The Heroic CEO Model Is Outdated, MIT SMR Scholars Argue

Three management professors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Villanova, and Boston College argue in MIT Sloan Management Review that the "superhero CEO" model has outlived its usefulness in an era of continuous crises.

Published January 26, 2026, the essay by Janaki Gooty, Corinne Post, and Jamie Ladge takes aim at what Insead's Gianpiero Petriglieri calls "leaderism." Petriglieri's definition, cited verbatim by the authors, captures the appeal: "Leaderism is the belief that great leaders are the cure for every ill. It feeds on our desire for clarity and comfort, for a world of heroes and villains in which someone strong will keep us safe."

The authors anchor their critique in two recent peer-reviewed studies. The first, "When Super (Wo)man Fails to Appear: Beyond Idealized Prototypes in Crisis Leadership," appeared in the Journal of Organizational Behavior 46, no. 6 (July 2025): 813-832. The second, "Crisis Leader Behaviors: A Redirecting Review," ran in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 32, no. 4 (November 2025): 400-428.

What's wrong with the heroic CEO?

Crisis leadership is routinely cast in terms of extraordinary power, charisma, and superhuman qualities, the authors write. The dominant model assumes strong leaders hold complete agency and control over decisions, especially during emergencies. Gooty and her coauthors contend that academic literature has empirically overclaimed the value of such figures.

The pull toward heroics intensifies precisely when anxiety spikes. "The more anxious we are, the more leaderist we become," Petriglieri wrote in Fast Company on November 18, 2020, a passage the MIT SMR authors repurpose. Corporate leadership training, succession plans, and executive development programs still reward confidence and certainty, even when those traits prove elusive or counterproductive in a prolonged crisis.

What does humanized leadership look like?

The three scholars call for a different profile. Effective crisis leaders, they write, must engage with "messy, chaotic thoughts, intense emotions, and precarious relationships, both inside and outside the organization." Emotional complexity, doubt, and flexibility replace the lone decision-maker at the top.

The authors bring institutional weight to the argument. Gooty is cofounder and codirector of UNC Charlotte's Center for Leadership Science and director of the Charlotte MBA programs. Post holds the Fred J. Springer Endowed Chair in Business Leadership at Villanova's School of Business. Ladge chairs the Management and Organization Department at Boston College's Carroll School of Management.

Why now?

The authors frame the essay around a single premise: today's continuous trickle of crises has outlasted the old heroic script. The romantic image of a single leader who carries an organization through catastrophe no longer matches a world in which disruptions compound.

The implication for boards, executive recruiters, and leadership development budgets is direct. Programs built on projecting confidence and certainty will misfire, the authors warn, when the next crisis arrives. Boards that evaluate CEOs primarily on charisma, decisiveness, and the appearance of control risk overpaying for a leadership archetype the scholars say is already failing in real-world tests.

Investors and compensation committees now have peer-reviewed evidence, not just anecdote, to weigh against the heroic-CEO premium. The next test will be whether executive recruiters, succession committees, and corporate training budgets actually adjust, or whether the lure of "leaderism" keeps winning out over the data.