Here’s what employees are looking for in their CEOs—and what they avoid

In a new analysis by job and recruiting platform Glassdoor, employees say career development and mentorship are among the most desired traits in their company’s leadership. The analysis looks into Glassdoor reviews of senior leadership collected from May 2025 to May 2026 for the site’s Best CEOs 2026 award winners, which is based on employee ratings of CEO approval. The data comes from over 150,000 reviews from U.S.-based non-intern employees who mentioned management or senior leadership topics in their reviews of their CEOs. The analysis compared the frequency of terms employees used when rating the best CEOs against reviews from companies of executives who didn’t win. It then measured the increase in the share of reviews that mention certain keywords. Among the positive reviews of the best CEOs, employees mention keywords related to career development: Some of them include “mobility” (mentioned over 253% more than in the reviews of non-winning CEOs), “growth opportunities” (+159%), and “career growth” (+111%). Research from 2023 by Glassdoor already showed that access to career opportunities within an organization is one of the mai…