CEO excellence: How do leaders assess their own performance?

In “CEO Excellence: How Do Leaders Assess Their Own Performance?”, Gautam Kumra, Joydeep Sengupta, and Mukund Sridhar share early findings from McKinsey’s CEO Excellence Assessment Tool, a self-assessment based on the six leadership dimensions from McKinsey’s CEO Excellence research. Published on February 13, 2024, the article draws on data from more than 100 CEOs across 17 major industries, mostly from Asia, to explore where CEOs feel most confident—and where they feel most exposed.

Overarching Theme

The article’s central message is that CEO performance should be treated as a measurable, improvable discipline. McKinsey frames CEO excellence across six dimensions: setting direction, engaging with the board, aligning the organization, mobilizing through leaders, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness. The authors argue that self-reflection, peer learning, mentoring, and targeted development can help CEOs improve, especially early in their tenure.

Major Takeaways for Business Leaders

1. CEOs feel least confident in board engagement, resource allocation, and stakeholder management.
The lowest self-assessed behaviors include tapping into board members’ wisdom, objectively reallocating resources, and prioritizing stakeholder engagement strategies. These are not soft issues; they directly affect value creation, strategic agility, and trust.

2. CEOs tend to feel strongest in personal values, humility, and vision-setting.
Respondents generally rated themselves highly on staying true to their convictions, practicing gratitude, staying humble, and setting or reframing the company vision.

3. Dynamic resource allocation remains a leadership gap.
McKinsey notes that CEOs often struggle to allocate resources as an outsider would, especially when shutting down or removing initiatives. The article also cites McKinsey research showing that active reallocators have historically delivered stronger shareholder returns than slower reallocators.

4. Board relationships require more than cordiality.
The authors argue that the best CEOs do not settle for an indifferent or purely formal board relationship. They work to help directors help the business, focusing board time on future-oriented questions and strategic value creation.

5. CEO development pays off.
CEOs who invest in targeted learning, training, and mentorship report improvement across all 18 measured behaviors. Early-tenure CEOs appear to benefit especially from development interventions around board engagement and stakeholder connection.

Talking Points for Executives

A useful leadership-team discussion starter is: “Where are we mistaking confidence for competence?” The article shows that CEOs may feel strong in areas such as vision, values, and personal leadership, while feeling less certain in structurally important areas like board leverage, resource reallocation, stakeholder engagement, and talent management.

Another key talking point: CEO effectiveness is not static. The article challenges the idea that leaders must simply “grow into” the role through experience alone. Deliberate learning, mentoring, reflection, and structured feedback can accelerate CEO development.

For boards, the article also raises a governance question: Are we supporting the CEO as a strategic partner, or simply evaluating performance after the fact?

Reflection Questions

1. Which of the six CEO excellence dimensions would we rate as our strongest today?
2. Where would the CEO, board, and executive team disagree on current performance?
3. Are we reallocating capital, talent, and leadership attention toward the future—or protecting legacy commitments?
4. Does the board agenda spend enough time on strategy, risk, disruption, and future value creation?
5. Which stakeholders matter most to our license to operate, and do we understand their motivations clearly?
6. What formal learning, mentorship, or feedback mechanisms are in place for the CEO and top team?

Potential Action Items

Run a CEO effectiveness review using the six McKinsey dimensions as a discussion framework.

Create a board-engagement reset: clarify how board members’ expertise can be used, redesign board agendas around future-facing issues, and improve pre-board strategic preparation.

Conduct a resource allocation challenge session in which leaders ask what they would fund, stop, scale, or exit if they were joining the company today.

Map the company’s priority stakeholders and develop a disciplined engagement strategy for each group.

Build a CEO and executive-team development plan that includes mentorship, peer learning, structured reflection, and periodic 360-style feedback.

Protect CEO time for personal effectiveness: strategic thinking, unexpected issues, learning, recovery, and high-value stakeholder interactions.

Similar Articles to Recommend

“CEO Excellence” — McKinsey & Company
A broader overview of McKinsey’s CEO Excellence work, focused on the CEO’s responsibilities in strategy, organization alignment, top-team leadership, board engagement, external stakeholders, and personal effectiveness.

“CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest” — McKinsey on Books
A companion resource on the research behind McKinsey’s CEO Excellence book, based on long-term CEO data and interviews with high-performing chief executives.

“The Mindsets and Practices of Excellent CEOs” — McKinsey
A foundational article that includes a self-assessment approach for CEOs and boards to evaluate leadership practices associated with superior CEO performance.

“How the Best CEOs Build Lasting Stakeholder Relationships” — McKinsey
A strong companion piece for leaders who want to go deeper on one of the lower-confidence areas identified in the assessment: stakeholder connection.

“Better Together: Three Ways to Boost Board–CEO Collaboration” — McKinsey
A useful follow-up on board effectiveness and CEO-board partnership, especially given that board engagement emerged as a common CEO challenge.

“Tying Short-Term Decisions to Long-Term Strategy” — McKinsey
A practical companion on resource allocation, one of the lowest-rated CEO behaviors in the article