Leaders should be taken at 'Face Value'

London, Jan 15 (UNI) Which came first-- a powerful looking CEO or his successful career.

Many of us would opt for the latter one saying, ''It takes more than a pretty face to run a leading national corporation''. A recent study, however, revealed that performance levels of US top companies could be related to the first impressions made by their chief executive officers (CEOs).

Using photographs of the highest and lowest ranked Fortune 1000 companies' CEOs, experts quizzed college students to determine which of the pictured faces had the characteristics of a leader.

Without knowledge of the job titles of the pictured individuals, the students were able to distinguish between the successful and the not-so-successful CEOs by rating the faces on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness.

Despite the ambiguity of the images, which were cropped to the face, put into grayscale and standardised in size, ratings of power and leadership related traits from CEOs' faces were significantly related to company profits, Science Daily reported.

The majority of CEOs, who were selected according to their Fortune 1000 ranking, were Caucasian males of similar age.

The findings suggested that naive judgments might provide more accurate assessments of individuals than well-informed judgments could, experts believed.

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