Turning that question around, what sort of a leader do you want to work for? Or folks usually like to work for? This whole idea of growing a company as the only (or most important) thing that matters is something that should die. We want people who we genuinely respect and imitate as our leaders. We want to build products that are genuinely useful and bring about a positive change in the society.
Yes, that's a personal decision in deciding where to work. But it's easy to come up with specific examples of CEOs that are assholes who grow gigantic companies. I was just using this specific example with Kalanick to raise the question. Perhaps a better example is Steve Jobs, someone who had something of a cult following but from what I've heard was an all around terrible person. If these people truly weren't tolerated, they wouldn't get to the top in the first place.
I guess some of these leaders have strengths that we probably can't easily put into words. For ex., a leader who can bring about the best from people, a leader who has a knack for understanding people, etc., I wonder how much of those other qualities played role more than them being assholes.
I'm not asking what we should do from a moral perspective, which is highly subjective. I'm asking for data. Has anyone done an analysis on the traits of successful CEOs?
