The 25 Highest Rated CEOs

The following piece is by Mark Fidelman, a contributor at Forbes. He recently wrote about the CEOs that ranked highest from a range of sources including Glassdoor:

If you’ve ever worked for an extraordinary CEO you may have described the situation in nostalgic, harmonious tones. Like your first year of College where everything is new and exciting, and the possibilities are endless.

These characteristics can be found in the leaders of successful companies like IBM, Google and Qualcomm. They signal future achievements in products, customer acquisition and shareholder value.

If you haven’t worked with a top CEO, your professional career probably resembles a long stint at junior high school, where you’ve witnessed a lot of sociopathic behavior due to lack of maturity and emotional IQ.

So if you now work with one of the CEOs listed below, you’re very fortunate. If you’re not, good news – they are hiring.

I’m not in a position to judge whether or not these are good choices or not. But it does serve as a timely reminder that leadership matters and  that there is indeed a big difference between the leaders that are in charge due to positional authority (they are respected because we have to respect them or we get fired, demoted, or career-limited) compared to the leaders who have earned our respect through

• Fidelity to values (staying true to the organization’s values even when the going gets rough),
• Treatment of human capital (considering people as a critical resource rather than costs that are stripped out when the last quarter was disappointing), and
• Humble intelligence (the ability to admit they are wrong and the ability to learn from mistakes).

In 20 years time we will see whether any of these folks are considered great corporate leaders from the perspective of shareholders, employees, customers, and community.