The Biggest CEO Fear Is...
Hint: It's not PR nightmares, market crashes, natural disasters, or bankruptcy.
The most common CEO fear is being found to be incompetent.
From one in-depth survey of 116 executives reported in Harvard Business Review:
What I found about executives’ fears and their impact in the boardroom was revealing, and in some cases astonishing . . . The biggest fear is being found to be incompetent, also known as the “imposter syndrome.” This fear diminishes their confidence and undermines relationships with other executives.
A new report from Korn Ferry agrees, finding that 71% of US CEOs say they’ve felt imposter syndrome, where we feel the façade will be ripped away at any moment, exposing us as a fraud. (I would guess the number is even higher than that.) What’s really interesting is that in the same study only 47% of the regular workforce reports feeling imposter syndrome.
Strange. Don’t CEOs land their spots because of their confidence and competence?
When you’re the CEO—when your job performance is scru…
