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By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.

— Ben Horowitz

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Source: Ben Horowitz, "What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology," at bhorowitz.com, March 31, 2011.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

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Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ben Horowitz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.