Reflections of a CEO: The chair is not the person

This article reflects on the idea of “observing yourself observing yourself” after stepping down as CEO of 21st Century after 28 years.

There is a peculiar occupational hazard that comes with being a CEO. People laugh more readily at your jokes, listen more attentively to your opinions, reply more quickly to your emails, and are generally less inclined to tell you that your latest “strategic insight” may in fact be a reheated version of something they said three meetings ago.

This is flattering. It is also dangerous.

Many CEOs fall, often unconsciously, into the comforting belief that they are respected for who they are as people and managers.

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Some of that respect may indeed be genuine. But a substantial portion is respect for the office they occupy, the authority they hold, the career consequences they influence, and the resources they control.

Put differently, there is a critical distinction between being respected as Chris Blair, the person, and being respected as Chris Blair, the CEO. The two overlap, but they are not the same.

A CEO who fails to understand the difference may mistake compliance for commitment, politeness for trust, silence for agreement, and positional deference for personal loyalty. This is not a comfortable reflection. It is, however, a necessary one. Recent leadership research supports the distinction.

CEO power is not simply a job title; it is a social, psychological and organisational force field.

A comprehensive 2025 review by Ozgen, Mooney and Zhou (2025) examined 580 articles and confirmed that CEO power continues to shape strategic decision-making, organisational outcomes and the behaviour of those around the chief executive.

The CEO’s chair has gravity. It pulls attention, agreement, caution and ambition towards it. The danger is that the person sitting in the chair may begin to believe that the gravity belongs to them.

The CEO’s mirror is often distorted

When serving as CEO, I believed my Exco respected me as Chris Blair who happened to be CEO. When I stepped down, I was forced into a more honest reflection – perhaps, to a meaningful extent, they had respected the CEO who happened to be Chris Blair.

That does not mean the respect was false. It means it was layered.

In leadership, respect is rarely pure. It is a cocktail of admiration, dependency, caution, hierarchy, familiarity, history, fear, trust, obligation and self-interest.

The senior leader who cannot separate these ingredients may end up drinking his own bathwater and calling it leadership insight.

Role respect versus person respect

All leadership contains an element of role respect. This is appropriate. Institutions require authority. Hierarchies exist because accountability must live somewhere. A CEO must have the right to decide, direct and, when necessary, disappoint.

The problem begins when the CEO confuses role respect with person respect.

Role respect says, “You are the CEO, and I will treat you accordingly”. Person respect says, “I trust your judgement, character, consistency and intent, even when I disagree with you”.

The first is granted by structure. The second is earned through behaviour.

Leader identity research is helpful here. Hammond, Thrasher and Vogelgesang Lester’s 2025 systematic review shows how deeply the “leader” role can become internalised into one’s self-concept. This identity can give courage, stamina and purpose.

But it can also become a sedative, whispering that people follow because they believe in you, when sometimes they follow because they must.

The Exco problem: Candour under hierarchy

The executive committee is supposed to be the CEO’s truth-telling mechanism.

In theory, Exco members bring insight, challenge and alternative perspectives. In practice, they are also people with reporting lines, incentives, ambitions, vulnerabilities and finely tuned political antennae.

When people report to you, they are continuously calculating more than the quality of your argument. They are calculating timing, risk, relationship, your mood, their bonus, board dynamics and whether your “open-door policy” is in fact a trapdoor with better lighting.

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Research on inclusive leadership and psychological safety reinforces the point. Mohase, Donald and Israel’s 2025 study found that inclusive leadership builds psychological safety, which in turn predicts greater employee voice.

Silence in an Exco meeting should therefore never automatically be interpreted as agreement. It may be agreement. It may also be calculation, resignation or the perfectly rational conclusion that telling the CEO the truth is not worth the career indigestion.

Deference is not the same as endorsement

One of the most useful recent leadership concepts is “downward deference”.

Neeley and Reiche’s 2022 study of global leaders showed that leaders can gain power by reducing social distance and deferring to the knowledge and expertise of lower-power colleagues.

The insecure CEO hoards status. The mature CEO spends it wisely. Downward deference does not mean weakness. It means the CEO has enough inner authority not to need constant outer confirmation.

Such leaders do not have to be the cleverest person in the room. They only need to ensure that the cleverest thinking in the room is heard before the decision is made.

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This is especially important for CEOs who have founded businesses or led them for long periods. Longevity creates institutional mythology.

People begin to know the leader’s preferences before the leader has spoken. They pre-edit themselves. Eventually the CEO may be surrounded by agreement but starved of truth.

Humility is organisational intelligence

Humility is often misunderstood in business. Chandler and colleagues’ 2023 meta-analysis of 212 studies found that leader humility is strongly associated with follower satisfaction and participative decision-making.

Humility does not require the CEO to pretend not to know things. It requires the CEO to know that the role amplifies both insight and illusion.

A humble CEO asks, “Do they agree because I am right, or because I am CEO?” “Have I created a culture where disagreement is safe, or merely where agreement is efficient?” “Who still tells me the truth when it costs them something?”

These are not soft questions. They are governance questions. They are risk questions. They are performance questions.

Self-awareness is a leadership capability

Steffens and colleagues’ 2021 research showed that both personal self-awareness and collective self-awareness enhance perceptions of authentic leadership and leader endorsement. Real leadership maturity requires the CEO to observe the room, then observe the self-observing the room.

When everyone agrees, what do I feel? When someone challenges me, what happens in my body? When I am praised, what story do I tell myself?

These are the questions that separate leadership performance from leadership theatre.

The post-CEO test

There is one particularly clarifying moment in a CEO’s life – the moment after stepping down. The emails reduce. The invitations become more selective. People who once urgently needed your view now discover they can survive entire weeks without it. Some relationships deepen. Some evaporate.

This is not betrayal. It is organisational physics. When the role changes, the relational architecture changes with it.

The post-CEO test reveals what was attached to the person and what was attached to the position. For a reflective leader, this should not produce bitterness. It should produce wisdom.

The correct response is not, “They never respected me”. The more mature response is, “I now understand more clearly what they were respecting”.

How CEOs can reduce the illusion while still in office

Many CEOs only learn this lesson after they leave the chair. But it is possible to learn it while still occupying it.

First, actively separate role feedback from person feedback. Board approval and Exco compliance may indicate effectiveness, but they may also indicate hierarchy working exactly as hierarchy is designed to work.

Second, institutionalise disagreement. Challenge should not depend on personality bravery. It should be built into meeting design, decision rights, board processes and risk reviews.

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Third, practise visible teachability. Hohnsbehn, Bechtoldt and Van Kleef’s 2024 research on leader ambivalence suggests that when followers perceive leaders as cognitively flexible and responsive, they become more willing to speak up.

Leaders do not need to project permanent certainty; they need to project enough openness for others to risk honesty.

Fourth, cultivate people who are not impressed by title. Every CEO needs at least two or three people who can say, with affection and without career fear “That is nonsense”. These people are priceless. Protect them.

Finally, observe yourself observing yourself. When the room agrees, pause. When nobody challenges, pause longest of all.

The real measure of CEO respect

The true measure of CEO respect is not how people behave when the CEO has power over them. It is how they speak of the CEO when there is nothing to gain, nothing to fear, and no signature required.

That is the respect worth earning.

Deference is useful while one has the title. Respect is what remains when one does not.

The chair is temporary. The person is what walks away from it.

And perhaps the greatest act of leadership maturity is to know, while still sitting in the chair, that not all the applause is for you.

Dr Chris Blair is group director of 21st Century.