at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, set out to find the answer by examining the photos of fifty-five male CEOs who led Fortune 500 companies. Specifically, they examined each CEO’s facial width-to-height ratio (WHR), a trait linked to aggression in men (as mentioned in Chapter 4) and to a psychological perception of power. Since CEOs don’t make decisions in a vacuum, the researchers also assessed whether companies’ leadership teams tended to see decisions as black-and-white, deferring to the authority of leadership, or in shades of grey, actively soliciting diverse opinions in their decision-making process.

CEOs with greater WHRs, that is wider faces, tended to run better-performing companies, but this trend only held if their leadership team was deferential and conceded to their authority. The researchers reported an anecdote about General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who had a high WHR compared to most CEOs in their sample. In the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, Immelt confronted a decision concerning the company’s environmental responsibilities. The authors reported that although the leadership team at General Electric strongly disagreed with his vision on this issue, they conceded to his strategy. The authors argued that because company performance correlated to CEOs’ WHRs primarily when boards were passive, CEOs actively influenced the performance of their companies. Whether the wide-faced CEOs were actually more aggressive or just perceived as such is unknown, but researchers found a statistical link between the dimensions of a leader’s face and the performance of a company. (That being said, I wouldn’t suggest purchasing stock based on the CEO’s facial breadth.)

Pick up a picture of the head of your company. What tells do you pick up on? What is she communicating to the rest of the world, and what impact might this have on the performance of your company?

Are Leaders Born or Made (or Both)?

These studies raise an intriguing question. Are the differences in facial appearance among business leaders innate, or do the leaders come to acquire the look of leadership with increased success and other life experiences?

One hypothesis—let’s call it the “face begets success” hypothesis—posits that some individuals are born with physical features that result in more leadership opportunities. From this perspective, looking successful actually fosters success. This effect can occur in any number of ways. People may treat powerful-looking people more like leaders, in much the way that adults tend to treat attractive infants more positively than less attractive babies. Also, people who look like leaders may receive more opportunities to develop their leadership skills. Thus, looks beget opportunities, yielding experiences that may cultivate leadership success.

A second hypothesis—let’s call it the “success begets a face” hypothesis—implies that successful leaders’ faces may change over time to “look the part.” Some evidence suggests that repeated facial movements can leave their mark by wrinkling the skin and shifting the musculature.

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