In order to be persistently successful, people and organizations need to adapt continually to their environment. This requires information from the environment. The more active and open the feedback loops, the more effective the adaptation and change can be. Few leaders have truly open and honest feedback within their organizations.

CEO disease: not seeing the impact a leader’s mood has on the organization.

Symptom: when the leader has near-total ignorance about how his or her mood and actions appear to the organization.

The term “CEO disease” comes from the book Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press 2002). The term was originally coined in an article in Business Week by John Byrne in 1991.

The higher up in an organization a leader goes, the less accurate his self-assessment is likely to be. The problem is a lack of candid feedback.

As one CEO expressed it, “I can’t put my finger on it, because no one is actually lying to me. But I can sense that people are hiding information, or camouflaging key facts, so I won’t notice…they aren’t telling me everything I need to know.”