Celebrity v CEO v Politician
Why are celebrities, CEOs, and politicians three different types of people who don’t overlap much? You might think that being good at one would make you also well suited for the others, but it seems not. Few people switch between these roles.
Maybe we can understand this in terms of two key kinds of social skills, interaction and captivation. The skill of interacting is reacting to others going back and forth many times. The skill of captivation is presenting a persona that others find captivating, entertaining, engaging, and/or mesmerizing.
Celebrities in our world mainly become so by showing a captivating persona. Their many fans don’t get much of a chance to react to them, so this is mostly a one-way one-time interaction.
In contrast, CEOs mostly become so by managing interactions well. They rarely present personas to people they don’t interact much with. People far below them in an org might know something about them, but don’t need to be captivated to accept their place and do their jobs well. In fact, a captivating CEO runs substantial risks of negative publicity from outside and hostile undermining from below.
Politicians need to be good at both interaction and captivation. They need to captivate the public, while also interacting well with political associates, such as donors, agency heads, and other politicians. If they are only good at managing interactions, voters will yawn and forget them. But if they are only good at captivating the public, they will fail in their relations with political folks behind the scenes.
Compared to top celebrities, politicians seem to look ugly, and have lame personas. And compared to top CEOs, politicians seem like crude organizational allies. Their magic is in doing both things moderately well.
Insightful, but there are a lot more types of people out there who also don't overlap much. Why group these three together? (Many others who share one or both of these traits to some degree.) What about college presidents?
Also it's not just that they do both well but that they enjoy both being the focus of attention and engaging with others. If they didn't enjoy both they'd likely try to be celebrities or CEOs. I'd imagine CEOs don't crave the attention and admiration of others and celebs don't really want that two way interaction.
I think it's also driven by people's desire. If you want lots of money, you become a CEO. If you want lots of power, you become a politician. If you want lots of attention, you become a celebrity. For many people, the amount of power politicians have and the amount of attention celebrities get become so large they're unwelcome burdens. I think most people would probably want the amount of money CEOs get, but being a CEO is a very difficult thing that I think even people skilled at other domains would be capable of switching into.