The Most Important CEO Hiring Criteria Boards Overlook

We analysed hundreds of conversations with Chairs, CEOs, investors and academics on what actually predicts CEO success. The most consistent signals weren't the ones boards typically lead with. 

Below, we include 10 hiring principles and 9 core attributes boards should look for in CEOs.

What this article reveals at a glance

1. Boards still overweight credentials and underweight character.
Track record, pedigree and familiarity remain powerful signals. But our conversations suggest they are weak predictors of how a CEO will actually behave under pressure. The most consequential failures stem from ethics, ego, and judgment, not CV gaps.

2. Behavioural patterns matter more than past outcomes.
Guests repeatedly emphasised that CEOs are not portfolios of experience but individuals with persistent tendencies. Boards that focus on how candidates think, decide and react - rather than what they’ve achieved - make more resilient appointments.

3. CEO hiring is now a forward-looking exercise.
The strongest Chairs described CEO selection as an act of strategic forecasting. Fitness for the next five to ten years matters more than relevance to the last five. Comfort with uncertainty, adaptability and learning agility are becoming core requirements, not optional extras.

4. Ethical judgment is a leading indicator of CEO risk.
Ethics surfaced not as a compliance issue, but as a predictor of CEO longevity. Boards that fail to probe values, fairness and moral reasoning early often end up dealing with them later, at far higher cost.

5. Confidence is no longer enough. Humility and followership matter.
Many guests challenged the traditional CEO archetype. Today’s effective CEOs are those who can say “I don’t know,” actively use their boards, earn followership, and create space for challenge — not those who dominate the room.

6. Structure beats instinct in high-stakes hiring decisions.
Scorecards, explicit success definitions and behavioural frameworks consistently outperformed intuition. Boards that rely on “gut feel” were more likely to hire for familiarity, charisma or comfort — and to miss the signals that mattered most.

Taken together, these patterns point to a clear shift. CEO hiring is moving away from reputation and reassurance and towards behaviour, judgment and adaptability. Boards that recognise this earlier make better appointments. Boards that don’t tend to learn the hard way.

10 Hiring Principles

With CEOs, past performance does indicate future results

"There are many variables that go into the price of an equity, so you can't guarantee that past performance indicates future performance. For an individual human being, it's different. There's no greater predictor of future performance … because they're one thing. It's a person. There might be different situations they're in or different environments … but people's behavioural tendencies are very strong … The challenge to me is really understanding what those behaviour patterns are.” Dr Geoff Smart, Chair and Founder of ghSMART, a global leadership advisory, which has published three bestselling books: Who? A Method for Hiring, The CEO Next Door, and PowerScore

Look for “smart, driven and honest”

“If you simplify it, you want leaders who are smart, driven and honest. If you only have two of those three, you’re in trouble, and if you get all three right, you’re usually fine.” Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup and a Professor of Business Psychology

Hire CEOs for the future, not the past

“The test that a board should apply to a new CEO is their fitness for the next five to ten years. Boards are hiring against a view of the future and asking whether person A or person B is better equipped to take the business forward, not what they’ve done historically.” Gerry Murphy, Chair of Tesco and Burberry, Trustee at Burberry Foundation, Senior Advisor at Perella Weinberg and Mentor at J&A Mentoring

Don’t under-index on a prospective CEO’s ethics

“Traditionally, when we interviewed CEO candidates, we probed them on their financial expertise, team management, strategy, but we never asked ethical questions, which seems upside down if ethical questions are the reason a large proportion of CEOs are losing their jobs. How to manage diverse teams, the fairness and transparency of promotion – those types of ethical questions need to be managed more aggressively. We need some portal (such as an ethics committee) that allows us to build this ethical muscle.” Baroness Dambisa Moyo, Board member of Chevron and Conde Nast, investment committee member of the Oxford University Endowment, and co-principal of Versaca Investments

Don’t place too much weight on technical over managerial competence

“We promote people on the basis of technical competence rather than whether or not they’re good at managing themselves, others, and resources.” Anne Francke OBE, CEO, Chartered Management Institute

“It’s not the technical skills that get executives into trouble. It’s people, culture, and politics.”
Navid Nazimian, PCC, ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach, Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, NED

Don’t over-rely on references

“Written references are often almost untruths because they’re part of a compromise agreement. Even verbal references can be misleading. You really can’t rely on what the previous employer tells you.” Stuart Roden, Chair / former Chair of Lansdowne Partners, Hetz Ventures, Lewis Advisors, Tresidor, the Design Museum and Unlocking Potential, NED at LSE and Trustee at the National Gallery and Centre for Social Justice

Use scorecards to define potential success explicitly and objectively

“A scorecard is a very explicit statement of what success will look like in a role… The opposite… is to just think that you know what you’re looking for and that you’ll recognize it when you see it.” Geoff Smart (see biography above) 

Don’t place too much weight on industry experience and networks at the expense of character

“I wouldn’t take industry networks over personal qualities for a second. I’d take low ego, genuine interest in the business, and collaboration every time.” Kate Swann, Chair of Moonpig, Beijer Ref, Parques Reunidos, and IVC Evidensia and former CEO of WH Smith

Don’t default to what feels comfortable

“And the difficulty with that is that if you rush to a strategy, for example, or an approach or a product or a hire, what's going to make you feel most comfortable is what you've done in the past. And it'll feel comfortable because it's familiar, but it won't necessarily be right.” Margaret Heffernan, Author of seven books, including Wilful Blindness, Uncharted and Embracing Uncertainty, former CEO of InfoMation Corp, ZineZone Corp, and iCast Corp, Thinkers50 Hall of Fame Member 

Use the DARE framework

“What actually led to CEO performance were four behaviours … we call it the DARE model… decisiveness, adaptability, reliability, engagement (for results)… and these four behaviours were incredibly statistically powerful in being associated with high performance in the CEO role.” Elena Botelho, Co-author, The CEO Next Door, Partner at ghSMART

9 Core CEO Attributes (Beyond Technical Competence)

Willingness to invest in thinking time, not just execution

“Unless you spend time on growth and strategy and not just the day to day, you are not going to grow.” Sam Smith, Founder & Former CEO, Fincap Group

Ability to prioritise and delegate ruthlessly

“One of the best things you can do as a leader is make fewer and fewer decisions the higher up you get. That’s how you build a strong team.” Shellye Archambeau, Fortune 500 board director, strategic advisor, former CEO and author

Ability to actively use the board, not just tolerate it

“The best boards work by being part of the team — but the CEO has to tell them how they can help.” Wais Shaifta, Chief Growth Officer at The Co-op, NED at The Gym Group and Reach plc, Senior Independent Trustee at Football Foundation, Samaipata and Ex-CEO Push Doctor

Ability to manage down, not just up

“This person was fantastic at managing up, but absolutely awful the other way. On paper everything looked great, the references were strong, and they were very engaging and charismatic. But it became clear that how they treated people inside the organisation was completely different.” Stuart Roden (see biography above) 

Ability to get followership

“What makes an outstanding CEO today beyond delivering the business results?… It’s basically getting that followership right… will the team, will the company, will the clients… take people with them… communication skills, emotional intelligence… that’s as important as the technical skills.” Lord Charles Allen, Baron Allen of Kensington, CBE, Chair of Moelis & Co, Balfour Beatty Plc, Global Media & Entertainment Group, and The Invictus Games

Epistemic humility over “confidence”

“Think about the concept of intellectual humility, or you might also call it epistemic humility. It’s almost like a worldview… a sense that, you know, look at this universe, look at this reality… it’s incredibly complex… and who are we? I mean, come on, we’re naked apes.” Dan Gardner, best-selling author of Superforecasting, How Big Things Get Done, Risk and Future Babble.

Ability to say “I don’t know”

“In business, you see it all the time where people don't know the answer, but try and bull**** you… one of my execs in a board meeting said this was going to be a billion-dollar business. I knew at best it was a fifty-million business, and one of my directors absolutely nailed him — and he never quite recovered from it.” Lord Mervyn Davies, Chair of LetterOne, the LTA, Glyndebourne Opera and a variety of high growth companies and SID at Teneo

Customer focus

“Once you realise you want to help the customer, you have to step one back into the business and help the people. It’s those people who deliver the experience for the customers. So leadership that doesn’t understand that link will always struggle.” Sara Weller CBE, Chair of the Money and Pension Service and former/NED at BT, Virgin Money and Lloyds Banking Group and UK Department for Work and Pensions 

Growth-mindset

“All of the CEOs we’ve appointed recently have been first-time listed CEOs. There is something about a person’s ability to transfer skills and keep learning because things can change incredibly quickly. You may hire the perfect person for today, and suddenly the context shifts.” Angela Seymour-Jackson, Chair of Page Group, Deputy Chair of Pikl, SID at TrustPilot Group, and NED at Future and Janus Henderson Group

Ability to survive existential threats

“Until a company has been through an existential threat, it is never as good as it could be. And individuals on boards are never as good as they could be until they’ve lived through that.” Sir Douglas Flint CBE, Chair of Aberdeen, IP Group and the Royal Marsden NHS Trust and former chair of HSBC Group Holdings and NED at BP