[fanzhang]

This sounds almost like a rubric for evaluating the CEO rather than learning from them. In the sense that from the paragraphs above it seems you have already an answer for what the good CEO should do.

For example, what does one learn from a successful CEO who is dominant, unempathetic, surrounded by yes men, and fiddles with their phone?

Perhaps I'm not reading this correctly, and you mean look at these traits and note how (perhaps counterintuitively) effective or ineffective they are?

[austincheney]

At a certain point in life this sort of listening, or mind reading, becomes non-cognitive. You do this without deliberation and have trouble turning it off. I suppose the idea is to better understand and possibly anticipate the forth coming decisions from how they treat people, self reflect, and plan.