The other day I attended a Hubris Forum hosted by The Surrey Business School at the University of Surrey and facilitated by Professor Eugene Sadler-Smith.

Some people suggest that we are at ‘Peak Hubris’ and that Hubris’ time has come around again. Certainly the new millennium has presented us with any number of Hubristic Leaders, in business and politics, as well as Hubristic organisations. 2001 saw the implosion of Enron and its accounting company Arthur Andersen, move on to the banking crisis of 2007/8 and look at the political peacocks in the USA and Europe today.

Within the Forum, Eugene invited us to pick the odd one out from the Hall of Fame / Shame slide at the top of this post. I wonder who you would pick out and why?  2 snippets might help: First, the character in the bottom right is Icarus, who hubristically flew too close to the sun. Second, you might find this overview from Eugene useful:

Hubris is a potentially lethal cocktail of over-confidence, over-ambition, arrogance and pride.  It’s a malaise of powerful and successful leaders, fuelled by prior success and media praise, which feeds off the collusion and conformance of followers.  When it’s allied to contempt for the advice and criticism of others it can cause leaders in all walks of life to recklessly over-reach themselves and inflict damage—both financial and reputational—on themselves, their organizations and its employees.

So, over to you. Who is the odd one out and why? Join the conversation in the comments box at the foot of the page.