BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says leaders have to be ‘much more guarded’ about what they say because of social media and populism

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said leaders have to be far more careful about what they say. He compared the attention leaders deal with to living in “a terrarium.”

For BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, the qualities that make a good leader haven’t changed, but the world they live in has.

As a result, leaders nowadays have to measure their words carefully, Fink said during the Forbes Iconoclast Summit in New York.

“You have to be a lot more guarded. I can’t say everything I really want to say to all of you right now,” Fink told the audience. “The reality is you have to be a lot more systematic in what you say and how you say it—internally or externally.”

Fink added the biggest change he’d seen over the last 30 years of being a corporate leader was the “transparency of everything we do.”

Leaders h