Nitin Nohria: Why it’s so hard for CEOs to stay grounded

One participant, the newly appointed CEO of a global industrial company, instantly struck our faculty team as humble and unpretentious. When he arrived a few moments late, he apologized profusely because there’d been a wait at the airport taxi stand. When the morning class ended, he gathered his used coffee cup and found a trash can, while his peers left theirs for the staff to clean. As he departed, he commented on how unaccustomed he was to be staying at the Four Seasons—the hotel where we book all our CEO guests—because it was so fancy.

I saw him again five years later, when he attended a reunion session for past workshop participants. Before he arrived, his staff called to ask if we could upgrade him to a Four Seasons suite. They gave us a detailed list of his dietary preferences and favorite organic wine. They asked for a private room where he could make phone calls between sessions. (Other CEOs do this from the lobby.) When he arrived, in a chauffeured Escalade with his bodyguard and chief of staff, he was once again late, but this time he offered no apology.

He was never rude or overtly disrespectful. But after several years as CEO, his expectations had quietly changed. The extraordinary treatment surrounding him had become ordinary, so he no longer seemed to notice it. The Four Seasons had been our choice. We, too, were playing our role in defining what a CEO should expect. 

This loss of grounding is a quiet peril of the job. Each accommodation CEOs receive solves a real problem and can be rationalized on its own. Collectively, they can profoundly distort a leader’s sense of what is normal and change what they understand about the lives of the people they employ and serve.

CEOs face relentless and exhausting demands on their time. In a minute-by-minute study of how CEOs spend their days that I co-authored with Michael Porter, we found that CEOs really do work all the time, putting in 62.5 hours a week and working most weekends and vacation days. “Even when I’m not working,” one told us, “I’m thinking about work.” There is, as another put it, a whole second shift outside the office—the travel, the dinners, the miles logged representing the company. The time pressures and complexity of their travel schedules make private-jet travel, a perk many quickly grow attached to, easy to justify. Once everything is organized around a CEO’s convenience, it can become easier to expect others to bend their time to suit a CEO’s schedule.

And then there is the emotional toll, which can become another justification for special treatment. CEOs must project confidence even when they doubt themselves. They must reassure employees during crises that test their own fortitude. They may need to close businesses and undertake layoffs that they themselves find painful. One leader described it to me as an emotional asymmetry—having to absorb everyone else’s emotions without being able to express any of your own. Do that for a few years and a calculus sets in: Given how much I do for others, this is the least I am owed. The perks come to feel like fair compensation for the demands of the job. Although many other people work long hours under severe strain, CEOs have the power to turn their sense of sacrifice into special treatment.

Some of this special treatment is essential—and can be pressed on CEOs whether they like it or not. The December 2024 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk has made companies rightly anxious about the safety of the people who lead their companies. Depending on the threat, armed bodyguards, armored vehicles, and flying private instead of commercial can be sensible security measures. The trouble is that before you know it, a leader experiences what earlier felt imposed as essential. Others may have built the bubble CEOs inhabit with the best intentions. But it morphs into their own.

Isn’t this all explained by narcissism? Michael Maccoby and other psychoanalysts have indeed argued that leadership roles like that of the CEO draw individuals who already carry some narcissistic traits, among them the desire to remake an institution in their own image. But my Harvard colleague Rakesh Khurana observes a different force at work. Even leaders with no such predisposition are susceptible to what he calls “structurally induced narcissism”—the adulation, the constant attention, the deference surrounding a CEO can make these tendencies nearly inevitable. From the day a CEO takes the office, the symbols of importance accrue. Invitations may arrive from heads of state. Inside the building, people orient themselves around your preferences—how you appreciate information presented, the causes you favor, even the manner of voice you prefer.

This is not a new phenomenon. A quarter-century ago, retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch—the most admired executive of his generation—had the details of his GE retirement package spilled into public view during a divorce. They included the use of an $11 million Manhattan apartment, unlimited use of a company plane, a chauffeured limousine, flowers, dry cleaning, wine, and premium sports and entertainment seats—all at the company’s expense. Within days, he agreed to give up most of the benefits and pay for those he retained. But he saw nothing to apologize for. “In this particular deal, I sacrificed millions of dollars,” he said. By his own reckoning, he’d negotiated this deal legally with GE’s board. And because he had grown GE’s market value by billions of dollars during his tenure, he felt he’d earned it, even if it appeared excessive.

How can leaders avoid this quiet loss of grounding?

The problem cannot be left entirely to a leader’s self-discipline. Boards and senior colleagues should periodically reconsider which accommodations still serve a purpose and make it possible to question those that do not.

CEOs need to fight these forces, too. One technique is to regularly shift perspective. As they move deeper into the bubble, leaders must have the discipline to keep asking themselves: “This may feel normal to me, but how does it look from the outside?” Cultivating and listening to a handful of intrepid truth tellers, like a leadership coach, a wise general counsel or CHRO, or people close to the frontlines and customers, is one way to gain this perspective. That requires making disagreement safe, especially for people whose job depend on the CEO’s goodwill. 

Another is to keep close the people who’ve known you too long to be impressed by the CEO title. The most grounded leaders guard and keep up childhood friendships. They pursue activities with people whose lives differ from their own, setting aside time for pickup basketball or book clubs. One told me he sets aside two evenings a week for dinner at home, mostly because his family has no regard for his professional status. “It’s not about the meal,” he said. “It’s about being reminded that I’m just Dad.”

Some leaders deliberately refuse the conveniences that separate them from ordinary life. When a prominent Harvard Business School alumnus whose name adorns a campus building visited, he always declined our offer of a car from the airport and rented his own. “I prefer to drive myself,” he’d say. When I accompanied him to one of his factories, he parked in the regular lot far from the entrance, then declined eating in the executive dining room in favor of the employee cafeteria.

Making those inconvenient choices, especially when you’re stressed and tired and running behind, takes discipline. Its value lies in preserving contact with the lives of people the leader must touch—which may help to lead them more effectively.

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