A few weeks ago, in a Marketplace Mores column, Matthew Lynn of Bloomberg News published a piece that declared, “If you want to be wealthy, it helps to be rude to people”.

He cited research conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, on students from various socio-economic backgrounds. The wealthier students tended to be more disinterested in others and less likely to engage in conversation than their less-privileged brethren. The psychologists concluded that what they were seeing was a reflection of basic animal behaviour: the higher animals are in the food chain, the stronger and fitter they are, the less they need others. “It is the experience of wealth that leads individuals to become disengaged”, observed Professor Dacher Keltner.

With this as the backdrop, Lynn then talks about CEOs, who he has found to be, often enough, an unpleasant bunch. “They bully, cajole, threaten and fume. There are very few examples of (CEOs) flattering or charming their way to the top. The accumulation of wealth requires an ability to crush rivals, stamp on employees, and sweep aside all opposition. Charm doesn’t come into it.”

I disagree. It is true that some chief executives can be… how should I put it?… determined. It is also true that some can be downright aggressive when push comes to shove. But I would argue that the ability to lay on the charm when and as required is a fundamental skill that most decent CEOs have mastered.

Engaging with others, generous listening, sending “I’m interested” signals… all enable successful leaders to enroll employees in corporate programs, secure the loyalty of customers in negotiations, create alliances, finesse bank loans, enthuse analysts, etc.

Most customers and suppliers will push back when they feel they are being bullied. Rudeness would be rebuffed vigorously. Balance of power is often established behind the scenes, while the more visible road to good intentions is being paved thickly with charm. Sometimes it works the other way around. One player is allowed to make public points if he is willing to make private concessions. There’s winning and there’s winning.

Employees are more easily cowed by authority; the fundamentals of hierarchal behaviour are well ingrained in most of us. But the true enrollment of employees, instilling real excitement, involvement and commitment, is not possible without first creating a belief in the sincerity and caring of the CEO. A ‘charming’ CEO will always get the benefit of the doubt. At least the first time.

CEOs tend to talk to other CEOs. Alliances, in theory a coming together of equals, can not be consummated if one potential partner aggressively pushes a win-lose scenario on another equally ‘determined’ chief executive. I have seen many an alliance and numerous potential acquisitions founder, not on the basis of due diligence but because of ego-driven obstinacy and the inability to finesse, i.e., charm, one’s way past clearly surmountable stumbling blocks.

By the way, if you are going to be rude, you had better be the CEO. It is a trait less tolerated by superiors, peers and staff as you work your way down the org chart. And it is one I’ve seen used as an excuse when staffing sacrifices have to be made.

In most cases, charm is a first resort, bullying the last. Power, wrapped in a smile, is almost impossible to resist. It is the ultimate expression of walking softly but carrying a big stick.

I always liked factor analysis as a strategic tool. To begin with, statistics were never a strength of mine. Factor analysis is different; there is nothing arcane about it. It is simply a method of observing linear combinations of attributes or factors. They may or may not be accurate measures of interdependencies. Multiple attributes can be highly correlated with no apparent reason. And if important attributes are missed, the value of the analysis is reduced accordingly. That said, marketers often use them successfully to construct perceptual maps and other product positioning devices. At the very least, it is a neat, almost elegant, way of capturing and presenting information.

Factor analysis was a tool used cleverly by Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist who, with N.Y. Times journalist Stephen Dubner, co-authored Freakonomics in 2005. The subtitle of Freakonomics is apt: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Cause and effect were turned upside down as they searched for interdependencies and correlations that to others seemed, at best, coincidental. They were able to debunk commonly held theories on many topical issues…as, for example, why the crime rates in New York City fell precipitously under the watchful eye of Rudy Giuliani.

Without being referred to specifically, factor analysis was also used by Malcolm Gladwell in his very clever new best-seller, Outliers: The Story of Success. It takes a leap of faith the size of the Grand Canyon to suggest that Bill Gates’ ultimate success was the result of accumulative advantage starting as an eighth grader when he had unlimited access to a computer, access denied even to university students. Ditto for hockey players who took advantage of the age cut in minor hockey to jump ahead of the pack.

Cultural legacy provides the basis for an even more startling leap from rice paddies to Chinese aptitude for math and deference to Korean Air pilots being the unwitting triggers to a succession of horrific crashes.

Gladwell is near-Holmsian in his ability to apply observation, deductive reasoning and inference to reach his conclusions. But he has the numbers to back up the anecdotal, if anomalous, evidence.

This is a fun book. It is, like Gladwell’s other books, breezy and easy to read. And while some of his theories might be a stretch, they aren’t as silly as, say, the Paul Revere stuff in The Tipping Point. It is replete with interesting concepts and enough terminology – divergence testing, orthogonal intelligence, concerted cultivation and mitigated speech – to wow even the stuffiest psychologist.

Like Levitt, Gladwell makes you think. Unlike Levitt, he offers up the basis, if not the blueprint, for making the most of your potential.

It’s all in the numbers. And, as you know, numbers don’t lie.