When Charismatic CEOs Are an Asset — and When They’re a Liability

我在哈佛商学院担任领导力教授的时候，经常讲述一个案例，探讨的是杰克·韦尔奇在20世纪80年代到90年代如何领导通用电气公司。在90年代和本世纪初，他本人还参与了我们好几节课的讨论。

In my role as a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School, I often taught a case exploring how Jack Welch led General Electric during the 1980s and 1990s — and on nearly a dozen occasions in the 1990s and early 2000s, he attended and participated in the discussion.

每堂课的前半部分，我的学生们会推动对案例的讨论，韦尔奇则认真倾听。随后，我会让韦尔奇谈谈他的想法和反思。他站起来发言时，我通常会注视学生的反应。大部分学生都会被他迷住。韦尔奇散发着某种难以言喻的能量和吸引力。他跟学生们的辩论直接且激烈，让人激动不已。在他来过课堂之后的第二天，我们询问学生对他的印象，出现最多的词语就是“魅力”。

During the first part of each class, students would drive the case discussion as Welch listened intently. Then I’d ask Welch to offer his thoughts and reactions. When he’d rise and begin speaking, I tended to keep my eyes on the students. Most were spellbound. Welch exuded an energy and intensity that’s hard to capture in words. His verbal sparring with students was blunt, argumentative, and electric. The day after he attended this class, we would ask students for their impressions of him. The word that came up most often was “charismatic.”

韦尔奇2020年去世，人生大半都受到赞誉，但留下了一份复杂的遗产。他为通用电气这家美国标志性的企业带来了新的生机和一段空前的发展，但他也受到批评，说他对人过于苛刻、太过急功近利，以及轻率地进入金融服务、媒体娱乐等与公司核心竞争力相差甚远的领域，导致继任者面对棘手的难题。

Though celebrated for much of his life, Welch, who died in 2020, left a complicated legacy. He was credited for sparking new life and a period of unprecedented growth into an iconic American company — but he also been criticized for being excessively tough on people, too driven, and imprudently expansive in entering sectors like financial services, media, and entertainment that were too far afield from GE’s core competencies, leaving GE in a position that created thorny challenges for his successors.

不过毫无疑问，他是一位魅力四射的CEO，这种特质在当时备受推崇。

There is no debate, however, about the fact he was a charismatic chief executive during an era when that quality became highly valued.

早在1910年代，著名社会学家马克斯·韦伯第一个提出了魅力在领导力中的作用。他认为魅力是“某种个人性格特质，一个人凭借这种特质与常人不同，被视为具备超自然、超人类的力量，或者至少具备特殊的力量或品质。”以这种观点来看，有魅力的领导者可以成为社会变革的强大推动力。

The prominent sociologist Max Weber was the first (in the 1910s) to talk about the role of charisma in leadership, viewing it as “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he (sic) is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Charismatic leaders, in this view, can be a powerful force for social change.

不过魅力也是一把双刃剑。我的同事拉克什·库拉纳在2002年刊登于《哈佛商业评论》的《超级明星CEO的诅咒》一文中提出了魅力的一些弊端。这篇文章讲的是他关于董事会如何选择CEO的研究。

But charisma can cut both ways. My colleague Rakesh Khurana captured some of the downsides of this style in “The Curse of the Superstar CEO,” a 2002 Harvard Business Review article describing research he’d done on how boards choose chief executives.

库拉纳在文章中写道，1980年以前，CEO一般是在一家公司里慢慢晋升的平凡高管，不比当地的牙医更出名。到了20世纪80年代，新闻媒体开始像体育版面报道运动员一样报道一些富有魅力、想上新闻头条、性格高调的企业领导者。韦尔奇和克莱斯勒的李·艾柯卡、迪士尼的迈克尔·埃斯纳、斯堪的纳维亚航空公司的扬·卡尔松、索尼的盛田昭夫一起成了真正的名人。久而久之，董事会开始倾向于选择有号召力、鼓舞人心的人来管理公司（并且为了留住这些人而大幅度提高他们的薪酬）。库拉纳提出，这样做的结果往往事与愿违——一部分原因在于，企业成功是除了CEO性格以外很多其他因素共同作用的结果。

Before 1980, Khurana wrote, the average CEO tended to be an anonymous executive who climbed the ladder at a single company — someone no better known than the local dentist. During the 1980s, however, the news media began covering a cohort of charismatic, headline-seeking, big-personality corporate leaders the way the sports pages lionize athletes. Welch, along with leaders such as Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca, Disney’s Michael Eisner, Scandinavian Airlines’s Jan Carlzon, and Sony’s Akio Morita, became bona fide celebrities. Over time, boards became fixated on choosing telegenic, inspirational personalities to run their companies (and dramatically increasing these leaders’ compensation packages to keep them in the seat). The results, Khurana argued, often didn’t live up to the promise — partly because corporate success is a function of many factors beyond the CEO’s personality.

库拉纳在2004年的著作《为企业寻找救世主》中进一步扩充了自己的研究成果。与很多对他的论点印象深刻的人一样，我也记住了他关于魅力型CEO带来的成本和收益的结论。我很欣赏一些领导者用个人魅力来激励员工、影响利益相关者的方式，但我也对那种过度热衷于成为公众焦点的企业领导者抱有怀疑。研究和我自己的经验都表明，由谦虚的领导者管理企业的时候，企业经营状况会更好——这样的领导者没那么自我，会更关注团队，是运用能力而非魅力管理公司。

Like many people who were impressed by Khurana’s work, which he expanded in the 2004 book Searching for a Corporate Savior, I internalized his conclusions about the costs and benefits of charismatic CEOs. As much as I admired the way some leaders used personal magnetism to energize employees and influence stakeholders, I also tended to view skeptically business leaders who seemed too fond of the public spotlight. Research and my own experience suggest that organizations fare better when led by humble executives who sublimate their egos to focus on their team — who lead more from competence than charisma.

然而我看到新一代的魅力型创业者和高管领导如今的公司，我对魅力型领导力的价值的认识变得更加深入了。

But as I watch a new generation of charismatic entrepreneurs and executives lead today’s companies, my views on the value of charismatic leadership have become more contingent.

具体来说，我开始意识到，依靠人格魅力的领导者在两种情况下可以带来益处。

Specifically, I have begun to recognize two contexts in which a leader’s reliance on the power of personality can be beneficial.

第一种情况是初创企业。启动新企业的时候，参与其中的各方——投资者、员工、客户、供应商——都面对着庞大的不确定性。产品能否成功？能否推广？公司能否扩大规模？不被竞争对手超越的原因何在？在演讲用的幻灯片和乐观预测背后，初创企业是动荡多变的、有风险的。

The first context is in entrepreneurial startups. When launching a new venture, everyone involved — investors, employees, customers, suppliers — is dealing with enormous uncertainties. Will the product work? Will it catch on? Can the company scale? Why won’t competitors overtake it? Behind the slide decks and optimistic projections, startups are fluid, risky, shapeshifting works-in-progress.

在面对这么多不可知因素的组织里，人们自然会向具有某种人格力量的领导者寻求保障。初创企业中领导者的魅力会让人们有信心接受那些令人在理性状态下感到焦虑的风险。魅力作为一种可以激发信仰的领导力要素，部分源于神学：基督教的使徒保罗在《新约》中提到了这一点。在不确定性高涨的时期，国家似乎会受益于有魅力的政治领导者——比如丘吉尔——初创企业的情况也是如此。

In organizations facing so much that’s unknowable, it’s natural for people to seek reassurance in a leader with a certain force of personality. In startups, the leader’s charisma gives people the faith to accept risks that would make reasonable people anxious. It is no coincidence that charisma as a leadership quality that inspires faith derives partly from theology; the Christian apostle Paul wrote about it in his New Testament letters. The same way countries seem to benefit from a certain kind of charismatic political leadership during periods of deep uncertainty — think of Churchill, for instance — nascent companies appear to benefit from them, too.

比如史蒂夫·乔布斯，他很自负，通常都蔑视规则（他开车不挂牌照，因为嫌牌照不好看）。与此同时，乔布斯具备一种无与伦比的能力，能够创造出一种被部分人称为“现实扭曲领域”的东西。一位早期员工这样描述：“他的措辞风格充满魅力，他的意志十分坚韧，他会热切地扭曲一切事实达到自己的目的。如果一种说法说服不了别人，他会巧妙地换用另一种说法。有时候，他会突然把你的立场当作自己的立场，不承认自己有别的想法，让你猛然失去平衡。”

Consider Steve Jobs. He was egotistical and routinely flouted rules. (He drove cars without license plates because he disliked the way they looked.) At the same time, Jobs had an unrivaled ability to create what some called a reality distortion field, which one early employee described this way: “a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.”

如今许多观察者回想起乔布斯独特的风格——粗鲁、爱挑衅、能激发起狂热的追随和崇拜——他们认为这是美德，而非恶劣的品质。尽管乔布斯傲慢爱炫耀，但他成功地创造出了改变世界的产品。在关于魅力利弊的争论中，这个案例很重要。社会看到了伊丽莎白·霍姆斯、亚当·诺伊曼和山姆·班克曼-弗里德等魅力型创业者可能造成怎样的损害，但我们也享受了杰夫·贝索斯、马克·扎克伯格、萨拉·布莱克利、理查德·布兰森、亚莉安娜·赫芬顿和马云等人的创造性愿景——虽然他们也受到了一些合情合理的批评。

Today many observers recall Jobs’s distinctive style — brashness, a tendency to provoke, and the ability to inspire a cult-like following — as a virtue, not a vice. Despite his arrogance and tendency to showboat, he successfully created products that have changed our world. It’s a relevant data point in the argument over whether the benefits of charisma may outweigh its costs. Although society has witnessed the damage that can be done by charismatic entrepreneurs such as Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, and Sam Bankman-Fried, we’ve likewise benefited from the creative vision — despite some legitimate criticisms — of founders such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sara Blakely, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Jack Ma.

魅力很能发挥效用的另一种情况，是在位企业要扭转局势的时候。20世纪70年代末至80年代初，李·艾柯卡运用人格魅力协助说服联邦政府为克莱斯勒公司提供贷款，避免公司破产，然后用广告宣传说服消费者购买新出的K系列车型和小型货车。90年代初期，路·格斯特纳的魅力在发展缓慢的IBM创造出了变革的紧迫感和使命感。乔布斯在70年代创立苹果公司靠的是自己的魅力，90年代重返苹果公司重振旗鼓，靠的还是人格魅力。到了21世纪，英德拉·努伊和金妮·罗梅蒂各自为百事公司和IBM注入了新的活力。

The second context in which charisma can be especially useful is the turnaround of an established company. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lee Iacocca’s personality helped persuade the federal government to loan Chrysler money to avoid bankruptcy, and then powered an advertising campaign to persuade consumers to buy its new line of K-cars and minivans. In the early 1990s, Lou Gerstner’s charisma helped create urgency and a mandate for change at slow-moving IBM. Jobs, who relied on charisma while founding Apple in the 1970s, relied on it again when he returned to revive the company in the late 1990s. In this century, Indra Nooyi and Ginni Rometty helped breathe new life into PepsiCo and IBM, respectively.

当初马克斯·韦伯把魅力的概念引入关于领导力的讨论时，他觉得大型现代官僚制组织的崛起会使得能力和理性比魅力更受重视。从那以后，人们对魅力的重视程度反复波动。如今我在哈佛商学院的新任CEO研讨会上与新上任的领导者交流，他们中的很多人都希望避开聚光灯，尽量降低自己的公众知名度。库拉纳提出矫正性分析的二十年后，许多知名企业不再寻找名人CEO。请迅速想一想，你能说出AT&T、施乐、埃克森美孚或联合健康集团的CEO的名字吗？

When Max Weber introduced the idea of charisma into the discussion of leadership, his feeling was that the rise of the large, modern, bureaucratic organization would put a premium on competence and rationality over charisma.  The value people attach to charismatic leadership has waxed and waned since then. Today when I work with newly appointed leaders in the new CEO workshop we conduct at Harvard Business School, it’s striking how many of them hope to avoid the limelight and minimize their public visibility. Twenty years after Khurana’s corrective analysis, many established firms have moved away from seeking celebrity CEOs. Think fast: Can you name the CEO of AT&T, Xerox, ExxonMobil, or UnitedHealth Group?

与其轻率地得出普遍性的结论说魅力是好还是坏，或者韦尔奇的人格驱动型领导风格是应该接受还是应该避免，不如仔细思考魅力在怎样的情况下可能更有价值或是会产生负面影响。

Rather than concluding that charisma is universally good or bad, or that Welch’s style of personality-driven leadership is something to embrace or avoid, it may be more helpful to carefully consider the circumstances when charisma may be more or less valuable.

对于刚创立的公司，或者迫切需要重振精神的公司，魅力四射的领导者很可能是值得考虑的好选择。

For companies that are just starting out or in desperate need of a re-start, a larger-than-life charismatic leader may well be a considered choice.

说到底，魅力型领导者通常是高风险、高回报的选择。这个类型的领导者在任何情况下都可能造成危害（由于渎职、行为不当或太过傲慢），公司必须认识到这种真实的风险。与此同时，在位企业扭转局势或初创公司成为行业标志性企业的可能性非常低——若能成功，就能获得巨大的收益。

Ultimately, a charismatic leader tends to be a high-risk, high-reward selection. In any setting, the risk that a charismatic leader could create harm (either through malfeasance, misbehavior, or hubris) is real and must be acknowledged.  At the same time, the odds of a turnaround working out or a startup idea becoming a category defining company are very low — and the benefits when they are successful can be enormous.

魅力型领导者能略微提高这种成功的可能性，那么承担风险也许就是值得的。

To the extent charisma can tilt these odds even modestly in the direction of success, the risks may be worth it.

关键词：领导力

尼廷·诺利亚是哈佛商学院小乔治·贝克教席教授、哈佛商学院前院长。

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