The Top 5 CEO education requirements

CEO education requirements are different and more exigent than those of less experienced
managers. The best CEOs have already learned the value of lifelong learning: they got where
they are through a combination of intelligence, creative thinking skills, business acumen and
hard, hard work. They will have fine-tuned their skills throughout their careers, always aiming
at little further than last time, always preparing for the next challenge. Now, their leadership
education needs are slightly different. For executives at the top, education is about exploring
their individual, business and market challenges – so they can break through apparent limits for
ongoing benefit for their organizations.
Here are the top 5 education requirements:

5. Lifelong learning value: CEOs set the tone for the whole team’s approach. A CEO who stays
informed, clear-minded and action-ready for new opportunities will maintain the loyalty of his
or her team, and help them to also continually grow and contribute their all. The team will be
inspired to value lifelong learning and embrace their own executive education. Setting the
example of lifelong learning ensures long-lasting results for the team and the organization.

4. Networking: A business leadership class for senior global executives should bring together a
group people who are all at the same elite level, who all face critical global challenges but who
bring a great diversity of backgrounds, nationalities and fields. The group dynamics alone will
offer challenge and motivation. CEOs, like anyone else, learn from others who are equally
talented. It is certainly important for CEO education requirements to include the opportunity to
build personal and professional networks at the international level.

3. Fresh perspectives: CEO education should offer the occasion to enhance knowledge with
fresh perspectives on broader economic and societal challenges – ones that participants won’t
necessarily see in their industry-specific role. A leadership program for top executives must
explore these issues and guide participants to more complete understanding of both the big
picture and the finer points. It should examine new business models and new players within
these contexts. CEOs – whose direct experience may come from more traditional models –
must keenly assess and compare the robustness of such perspectives. New perspectives are thus
among CEO education requirements because they ensure executives stay nimble and ahead of
their own challenges for exceptional ongoing performance.
2. Reflection: Good CEO education is tailored to participants’ own situations and needs. This
gives participants the chance to step back and reflect on their approaches and responses in the
face of challenges. Scrutinizing events, interactions and their own behavior allows them to
refresh and recharge. Critically, it also enables them to meet the next challenge with strong,
specific focus and innovative strategies rather than simply relying on old habits.

1. New opportunities: In a fast-evolving global marketplace, tomorrow’s opportunities won’t

look the same as today’s. It’s essential among CEO education requirements to provide the
vantage point to examine the highest levels of the competitive landscape. CEO education must
keep skills sharp when it comes to anticipating changes, determining the best business
strategies to leverage them, and implementing these strategies to the advantage of the team, the
company and the global economy.

Smart CEOs and top executives are not satisfied with the status quo. They look to executive
education to help them make sure they stay on top of the global playing field, design game-
changing moves and be fit to lead towards ever greater outcomes. They will get real results
with a business leadership program meets the five most vital CEO education requirements.

Any individual who aspires to become a CEO, rising from the working ranks to a lower
executive position into the highest levels, must have certain key attributes that distinguishes them
from other employees.

Individuals might sometimes be born with these skills, and be termed as natural leaders that
motivate others and lead a team towards success. However, others might be required to develop
these skills over a period of time.

The CEO is the head of the company and therefore the responsibility for the entire company rests
upon their shoulders.

The Ability to Be Innovative

Globalization, a competitive business environment, escalating inflation and rapid technological
advancement all mean that organizations are faced with a rapidly changing business
environment.
The key to success for any organization is to be able to innovate on a continuous basis and
deliver a range of features in their products and services that are not yet marketed by their
competitors. A CEO must ideally be able to anticipate the future and design a set of strategies
that effectively combat change and result in profitability in the long term.
A Risk Taker:A CEO must ideally be able to take calculated risks after conducting an in-depth
evaluation of the probabilities associated with the profit and loss outcomes of the decision.
Any individual that is risk-averse is not generally suitable as a CEO candidate, as an executive
that has an inability to take risk is likely to force the company to lag behind other competitors. A
CEO should be able to take risks, although the risks must not jeopardize the survival or the
profitability of the company.

An Optimistic Nature:A CEO should have an optimistic nature in general, and able to identify
opportunities even within difficult situations.
The individual must be able to think outside the box and design strategies that can effectively
combat the threats faced by the organization, while inspiring others to keep a positive attitude
and work hard to get through bad times.

The Ability to Take Action:A CEO must be able to take timely action based on the
environmental factors at work.
However, a CEO must not be impulsive, and any course of action must be constructed after
careful thought and analysis. A CEO must not only be able to design strategies that effectively
combat change but also execute them in a manner such that they enhance the profitability of the
organization.

Coordination and Communication with Team Members: A CEO must be able to effectively
communicate with fellow team members and explore ideas and suggestions put forward by the
team.
A CEO must be open-minded to the ideas or strategies put forward by staff members rather than
focusing on strategies that are designed by him or herself.
The communication skills of a CEO are largely based on their vocabulary, and therefore a CEO
that has extraordinary vocabulary skills is likely to be able to communicate with fellow team
members and subordinates with ease. This particularly holds true for the CEO of a multinational
company that is communicating with employees that uphold different cultural values.

Controlled Emotion:A CEO must be able to maintain control over his or her emotions.
However, this does not suggest that a CEO must be rigid in behavior and fail to applaud
successes or point out failures. Rather the intensity of emotion must be maintained in a manner
such that the fellow colleagues and subordinates understand the underlying meaning of the
emotion.
A CEO must ideally not display excessive levels of anger at small mistakes or become overjoyed
at small wins. Rather, he or she must know how to appreciate employees and push them in the
right direction that allows the team to achieve the corporate aim of the organization.

Inclusion in Decision Making: A CEO must be able to involve others in the decision-making
process and promote a culture in which all the employees work as a team in order to achieve a
common goal or objective.
The CEO must communicate to fellow colleagues and subordinates that their input into the
decision-making process is considered to be highly valuable. The final decision must only be
taken after conducting a complete financial and non-financial analysis of the decision and
considering how the decision can allow the team to achieve the corporate objective of the
organization.
However, the CEO must also be an independent decision maker and should be able to make such
decisions during pressure periods when time constraints hinder the ability to involve others in the
decision-making process.

The Ability to Trust Others:A culture of mutual trust must be developed by the CEO whereby the
CEO is able to trust fellow colleagues and subordinates.
This indicates that a CEO must be willing to delegate authority while overseeing various
functions within the organization. However, the CEO must be comfortable in sharing authority
with a wide range of people, but must also not turn a blind eye towards them. This indicates that
although the CEO must delegate authority to perform tasks, the ultimate power is vested within
the CEO and therefore she or he must oversee and take responsibility for all corporate decisions
undertaken by the staff.

What Are the Qualifications to Be a Senior Level Manager or CEO of a Company?

Education

Unless you start your own company, you’ll probably need some formal college education to
become a senior manager in a company. Many CEOs have an undergraduate degree in a business
field such as marketing, accounting, management or finance. A Master of Business
Administration is the gold standard for advanced degrees. If you haven’t earned a sheepskin or
don’t have a business degree, take advantage of your nearest community college or university
and take night classes in areas specific to your career. Many employers pay tuition for classes
relating to your work.
Experience

Job-related experience is another trait top managers have in common. In some cases, executives
have hands-on knowledge gained from using, selling and making a company’s product or
service. In other cases, an executive’s experience comes from holding a variety of administrative
positions during the course of 10 or more years. Your work experience shouldn’t be limited to
product-specific work. For example, regardless of what your company makes, try to get
experience in accounting, human resources, marketing and sales. Start by taking the heads of the
different departments at your company to lunch and asking them how they got their positions and
what you can do to learn more about their areas. Take an introductory bookkeeping class at your
local community college, then volunteer to help with the books at a local nonprofit agency to get
this experience on your resume. From there, you might be able to help with finance projects at
your work.
Training

Executives often have specific training acquired through certification programs, industry
workshops and other outlets. Many executives earn college degrees through night school. A
business professional might spend time working a mid-level or even lower position to learn how
his subordinates perform their tasks. For example, the CEO of a restaurant chain might work for
a month as an assistant manager, order taker, cook or dishwasher to learn how the restaurant
functions. Don’t be afraid to volunteer to help with projects that don’t earn you extra pay -- the
experience might look good on your CV.
People Skills

More often than not there are more people who want management positions than there are titles
available, and those who get selected often edge out the competition with their people skills. It’s
important you learn the different personality types you’re likely to find in the workplace and how
to manage them. For example, you know you work with shy, negative, helpful and selfish
coworkers. You can’t always fire employees you don’t like, and learning to manage different
people is a critical skill for executives. Visit your library or search the Internet for information on
industrial psychology, human resources, customer service and employee-management topics.
Does being a man or women affect your career? Recruitment experts, Talentful, have recently
carried out research that compares some of the world’s most powerful male and female CEOs of
Fortune 1000 companies to find out how gender can affect money, success, and their career path.

The gender gap is an issue that continues to pervade industry, particularly the IT and technology
industry. And, although the divide has been bridged to some degree within organisations, the
divide remains towards the more senior level. It is still a prevalent problem, to say the least.

Extensive discussions, both moral and financial, have been given to the effects of gender on
high-level positions on an organisation. How do the numbers turn out? How does being a man or
woman affect you and your company’s earnings and standing?

In order to answer these questions, a new study from recruitment specialists Talentful has looked
into 108 Fortune 1000 companies to establish gender trends at senior level. It looks at all the
female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 and compares them with an equivalent number of companies
with male CEOs from the top of the list.
The most stunning point that stood out from the research was just how few female CEOs there
were. In a list of 1000 CEOs, only 54 were women. Despite this small number, it does actually
represent a sign of slow improvement.

Business culture is traditionally slow to shift, and CEOs might be in their position for a long time
– Warren Buffet has headed Berkshire Hathaway since 1970.

In 2014, however, the number of female CEOs in the top 1000 companies was only 51. Now at
54, this means that either companies run by women are succeeding in the markets, or more
women are stepping up into leadership roles. This shows that the idea of a ‘man’s world’ is
eroding, albeit slowly.

Core insights
For each CEO, the piece analyses several factors, including the company’s Fortune rank, and the
CEO’s total compensation – the total financial gain from the business, made up of both salary
and incentives.

Companies with male CEOs rank much higher in the Fortune 1000, by 480 places on average. Of
the 54 female CEOs in the Fortune 1000, only 3 of them are in the top 50, and the average
ranking for female-run companies is 509. For the men researched, it was 29.

Monetary compensation, however, is one aspect which (perhaps surprisingly, in view of the
ranking differences) isn’t quite so male-dominated. Overall, male CEOs receive more company
compensation, by nearly $4,439,000.

The Disney CEO Robert “Bob” Iger receives the most overall, at $43,490,567. The second best-
paid overall is a woman– Safra Catz, of Oracle, with $40,943,812.

Some of the other best-compensated positions also belong to women. After Safra Catz, the next
two who benefit the most financially are also women: Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO
($35,981,107), and Mary Barra of General Motors, the highest-ranked female CEO in the
Fortune 500 at #8, with $28,576,651.

The person with the lowest compensation found throughout the research is the CEO of Alphabet
(Google’s parent company), Larry Page, at only $1.

He shares this with several industry leaders, including his co-founder Sergey Brin. However,
their stock holdings in Google is sufficient to earn them billions, making the actual compensation
symbolic rather than practical.

Qualifications and age

The research includes what qualifications each CEO studied and received prior to becoming
taking their current positions. There are two courses which are clearly the most popular across
both genders – many men and women have pursued some form of Engineering (Electrical
Engineering in turn was the most popular Engineering degree), but there was an even bigger
representation of MBAs (Master of Business Administration): 21 male CEOs had one, and 25 of
the female CEOs.

There’s a more marked gender difference when it comes to Ivy League graduates – former
students of Brown University, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton,
or Yale. 17 of the male CEOs attended one of the illustrious institutions – compared to only 8 of
the female.

Meanwhile, the average age for both genders was 51. Overall, it seems that despite the
discrepancies in representation across genders, the type of person who ascends to a CEO role

tends to have the same sort of background

Powerful People
“Women still have limited representation in the Fortune 1000,” said Talentful co-Founder Phil
Blaydes, “But it looks like that’s changing, albeit slowly. For all of those studied, their
achievements are impressive. It takes a certain sort of character to become a CEO, no matter
which gender you are.”

With information on many more CEOs, heading everything from computer companies to fashion
firms, energy enterprises to technology trades, there’s much more to see in the Talentful study.

As the report has revealed, most of those CEOs in the Fortune 1000 – whether male or female –
have very similar backgrounds in terms of education. So, why is divide at boardroom level so
great?
Inherently, a cultural shift needs to be adopted within organisations that reverses gender
stereotypes. Those companies that champion diversity are more likely to flourish in an era where
innovation is key to survival.

Events like Information Age’s Women in IT Awards, the largest event in the world celebrating
women in IT, and our female only career’s fair – Tomorrow’s Tech Leader’s Today – are vital to
help break the stigma surrounding women in the technology industry, indeed all industries.

It is also necessary for those men and women who are in senior positions to address the issue by
inspiring future professionals to pursue a career in their respective industries and give them the
belief to strive for the highest position possible.

According to a study of Fortune 1000 companies, women-led businesses earned investors a 340
percent return. Need more convincing? Read on.

Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are both in the news of late, for different reasons.

Both are former CEOs of what used to be Hewlett-Packard before it broke into two separate
companies.

Both are also female, which in a better world wouldn’t be worth mention.

That better world would be one unlike ours, in which the percentage of female CEOs in Fortune
500 companies is only five percent (a running total of 24 women), even though women make up
45 percent of the S&P 500 labor force, according to The Washington Post.
If we look more broadly at companies with more than 100 employees or more than $50 million
in revenue, the percentage is only marginally better—only 17 percent in a gender study
conducted by Mintage. But the same study found that these female CEOs headed up companies
with up to 18 percent higher revenue per employee than male CEO-led companies.
In general, female-led companies shared the following characteristics in comparison to their
male counterparts:

 More robust marketing teams

 Higher levels of publicity
 Stronger event planning
 Greater online presence
Moreover, studies such as those conducted by MIT and cited in The Huffington Postpoint to
women’s superior “emotional intelligence”—the ability to “read” a situation by correctly
evaluating the state other people’s emotions as well as your own—that results in higher task
performance.
And according to Business Reporter, women are better collaborators, which in part explains why
organizations that have a larger proportion of women in higher roles outperform organizations
that don’t.

Why Aren’t There More Female CEOs?

Despite the rising numbers of women in the workforce, at the higher echelons it’s still very much
an old boys club. As reported in The Guardian, despite some gains, company boards are still
made up mostly of men. Moreover, men tend to view women more critically, which is one
reason why women in top positions are forced out faster than men when a company is in crisis.
Or, perhaps more significantly, when women challenge the male hierarchy.
Sharon Bolton, a professor of organizational analysis at the University of Stirling in Scotland,
notes that women managers are primarily in roles that require people skills—human resources,
public relations, and communications, for example. But C-suite executives are typically drawn
from the male-dominated disciplines of finance, research, operations, and general management.
Put another way, women are victims of “institutionalized exclusion.”

Why Your Next CEO Should Be a Woman

While gender shouldn’t be a primary reason to hire (or not hire) anyone (for legal and moral
reasons), a case could be made that all other things being equal, a female CEO could pay off for
your company. Literally.

Quartz reports on an algorithm developed by Karen Rubin that correlates female leadership to
stock performance of Fortune 1000 companies in the period from 2002 to 2014.
Her findings: women-led companies earned investors a 340 percent return, compared to an S&P
500 benchmark of 122 percent.
You might have even more reason to hire a female CEO if your company is having problems.
Research suggests that women are more likely to be picked for leadership roles to run distressed
businesses. Women are thought to have a better personality to manage a crisis because they are
seen as more intuitive, understanding, and sympathetic than men.

Also, women are viewed as better able to manage people and situations during a time of stress,
as well as work behind the scenes and (while this isn’t why you should be looking to hire a
female CEO) fill the role of scapegoat. For examples of women appointed CEOs to fix
companies in trouble, see Marissa Mayer at Yahoo and May Barra at GM.
The downside for women is what is characterized as “the glass cliff,” a phenomenon in which
female CEOs are typically fired faster than men for not achieving the desired results. Shirley
Leung of The Boston Globe points out the higher percentage of female CEOS (38 percent)
forced out compared to men (27 percent) in a 2013 study of 2,500 public companies. This also
tends to, as Marianne Cooper notes for PBSNewsHour, “reaffirms beliefs that women aren’t
good leaders anyway.”
Ultimately, there are a multitude of factors to consider when hiring a CEO. In a better world, the
issue of gender would not matter. Since we’re not in a better world, your company’s culture and
business conditions might lead you towards the female side of the equation. (Although it’s not
legal to consider gender when hiring.) Even if you end up hiring a man, it might be a good idea if
he thought more like a woman.

In 2012, women held just 3.8% of Chief Executive Officer positions in Fortune 500 companies,
and 90 out of 535 seats in US Congress. Much has been written about why women are so
severely underrepresented in senior leadership – from poor childcare provisions to institutional
bias. One thing researchers can’t agree on is whether there are fewer women leaders because
they’re less effective at the job, or because society expects them to be.

One theory goes that society generally associates successful leadership with stereotypically
‘masculine’ traits such as assertiveness and dominance, and so disapproves of female leaders
because they violate these gender norms. As a result women experience greater obstacles to
reaching the upper echelons. In the 1970s Virginia Schein came up with the phrase ‘think
manager-think male’ to explain the automatic association between leadership and masculinity –
an association which still exists, in certain circumstances, today (see a previous post here). But
with the recent rise of transformational leadership and its emphasis on traditionally ‘feminine’
traits like empathy, collaboration and emotional intelligence, could the expectations of female
leaders be shifting?

Of course, there is no universal rule: different individuals are differently suited to different
situations, and context is, as ever, king. To that end, a study published recently in the Journal of
Applied Psychology aimed to add a more nuanced insight to the ‘male vs female leaders’ debate.
By analyzing the results of 99 different studies that measured leaders’ effectiveness from 1962 to
2011, the researchers were able to unpick the situations in which male or female leaders
excelled.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results suggested that the culture of the organization makes a
difference: in traditionally male dominated, masculine organizations like government or the
military, male leaders were more effective , while women triumphed in more ‘feminine’
environments like social services and education . Interestingly, under the vague umbrella term
‘business’, female leaders also came out on top.

What’s more, the results also highlighted that it matters who you ask. When leaders rated their
own effectiveness, men tended to rate themselves higher than women. But when other people
(peers, bosses, subordinates or third-party observers) did the rating, women were seen as
significantly more effective than men – particularly in studies from 1982 and later. This was
especially true taking into account the different levels of leadership: at lower, supervisor levels,
men rated themselves higher than women, while women were seen by others to be more effective
in mid- and upper-level positions.

There are a few possible explanations to this pattern of results:

1. the recent trend towards transformational leadership and its emphasis on

empowerment and collaboration – traits traditionally associated with women –
means that leadership is increasingly seen as a domain more suited to women.

2. because of the many obstacles that women experience on their way to the top and
the assumption that management is better suited to males, people assume that
women who have made it to a mid- or high-level management position must be
extra special, and so credit them with elevated competence (‘she must be really
good to have made it that far’).

3. men have an over-inflated view of their own ability and women really do make
better leaders.

Perhaps the most important result from this meta-analysis though was that taking into account
self and other ratings, across all types of organizations and all leadership levels, there was no
significant difference between male and female leaders. Perhaps in 2014 it’s time we all looked
further than gender and concentrated instead on which skills make the best leaders – male or
female.

First, let's start with the politically correct part and answer the alternative question, as
paraphrased by Alex Regueiro: why there are currently far more male CEOs

The answer to this question is the same as the answer to Why are there more men in jails than
women:

 Men are more keen to take risks

 Men handle stress better

Think about it, a lot of the traits that make a good psychopath (or an ordinary criminal) also help
in being a CEO, as advocated by Forbes and Kevin Dutton
As a CEO you face enormous pressure - from investors, from the board, from employees. One
wrong move and the whole company could go down, rendering most employees jobless - that's a
tremendous responsibility to bear. How can you make a quick decision under all this load?
Remember, we have pretty much the same brains as our male ancestors 100,000 ago who went
out hunting knowing full well that they might end up being mauled by a Smilodon any time of
the day. What's the risk of ending up in jail (or crashing a company into the ground) compared to
that!

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't underestimate women's ability to be managers and leaders -
they seem to me to be more organized than men and also more empathetic, which enables them
to connect with others better. But at the helm - where some do pretty well indeed - it takes traits
that are much more rarely found in women. The ones who posses them do (at least) equally well
as their male counterparts - there just aren't as many of them.

Now to the (potentially) politically incorrect part:

Are men really better CEOs?

Depends how you interpret the question. If you pit the 5% female CEOs against the male ones
there probably wouldn't be much difference - if there's any, it will most likely be to the
advantage of the ladies as it's harder for them to climb the ladder, so the ones that manage to get
to the top are more likely to be better.

But then, if you pick a random man and a random women and measure their CEO-specific skills
(including the skills needed to get there) - the man is more likely to score better. I don't have a
study to back this but that's my personal conclusion after knowing lots of men and women.

PS I'm ignoring men's stronger willingness to sacrifice family life for carrier - that's been well
covered by other answers
The phenomenal growth of women-owned businesses has made headlines for three decades—
women consistently have been launching new enterprises at twice the rate of men, and their
growth rates of employment and revenue have outpaced the economy.
So, it is dismaying to see that, despite all this progress, on average, women-owned business are
still small compared with businesses owned by men. And while the gap has narrowed, as of
2008—the latest year for which numbers are available—the average revenues of majority
women-owned businesses were still only 27% of the average of majority men-owned businesses.
What's going on here? Could it be that women and men have different measures of
success? Different goals when they start a business? Sharon Hadary shares this research in the
article:
Research also shows that the differences between women and men entrepreneurs begin with their
own reasons for starting a business. Men tend to start businesses to be the "boss," and their aim is
for their businesses to grow as big as possible. Women start businesses to be personally
challenged and to integrate work and family, and they want to stay at a size where they
personally can oversee all aspects of the business.
Sounds like a big overstatement to me, though I think there is a ring of truth to it. Doug Hickok,
CEO of Institute for Provocative Leadership shares his thoughts in the blog post Journal Gets It
Wrong/Right About Women Business Owners.
Since when is business success measured just by size, and why is this woman [Sharon Hadary]
doing that?
To Ms. Hadary, the fact that women-owned business revenues are “still only 27 of the average
of majority men-owned businesses” is a problem, even as she goes on to say that women start
their businesses for different reasons than men.
Now, I am an executive coach who works with a lot of women business owners, and I can attest
to the fact that women are very individual in their desires for their businesses, including revenues
and size.
Doug Hickok goes on to point out some valuable insight in the Wall Street Journal article as
to what's holding women back and his take on them:

 Women often fail to set high goals for growth. Very true, but women –
and men – usually set goals only for revenues, leaving out other aspects
of their business and their lives. Strong goals are needed for all of those
things, or life doesn’t feel whole and satisfying.
 Women often start their businesses with fewer resources available to
them than men. Sometimes true. This factor can drive women out of
what they really want to do and into retail or personal services
industries instead, for example, where the cost of entry is low, but so is
the growth and profit potential.
 Research shows that women tend to think of debt as a “bad thing” to
be avoided…one of women’s strengths is relationship-building, yet
women seldom focus on building relationships with bankers. True
again. Often women don’t reach out to the banker until they’re in
trouble and REALLY need the money… the very worst time to start
the relationship.