Hubris vs. Humility: Which is More Powerful for CEOs?
Throughout the ups and downs of this tumultuous year, CEO Coaching International has encouraged leaders to think BIG and act boldly. Any CEO who’s sitting on their hands, waiting for clarity on tariffs or the next leap in AI, is positioning their company to fail.
But there can be a thin line between boldness that leads to BIG, and boldness that’s reckless and arrogant.
And, as we learned from the OceanGate disaster, leaders suffering from an extreme case of tunnel vision can put much more than just a business at risk.
The Titan Tragedy: A Case Study in Arrogance
OceanGate had a BIG idea: “Open the oceans for all of humanity.”
The company’s fleet of submersibles would create a new high-end tourism business and help researchers explore the depths of the oceans. Eventually OceanGate developed submersibles that allowed “citizen scientists” to visit the wreckage of the Titanic — for $250,000 a seat.
But in the lead-up to the company’s June 2023 expedition, CEO Stockton Rush ignored warnings from many experts that the company’s Titan submersible wasn’t safe. Rush even boasted that the company had “broken some rules” to create the Titan. The CEO was so confident in his vision and his company’s ability to innovate that he blew past safety protocols and a multiyear approval process. And OceanGate employees who raised concerns about the Titan’s design were fired. Not even failed tests could stop Rush from diving to the Titanic on that fateful day, which cost him his own life and the lives of four passengers.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself,” director James Cameron said in the aftermath of Titan’s catastrophic implosion. “The captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet, he steamed up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think is just astonishing.”
Cameron, a submersible designer and ocean explorer himself, also pointed out that safety standards in the field — the very standards Rush ignored — are so high that no one had died in a submersible since the 1960s.
Confidence vs. Arrogance: Know the Difference
People respect confidence. They resent arrogance.
Especially at work. And especially if an arrogant CEO is making decisions that will affect their jobs.
Confidence is what rallies the troops. When employees know the CEO’s vision is grounded in data, sound strategy, and a genuine, human concern for all stakeholders, they’ll follow that CEO through pandemics, recessions, social media scuffles, or trade wars. They’ll forgive mistakes. They’ll appreciate bad news delivered with compassion and transparency. And they’ll feel confidence about how their own performance will help the company grow through challenges and keep getting BIG.
Arrogant CEOs are often trying to project confidence. But walling yourself behind the need to be “right,” all the time, no matter the cost, has the opposite effect. Bluster and closed-mindedness create confusion and distrust. “Because I say so” closes off top talent contributing to key decisions and disincentivizes creativity and collaboration.
Confident CEOs embrace feedback, watch for flashing red lights, and admit when they’re wrong. They pivot away from their Betamaxes, Quicksters, Zunes, Clear Pepsis, and New Cokes.
Arrogant CEOs ride theirs to the bottom of the ocean.
The Power of Humility in Leadership
Warren Buffett’s idea of effective daily leadership?
Reading.
Buffett estimates he spends 80% of his time soaking in every bit of information he can. He knows that even after six decades as one of the most successful CEOs in history, he doesn’t know everything. He trusts the people who work beneath him to do their jobs, including other CEOs at the companies he invests in.
And when he does make mistakes, Buffett often acknowledges them publicly in his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders. His humility inspires confidence not just in his employees or individual investors, but often in the entire financial system itself.
When Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he took over a company that was still coasting on the lead it had gained over its tech rivals in the 1990s. But Nadella saw that lead was shrinking as new competitors emerged in new places, including social media and cloud computing. Microsoft wasn’t poised to compete because the company thought it knew everything.
“If you take two kids at school, one of them has more innate capability but is a know-it-all,” Nadella said. “The other person has less innate capability but is a learn-it-all. The learn-it-all does better than the know-it-all.”
Nadella believes that opening yourself up to what you don’t know is a form of empathy and humility that can lead to growth and innovation. The more you learn about the world, your team, and your customers, the better positioned your company will be to anticipate and fill needs. In Microsoft’s case, the “learn-it-all” mindset turned the company into a leader not just in its traditional OS and productivity software spaces but also in the growing cloud computing and gaming markets.
Create a Culture Where It’s Safe to Learn from Failure
At OceanGate, “failure” wasn’t just a four-letter word. It was an impossibility.
The CEO’s hubris overwhelmed well-documented concerns about building materials, warnings from experts, and failed test dives.
A confident CEO would have used that data to build a better submersible, or scrapped the project and charted a new course based on what he’d learned.
Instead, arrogance lead to tragedy.
Imagine if Reed Hastings had been so arrogant during the Quickster debacle that he’d left Netflix split in two instead of admitting his mistake, correcting it, and refocusing on the company’s streaming future?
What if Howard Schultz had decided Starbucks’ 2008 swoon was all the Great Recession’s fault? Instead, Schultz admitted that Starbucks had lost its way and improved its core coffee and café experiences. A year later, the company’s stock was up 143%.
BIG leadership like this can set the tone for an entire company.
If arrogance is your company’s default attitude, then employees will keep their heads down and keep going through the motions, sweeping mistakes under the rug as they go and pointing fingers if they get caught.
But at a company that’s guided with confidence and humility, employees feel safe to think outside the box, collaborate with other departments, fire test bullets and follow the ones that hit. In this kind of dynamic environment, the only real failure is a failure to learn, grow, and move forward.
Practical Takeaways for CEO Self-Reflection
Humility requires active, ongoing self-awareness. If looking in your CEO’s mirror makes you wince, work with a coach or mentor who can help you answer these questions:
- Am I actively seeking input from people who are smarter than me and who have dissenting opinions, or am I surrounding myself with “Yes”?
- Is our culture one that punishes mistakes or one that rewards learning from them?
- Does our company make time in its meeting rhythms to reinforce the values of confidence, embracing failure, and supporting each other?
- When was the last time I admitted I was wrong—publicly, to my team?
- Do my direct reports feel safe pushing back on my ideas, or are they too afraid?
Do some of your answers make you feel uncomfortable?
Good. You’re being honest.
Now, follow that feeling and decide what kind of CEO you want to be.
The kind of CEO who keeps letting arrogance paper over their flaws, and their company’s?
Or the kind of CEO who accepts hard truths, commits to doing better, and sets the kind of confident, inspiring example that will Make BIG Happen?
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About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.
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