There are signs that shifts in culture and expectations are changing leadership norms. Early in 2022, the Financial Times and Quartz each declared the onset of an era of empathetic CEOs.

Satya Nadella at Microsoft and Sundar Pichai at Google have come to epitomize the traits of a new, quieter leadership cohort that rejects the Silicon Valley god/emperor model in favor of collaboration and humility.

Consulting firm Heidrick and Struggles has found that the new generation of senior executives is more likely to be female, come from places other than the nation in which the company is headquartered, and have cross-border experience and advanced degrees.

An increasing number of incoming CEOs aren’t former COOs or CFOs. They are bringing more diverse professional experience to the role.

Listening, empathy and persuasiveness have become far more valued qualifications in C-suite job descriptions and recruiter checklists.

CEOs are also being called on to care more about the welfare of their stakeholders. An academic study published in 2021 after 17 years of research showed that listening, empathy and persuasiveness have become far more valued qualifications in C-suite job descriptions and recruiter checklists.

These traits are particularly prized in the companies where intangible value and network influence first became paramount: larger, information-intensive enterprises where the staff have experienced firsthand the limitations of hierarchical management.

In an era of dissolving corporate boundaries and intangible value, the ability to tap into and leverage influence has become vital. So have familiarity and competence in handling pressures over social responsibility and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Shifting Cultural Expectations

Leaders are acutely aware that expectations are shifting. For one thing, they are increasingly being forced out for behavior that is considered unethical, even if it’s legal.

In 2019, Steve Easterbrook lost the top job at McDonald’s for having consensual affairs with colleagues, and in 2020, Jean Sebastien Jacques was toppled from running Rio Tinto after he authorized the destruction of sacred Indigenous rock shelters in Australia. In 2022, a senior executive was fired from Estée Lauder after making a racist Instagram post.

While all of this is encouraging, it does not suggest that we’ve tired of valorizing dominant personalities. What we want and expect from our bosses is still more complex and contradictory than optimistic leadership gurus like to suggest.

What we want and expect from our bosses is still more complex and contradictory than optimistic leadership gurus like to suggest.

Steve Jobs is a prime example of an unpleasant, narcissistic personality who went on to drive astonishing success at Apple. When Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO, most pundits happily ignored his complicated ethical legacy to hail his vision, aggression and creativity.

With enough charisma, you can even bounce back from abject commercial failure: Adam Neumann’s negative experience at WeWork turned out to be no barrier to generous funding for his new ventures.

Experiments indicate that creativity – an essential trait for business success – correlates inversely with ethics because it enhances our capacity to justify our own behavior. ‘Fake it to make it’ is broadly accepted as an essential element of successful entrepreneurship.

Inclusive Leadership on the Rise

In other words, signaling your robust ego and lack of self-doubt amounts to sensible strategic behavior in most corporations. In a recent literature review on dark leadership traits, authors Charles A O’Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer concluded: “Voluminous empirical research has consistently found a relationship between narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and leadership emergence as well as other positive career outcomes such as interviewing well, being hired and achieving promotions.”

Narcissistic leadership decisively undermines organizational integrity – not least by treating corporate responsibility as empty PR. Academic research has demonstrated that egoistic, personalized environments feature more unethical behavior than do principled, accountable ones.

Yet widespread tolerance for these traits persists, despite growing recognition of the benefits of ethical organizational cultures and inclusive, honest leadership. Much popular discourse on ethical leadership fails to account for why so many people follow and admire such leaders.

An intriguing study at Stanford University found that companies with more narcissistic CEOs tend to earn higher ESG scores. As well as displaying one of the weaknesses in ESG-scoring mechanisms, it might lead the rest of us to doubt some leaders’ avowals of passionate devotion to society.

The popular vision of CEOs as ethical statesmen even seems to have fed some messiah complexes. CEO pay packages keep growing more extreme, even in companies that trumpet their CSR.

    In the face of such contradictory pressures, no wonder it’s so hard to describe what good leadership looks like today.

Tim Cook’s 2021 US$99 million pay package at Apple drew shareholder ire – criticism he countered by reiterating a 2015 pledge to bequeath most of his fortune to philanthropic causes. But billionaire philanthropy is no solution to long-running, intractable social and environmental problems.

In the face of such contradictory pressures, no wonder it’s so hard to describe what good leadership looks like today.

Today’s businesses are more global and diffuse, and the challenges they face are complex and unpredictable. No CEO, no matter how personally impressive, should make judgment calls in isolation.

Demonstrating ethical leadership requires building robust organizational systems that can check and balance a leader’s personal judgement. Ethical leadership means taking ethical oversight seriously, building wider capacity for moral decision-making, and focusing on instilling trust and psychological safety throughout the organization.

In this era of the intangible company, ensuring strategic ethical leadership is far beyond the capacity of any individual. It exceeds that of any single team. We don’t just need tone at the top; we need to seek and support awareness, accountability and voice at all levels.

This is easier said than done. But it is the key leadership imperative of the 2020s.