The typical chief executive officer, reports USA Today, is now much more narcissistic and thin-skinned than the top guys used to be. A recent study by a Cleveland firm shows that the final step on the corporate ladder has a trandforming effect. People who were middle managers and foremen remained relatively level-headed but the top job makes people more egotistical and prone to delusions of, say, grandeur.

The model good CEO, A.G. Laffey of Proctor & Gamble, routinely subjects himself to anonymous evaluations from people at all levels of the company. He seems to take the criticisms in stride, noting that he must have done something right along the way to have risen through the ranks of such a complex organization.

Another study from Penn State measures how CEOs have not made themselves the focus of the company and this partly explains their unembarrassed acceptance of huge multiples of the typical worker when everyone is talking about how overpaid CEOs really are. And when things don’t pan out, CEOs rarely blame themselves: Former CEOs Carly Fiorina (H-P) and Robert Nardelli (Home Depot) are cases in point. (If  you’re interested in my take on Nardelli, read my Business Press piece.)

Too much ego, the Penn study concludes, is a recipe for disaster as the CEO jumps around trying to find the one big solution to the problems. Part of the problem is that those who reach the top often get little criticism on the way up and so start to think of themselves as invulnerable. Maybe the Laffey solution is the answer. If not, we might find even more boards firing more CEOs this year.

And here’s a tactic we hope never makes it into a Jeffrey Gitomer book. Airbus CEO Jean Pierson, reports Reuters, dropped his trousers when US Airways chairman Stephen Wolf started asking for a deeper discount on a 400-plane deal in 1997. The full story will appear in a new book on the Boeing-Airbus rivalry to be publsihed Tuesday.