Executive Extraversion: Career and Firm Outcomes

We use linguistic algorithms to measure the extraversion of company executives based on their speech patterns during conference calls. We find extraverted executives earn significantly higher salaries. Extraverted CFOs are more often promoted to CEO, and extraverted CEOs are more likely to serve on outside boards. Analyzing executive transitions, we find that firms with extraverted CEOs garner more attention from the media and brokerage analysts. Increases in executive extraversion are also associated with improvements in stock liquidity. However, CEO extraversion correlates with lower profitability among growth and high investment firms, which is consistent with introverted managers conveying operational benefits.