Rhetorical Analysis of 'Do You Have the Brain of a CEO?' Essay

This essay provides a rhetorical analysis of Joannah Pachner's 'Do You Have the Brain of a CEO?' published in Canadian Business. The essay examines leadership qualities, focusing on an interview with industrial psychologist Pamela Ennis, and explores topics like emotional intelligence. It highlights how leadership is assessed through psychometric tests, interviews, and questionnaires, challenging traditional views and myths about leadership. The analysis emphasizes the essay's use of first-person narration, colloquial diction, and the importance of self-motivation and practice in developing leadership skills. The essay also discusses the evolution of leadership assessment techniques in the modern corporate world, emphasizing the flexibility and adaptability of modern evaluation methods. The author concludes that leadership is an aptitude that can be sharpened through practice and self-direction, and the essay is free from bias.

Running head: DO YOU HAVE THE BRAIN OF A CEO? A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
DO YOU HAVE THE BRAIN OF A CEO?: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
Name of the student
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Author Note

1DO YOU HAVE THE BRAIN OF A CEO?: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
The respective essay “Do you have a brain of a CEO?” authored by Joannah Pachner in 2014,
which came in the Magazine “Canadian Business” talks about leadership qualities and how to detect
and evaluate them. There has been an increasing measure of research conducted in the field of
management and leadership qualities, especially in US (Dinh, Lord, Gardner, Meuser, Liden, & Hu,
2014). However, the topic of the mentioned essay has greater significance as a woman is assessed of
leadership qualities in this essay, which is unconventional and phenomenal giving a deep insight to
the feminist discourse in this case.
The essay is informal, eloquent and written from the perspective of a First person named
Joannah Pachner , narrating her experience with an eminent industrial psychologist Pamela Ennis,
who happened to take an interview of her for evaluating her leadership qualities on behalf of the
organisation where Joannah Pancher worked. It can be called a simple narrative text, connecting the
readers with the events and the characters named Pancher and Ennis, involved in the plot. It is an
intriguing essay with decorative figures of speech, colloquial diction with precision and clarity.
Primary source has been used in composing the essay, the source being the industrial psychologist
Pamela Ennis herself, her interview questions, findings and views. The face-to-face verbal
communication has resulted in ventilation of doubts while the interview session, increasing the
credibility of the paper.
The most appreciating part of the essay is that, its contents are relevant enough to the subject
it deals with, without digression. It focuses mainly on the analysing and evaluating standards of
leadership qualities in a person, dealing with his/her psychometric tests with a series of interviews,
discussions and questionnaires quintessentially conducted by professional industrial psychologists.
The tests are conducted to evaluate the cognitive and personality traits of the person. It also talks
about the experiences of the professional and retired CEOs in the field of work, and how the new
CEOs adjust themselves into the fast global world. The essay also overthrows certain myths

2DO YOU HAVE THE BRAIN OF A CEO?: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
associated with leadership qualities such as the proverb, “leaders are born, not made”. While Ennis,
the industrial psychologist notes down the activities and speeches of Pachner, the essay gives details
about sensitive topics such as emotional intelligence, which is traditionally ventured less in corporate
field (Bird & Stevens,2013). At last, Ennis, at the end of the essay, deciphers to Pachner that
leadership quality is an aptitude and it could be sharpened with self-motivation, adequate practice
and self-direction.
The essay appears to be free from any kind of stereotypes or prejudices. The interviewer and
the interviewee, both belonging to the same gender, shows no gender biasness or insensitivity in their
code of conduct. The industrial psychologist, Pamela Ennis, is seen to be observing the interviewee,
Pachner, (an aspiring CEO), taking her interview and evaluating her cognitive, behavioural and
personality traits to understand her capability. She observes Pachner carefully and her results show
accuracy and honesty, devoid of any prejudice. She doesn’t stick to the conventional standards of
aptitude evaluation. She is flexible in her thought and amends her evaluation standards according to
the demand of the international and global world. She also condemns the famous myth “leaders are
born, not made”, giving lectures about unique yet sensitive subjects such as emotional intelligence as
a main trait of a leader. The essay deals with modern and up-to-date techniques of assessing
leadership qualities, overshadowing the conventional code of conduct. Modern techniques assisted
leadership assessments have become customary in today’s corporate world.(Renko, Tarabishy,
Carsrud & Brännback, 2015). At the end, the essay declares that leadership quality is an aptitude that
can be sharpened through practice and self-direction, which clearly shows the flexibility and leniency
of the assessment carried out in the essay. Therefore, it can be decrypted that the essay is not biased.

3DO YOU HAVE THE BRAIN OF A CEO?: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
References:
Bird, A., & Stevens, M. J. (2013). Assessing global leadership competencies. In Global Leadership
2e (pp. 125-152). Routledge.
Dinh, J. E., Lord, R. G., Gardner, W. L., Meuser, J. D., Liden, R. C., & Hu, J. (2014). Leadership
theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing
perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 36-62.
Renko, M., El Tarabishy, A., Carsrud, A. L., & Brännback, M. (2015). Understanding and measuring
entrepreneurial leadership style. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(1), 54-74.