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?

Often CEOs can get away with it, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!

When you’re the CEO—when your job performance is scru…