Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein has been named “The World’s Greatest Leader” by Fortune Magazine.
Epstein ranked higher than even Pope Francis in the magazine’s fourth annual ranking.
The list was made up of nominations from a panel of “expert advisers” and features people the magazine says best taught three important lessons: Acknowledging reality and offering hope, bringing followers physically together and building bridges.
Joe Maddon weighed in on the ranking while talking to reporters recently.
"Has the pope broken any 108-year-old curses lately?" he asked jokingly.
Epstein was noted as being famous among baseball fans as a data nerd, but “turns out, there’s much more to him than you think.”
“Remember as you scan our list that we evaluate each leader within his or her own field of endeavor,” Fortune’s Geoff Colvin wrote on the list. “Someone leading a small organization effectively may rank above someone far more famous nudging global issues. Our point isn’t to declare that, say, No. 7 on our list is “greater” than No. 9. The point is that great leaders can be anywhere—at the helm of a giant corporation, running a rural college, or in a cramped office exerting influence through sheer personal energy.”
Chicago Baseball
Epstein was cited as being a “wunderkind executive who realized he would need to grow as a leader in order to replicate in Chicago the success he’d had with the Boston Red Sox.”
He is followed by Jack Ma, the executive chairman of Alibaba Group, Pope Francis, Melinda Gates and Jeff Bezos, among other notable leaders.
See the full list here.
