It's all bullshit. There's almost no measure by which particular CEOs are better than the average/random. Much like investors: almost no investors can be said to be consistently better than the average, i.e. the distribution follows what you would expect if everyone is doing decisions at random. Despite that, we still believe there are objectively good CEOs or investors (apart from a very small minority) who therefore deserve their outrageous compensation for their leadership and decision skills.

Just look at the amount of CEOs who got international industry awards or recognition, who some years later tanked their companies or were found to be engaged in criminal practices.