The job of a CEO has always been demanding, but in recent decades it has become more demanding than ever. This may not seem like news, but a corollary probably is. Because while being a CEO has always changed people a bit, the degree to which it changes people has grown as the job has become more demanding. And not in a good way.
When we look at how being the boss has evolved, three shifts stand out. It’s become more demanding, less secure, and more performative.
More Demanding
Perhaps the most obvious way the demands on CEOs have intensified is the relentless pressure to deliver. Shareholder expectations are higher than ever, short-termism has taken hold, and media coverage has added layers of scrutiny, intensifying the pressure. Surveys confirm continuing increases in this, too, with two-thirds of leaders reporting greater pressure to deliver than even five years ago.
Then there is the way in which the job has just become bigger and busier. Since the 1980s, waves of delayering and efficiency drives have stripped organisations of slack. Consequently, the average number of direct reports for leaders has nearly doubled over the past thirty years, while their hours and workloads have increased as well. Unsurprisingly, stress levels among executives are over 20 percent higher than they were a generation ago.
And as if greater pressure to deliver, less time to do it, and fewer resources to do it with weren’t bad enough, CEOs also face greater complexity and uncertainty. Globalisation and digital technologies have created hyper-connected markets and supply chains. Shocks travel faster, business cycles are shorter, and volatility is the norm. Nearly three-quarters of leaders say they make more decisions daily than five years ago, and two-thirds admit to feeling uncertain about at least one major decision every day.
Less Secure
Alongside these rising demands has come a decline in security for workers at every level. For CEOs, tenure has become shorter, and the consequences of failure tend to ripple through industries. Because when one firm removes its chief executive, others in the sector take note. Studies show that senior leaders at competing firms become more risk-averse after such events, aware that they, too, are exposed.
More Performative
Finally, leadership has become more performative. CEOs have always needed to project confidence and speak well, but today the performance element is amplified more than ever. Politicians exemplify the trend: media training, narrative control, and spin have become survival skills. CEOs operate in the same environment. Their visibility has grown, with some reaching celebrity status, while organisational politics have become more complex, ensuring that success is increasingly tied to image as much as to substance.
Cultural shifts have intensified this performative layer. Social media amplifies mistakes, while cancel culture makes reputational risk ever-present, reminding leaders that one misjudged comment can trigger viral backlash. The outcome is that CEOs must manage not only strategy and performance but also their persona, so that leadership today is as much about curating perception as it is about delivering results.
The Hidden Effects of Being the Boss
Some of the effects of all this are well known. The most obvious is stress and all its knock-on effects for both physical and mental health. But in recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered a host of other ways in which being in charge can alter not just how we behave or think, or even how we feel, but the very chemistry and structure of our brains.
For instance, most people in charge, in most situations, tend to become less sensitive to risk. Their brains become less likely to respond physically or chemically to environmental risk. And as a result, they are less likely to notice risk and respond to it.
As a result, powerholders tend to be more optimistic, confident, and willing to take action. And the more power they have and the longer they’ve had it, the more this tends to be so. This can have an upside, as it means they are more likely to take bold actions that can lead to significant performance gains. But because they take more risks, the strategies they pursue are also more likely to fail and destroy value. And so, over time, their impact becomes more variable – both more likely to succeed and more likely to fail.
A second significant change involves the CEO’s ability to connect with and understand others’ perspectives. Because powerholders tend to be far more attracted to and focused on goals and rewards than those who aren’t in charge, one by-product of this is that, unless a task they are involved in involves an interpersonal issue, they tend to be less able to notice social cues. And because they pay less attention to social information, they are thus less able to accurately gauge what people are thinking and how they are feeling. In fact, by almost every metric, outside of tasks that specifically require empathy, powerful people generally have less empathy.
So, power alters how our brains function, profoundly impacting core aspects of leadership. And the biggest risk for leaders is that, for the most part, these changes are silent and subtle shifts that are nearly invisible to them, and often become apparent only when things go wrong. Typically, this doesn’t mean leaders failing outright in some dramatic and public way, but rather small mistakes and reductions in effectiveness that gradually accrue over time, undermining performance. But as we have repeatedly seen in recent months, it can also lead to unfortunate errors of judgment that result in reputation-ruining front-page news.
The solution here is simple, but difficult. If CEOs and other senior executives are to be better prepared and supported to effectively manage the effects of being the boss, we need to first have more honest, open conversations about the hidden ways being the boss can change people, for better and for worse. The challenge is that in most countries at the moment, this is counter-cultural. And that in most companies, it is likely to feel challenging for many leaders. It is, therefore, a conversation that needs to be championed right from the top, by the Chairperson and the board, with the support of the CEO and the CPO. And we need to start doing it soon. Because the effects may mostly be hidden for now. But how many more headlines do we need to see before we are convinced that it’s getting worse and we need to act?
