This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

I am a venture capitalist. I take other people's money, invest it in exciting little companies, hope those companies get bigger and, if all goes well, return more money to my investors than they gave me.

I recently met a financial planner who informed me that his mission was to help me achieve my life's goals. He asked me a string of questions in an effort to understand me as a person, and then asked his final question: "What do you want to achieve with your life?"


I thought about it for a second and told him, "I want to be a successful venture capitalist without being a jerk." He was at a loss. Apparently my answer was supposed to be in dollars. But it was the truth. I'll make my investors plenty of money. But, above all, I want to demonstrate that success doesn't have to come at someone else's expense.

Imagine my horror, then, when I read about a recent study[1] by professors from several leading business schools, including Stanford's, which concluded that nice guys don't finish first. It determined that although nice guys garnered prestige for their upstanding behaviour, the strongest leaders were best characterised by dominance. Those who demonstrated selfish or belligerent traits were ultimately perceived as more dominant and, therefore, better leaders. The converse was also true -- the more altruistic you appeared, the less appealing you were as a leader.

The study reminds me of dating. The girls in my school were attracted to the bad boys. Despite the early appeal of the jerks, however, in the end the girls realised that they were better off marrying the nice guys. I think the same is true in business.

Selfish, authoritarian leaders may appear attractive at first. But the appeal will wear off.


What the study gets wrong is the timescale. Sometimes aggression and dominance will characterise a strong leader. But company-building is more collaborative than adversarial. Leaders need to co-operate with employees, partners, distributors, customers etc. As a result, executives who optimise for the confrontational aspects of their job, rather than the collaborative ones, will miss the mark. As tempting as it is to use this study as an excuse to become the bad boy of business, I'm convinced the professors have come to the wrong conclusion. Nice guys don't finish last. It just takes a while for the true value of positive, collaborative leadership to shine through.

[1] Nir Halevy et al, forthcoming, "Status conferral in intergroup social dilemma: behavioral antecedents and consequences of prestige and dominance", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

David Hornik is the author of Ventureblog.