A recent study found that executives who bring colleagues into the conversation on earnings calls are more likely to become CEO, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 20.
The study was published online April 8 in Management Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Its authors are researchers from Columbia Business School in New York City, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Business School in Boston. They reviewed transcripts of roughly 78,500 earnings calls held between 2010 and 2020. Executives who regularly handed questions to colleagues came across to boards and shareholders as more cooperative, and that group was more likely to reach the top job.
Overall, 6.7% of executives who spoke on the calls went on to become CEO. Among those who routinely asked colleagues to weigh in, the rate nearly doubled to 13%. Executives who brought in a wider mix of colleagues, rather than the same one or two, saw even better odds, the Journal reported.
“It’s not about being nice or inclusive,” Wei Cai, an associate professor at Columbia Business School and one of the study’s authors, told the Journal. “[It’s that] inviting a colleague to speak could signal to analysts, investors and boards of directors that the executive is good at coordinating and communicating across the organization, all of which could reveal meaningful leadership traits.”
The findings come at a time when hospitals and health systems are naming CEOs much faster than they did last year. More CEOs have been appointed so far in 2026 than in the same period of 2025, and most were outside hires. Large systems are the exception. They promoted internal leaders for 73% of CEO appointments in 2026, up from 57% in 2025. Presidents were the most common source, followed by COOs and CFOs.
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