In Praise of Dullness (article about CEOs and gov)

So good news for Booth grads, bad news for Kellogg grads?

I agree with the point about celebrity CEOs being less successful - after all, the more time spent giving interviews and doing magazine/TV shoots the less time there is for actually running your company - and that beyond all the warm and fuzzy people skills there needs to be a good amount of ability to actually execute. However, I found it interesting that while saying people skills are less important, some of the skills/traits that the article says *are* important: being humble, self-effacing, concientiousness, being dependable - they're some of the same traits that result in you having good people skills. The author brings up the book "Good to Great" as an example of research dispelling the myth of the "warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic" CEO...I don't think it coincidence though that the first lesson of that book focused on people, namely getting the right people on the bus. And how does the successful CEO identify those people to get on the bus? People skills.

I don't necessarily see "people skills" as meaning you're the slick salesman/politician type. Although many of those type of people on the surface are good at interacting with other people, at their core most people are distrustful of salesmen/politicians because they don't come off as authentic. Rather I think "people skills" is more about how well you can authentically build relationships with other people, relationships that both people see as valuable.