New research suggests that CEOs have a rosier view of senior management’s performance than other top team members do. In a global survey of 124 CEOs and 579 other senior executives at large and midsize firms from a range of industries, 52% of the non-CEOs said that their teams were doing poorly in critical areas such as thinking innovatively, cross-marketing, leading change, overseeing talent development, and building a company culture. Just 28% of the chief executives reported problems in these areas. Rating their teams’ overall effectiveness on a seven-point scale (seven being the best), the CEOs gave an average score of 5.39, whereas the other executives gave an average score of only 4.02. (See the exhibit “Performance Scores Diverge.”)

A version of this article appeared in the September 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review.