Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature. We have a sense of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations.
Malcolm Gladwell in his new bestseller, "blink" (Little, Brown), took a sample and found that, on average, male CEOs were just a shade under six feet tall. Given that the average American male is five foot nine, that means that CEOs as a group have about three inches on the rest of their sex.
In the US population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or taller. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58 percent. Even more striking, in the general American population, 3.9% of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among Gladwell's CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.
Of the tens of millions of American men below five foot six, a grand total of ten in Gladwell's sample have reached the level of CEO, which says that being short is probably as much of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African American.
Chin Up?
A strong chin may be a plus for aspiring CEOs. That's the conclusion of New York plastic surgeon Darrick Antell, who presented his highly anecdotal evidence at the 2007 World Congress on Liposuction Surgery and Advances in Cosmetic Surgery in Dubai.
Antell drew a line from the nose tip to the chin on photos of 42 CEOs from 2005's top 50 Fortune 500 companies. Some 90% showed nonreceding-to-prominent chins, vs. 40% of the U.S. population. People equate such jawlines with confidence and character, says Antell, who performed 20 chin augmentations in 2007.
Topping out at $7,500, the surgery's a bargain compared with, say, a $92,000 MBA from Harvard.
Source: BusinessWeek, January 14, 2008