Published: April 07, 2004 in Knowledge@Wharton “It is not essential to have a big ego to be a successful CEO,” says Deepak Chopra, a physician who has helped make alternative healing respectable in the U.S. He laments that American society has been trained to measure business success solely by the calculation of shareholder value. That, in turn, has bred a generation of top executives who have “bought into the idea of ego, power, extravagance, arrogance and total disregard for other people’s feelings,” says Chopra, who will be speaking at an April 9 Wharton Leadership Ventures conference in Philadelphia titled Leading from Within.  

 

Long-lasting businesses aim to serve needs, not just sell products, he says. “If you start with the premise of increased income for me and my shareholders, you get the big scandals you have had recently.” For the individual business leader, success should be much more, he suggests – “having meaning in your life, having love and compassion, self-esteem and a sense of connection with your own creativity.” Absent that, “egocentric leaders become most insecure, anchoring their self esteem in external things such as money and power.”

 

So managing others begins with managing oneself, Chopra and others note. Academics would say that it’s part of having a high level of emotional intelligence. Sigal Barsade, a professor of management at Wharton, defines emotional intelligence as one, “the capacity to think intelligently about our emotions and, two, to have our emotions help us learn how to think more intelligently.”

 

Part of it is the ability to regulate one’s emotions to come to a greater awareness of one’s inner self, she says. But emotionally intelligent people also know to regulate others’ emotions, Barsade adds, deeming it an essential skill in leading people.
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