Forget about warm and fuzzy in the executive suite, says a trio of University of Chicago business professors--it's the tough guys that get results.

Focused on CEO hiring for companies involved in private equity transactions including LBO and VC deals, the related study looked into how CEOs’ characteristics and abilities relate to hiring decisions, PE investment choices, and subsequent performance. More than 300 CEO candidates were assessed on more than forty individual characteristics in seven general areas--leadership, personal, intellectual, motivational, interpersonal, technical and specific.

The finding? While investors do value “soft” or team-related skills in the hiring decisions, “hard” abilities and execution skills, for LBO deals especially, predict greater success. As one of the profs acknowledges, this seems to contradict the New York Times’ portrait of the prototypical "softer" modern chief executive,

heralding current GE head Jeffrey Emmelt’s empathic, informal and generally unflappable style over Jack Welch’s hard-nosed approach.

With the caveat that their results "do not generalize" for all companies, the authors propose that in fact, aggressive, impatient, forceful Welch--his Darwinian toughness forged by childhood ballgames played in excavated gravel known as the "Pit"--persists as the model.

Not surprisingly (for the PE realm, anyway), the study also found that clear-eyed outside CEO candidates are more highly rated than incumbents.

Vince Lombardi and Bill Parcells bullied their way to Super Bowl victories; Tom Landry and Tony Dungy got there with saintly calm. Patton's blitzes, or Eisenhower’s team coverage? What kind of business leader are you?

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