Submission of a collection of insights from slovenian leaders on the psychology of reaching the top and staying there, created as part of a master’s thesis, to the social science data archives (ADP)

As a master’s student of psychology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, I conducted a study on the psychological principles underlying exceptional success in business and politics between 2023 and 2025, under the supervision of Dr Boštjan Bajec, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. Quite early on, my observations in practice led me to the idea that there are universal principles of success in life and at work – more specifically in business and politics, since I focused on those areas that were empirically closest to me from my own school of life. Or to put it another way: that there are certain universal rules of the game that increase the potential for victory and determine one’s chances of making it to the top – and staying there. That define one’s dance of life and turn one’s wheel of fortune to the segment marked “winner”. The rules of the game and the psychological principles of exceptional success that are important regardless of how the actors change and the scenes change, to quote the ancient Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who remains my ideal of a leader, a man and a human being. While studying psychology and interviewing Slovene leaders about the psychology of leadership for various seminar papers, I came to the conclusion that I might find more support for my hypothesis if I could actually draw parallels between classical philosophical views on leadership, modern psychological theories of effective leadership and insights from the practical experience of contemporary politicians and business leaders in Slovenia. 

I conducted interviews with twenty-four participants, whom I divided into three groups – politicians, management board presidents and members, and company owners – resulting in approximately 500 pages of transcripts, which I have now successfully submitted and published in the Social Science Data Archives under the title The Psychological Principles Underlying Exceptional Success in Slovenian Business and Politics, 2025 (https://dataverse.adp.fdv.uni-lj.si/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.17898/10057). The relative consistency in the way all three groups view the concepts under discussion, including in the differences and similarities within the groups, points to a shared understanding of the key determinants of a winning psyche. The leaders of antiquity, modern psychological and management literature, and the interviewed Slovenian business leaders and politicians in all three groups identify similar psychological principles that increase the individual’s potential for victory in business, in politics and in life. These include perseverance, flexibility and, at the same time, ruthlessness, steeliness tempered by empathy, decisiveness, vision, self-confidence, integrity, resilience to stress and the ability to respond effectively in crisis situations. A high degree of loneliness and solitude is, in the view of all three groups, an inevitable element of life at the top. The world of business and politics seems ruthless, because the wheel of fortune is constantly turning. One day you’re in, the next you’re out, as one of my interviewees puts it. Business is Newtonian physics, politics is quantum, says another. Mistakes are part of the learning process and it is only with hindsight that you can judge whether a decision was the right one. 

I believe that the dataset created as part of my master’s thesis – over 500 pages of transcribed conversations, submitted in its original form to the Social Science Data Archives – will serve as a kind of timeless gallery portraying the souls and wisdom of the decision-makers of a given period, both for future researchers and for the leaders of future generations, and will contribute to the conscious creation of greater prosperity, development and progress across the whole of Slovenia. The successful ones will keep pulling the cart forwards, says another interviewee. We need to soften the resistance to success in Slovenia… I believe in the saying that the better the leaders, the better the society they lead, and the greater the opportunities for prosperity for the nation. I am grateful to have had the opportunity, as a researcher, to play my part in creating what one of my interviewees describes as a kind of manifest of successful individuals from a given moment in the history of our country – a country for which I feel infinite love, if I may borrow the expression of another of my interviewees. My actual master’s thesis is still waiting to be defended before the panel at the Faculty of Arts. Also waiting is a final commemorative publication, to which I have given the poetic working title The Dark and the Light Side of ‘Ruling the World’. For me, a good leader is someone who is master of themselves. Master of their positive and negative characteristics. The world isn’t black and it isn’t white – it’s both, says one of my younger interviewees. Someone who is able to dance with both will be a winner. I am always reminded of Stiva Oblonsky’s words in Anna Karenina: This world is a dance of light and darkness. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.