Bob Iger, Chairman and former CEO of Disney has announced the intention of joining the 2021 trend of CEOs, founders and top executives stepping down from their roles. In a recent interview, the Disney executive said he first thought about leaving his position of CEO after feeling that he was sweeping other people’s opinions under the carpet. The former CEO who stepped down from his role as Chairman in 2020 was succeeded by Bob Chapek. He continued in the role of Chairman throughout the pandemic and now the executive is finally ready to give up this role too.
Explaining why he stepped down from his CEO role in an exclusive interview with David Faber of CNBC, the executive said that “Over time, I started listening less and maybe with a little less tolerance of other people’s opinions, maybe because of getting a little bit more overconfident in my own, which is sometimes what happens when you get built up”.
Bob Iger who ran the company from 2005 to last year will be giving up his position of Chairman by the year’s end. The decision to step down as Chairman is an extension of his decision to step down as CEO. According to him, he said he kept on invalidating the opinion of other people in the workplace which of course is detrimental to the running of the company. While he feels like he’s “heard every argument before”, it took some time of pondering to realize that he was saying no hastily and that the world is changing and things do not have to depend on his “rigid” ideas and opinions. “I became a little bit more dismissive of other people’s opinions than I should have been. That was an early sign that it was time. It wasn’t the reason I left, but it was a contributing factor”, he said.
For now, no one has been named as Bob Iger’s successor for the position of Chairman but eventually, this would be revealed in the coming week.
Other executives who have stepped down from their positions this year include Zhang Yiming, Jack Dorsey, Jim Whitehurst, Nat Friedman, Shou Zi Chew, etc. World’s richest man Elon Musk also tweeted his intention to step down from his CEO positions across his companies to follow his passion for influencing, but he is yet to do so.
