If you want to be a high-mileage leader like Warren Buffett, it pays to be humble.
The Oracle of Omaha this week gave up the job as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, after more than half a century spent building and then running the conglomerate. Buffett said his son Howard would succeed him as chairman.
In that role, his son will guard Berkshire’s culture and values, which the elder Buffett said are “worth more than anything on our balance sheet.”
That belief in the importance of organizational culture is nothing new for Buffett who has, over the years, offered a steady stream of advice on investing and leadership.
Last year, in his final Thanksgiving letter to shareholders as CEO, he shared insights on the virtues of stewardship, honesty, and what he described as “good intentions” gone awry in attempts to rein in CEO pay.
One broad takeaway was his call to continue learning and growing.
“Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better,” Buffett wrote.
Here are five other lessons Buffett shared:
Stay humble
The 96-year-old famously ran Berkshire with an unfussy, meat-and-potatoes sensibility. Buffett wrote about the role luck played in his life and work, and how that experience continually honed his sense of humility.
“Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman,” Buffett said.
He also grounded some of his humble inclinations in the luck he had, being a man — compared with his sisters, whom he described as having “equal intelligence and better personalities,” though they faced a much different outlook.
“I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck,” he said.
Learn from your errors
Buffett said that while he’s made many mistakes, he’s tried to use them as springboards for growth. “Learn at least a little from them and move on,” Buffett wrote.
One misstep, he said, was not intervening more forcefully when he saw indications that a “wonderful and loyal CEO” of a parent or subsidiary company would “succumb to dementia, Alzheimer’s or another debilitating and long-term disease.”
“Charlie and I encountered this problem several times and failed to act. This failure can be a huge mistake,” Buffett wrote, referring to Charlie Munger, his longtime friend and colleague, who died in 2023.
Buffett said that while it’s often not easy, boards need to keep watch for signs of such conditions in chiefs, and that CEOs themselves need to do the same at the units they oversee.
“Directors should be alert and speak up is all that I can advise,” Buffett said in the letter, which ran about seven pages.
Choose the right leaders
Part of Buffett’s call for humility extended to how future Berkshire leaders should expect to conduct themselves — and what they should aspire to.
He said that the company should only require five or six CEOs over the next century. In the shareholder letter released Friday, Buffett reiterated his confidence in Greg Abel, who succeeded him as CEO.
“He has been making the decisions that matter for some time now, and I have not had to think twice about any of them,” Buffett wrote.
Buffett wrote last fall that he wanted Berkshire Hathaway, which was a New England textile producer when he began buying up its stock in the early 1960s, to avoid hiring top leaders who are there for the wrong reasons: “It should particularly avoid those whose goal is to retire at 65, to become look-at-me rich or to initiate a dynasty,” Buffett said of the company.
Think about your obit
One recurring theme in his letter centered on Buffett’s assertion that it’s “never too late to improve.”
Another bit of advice: Work backward from what you want your obituary to say and then “live the life to deserve it.”
The release of Buffett’s third annual Thanksgiving letter to Berkshire shareholders had become something of an event because of his status as one of the world’s most famous investors. He said at the time that he planned to continue to address shareholders in an annual letter, though not as CEO. “As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet.’ Sort of.”
Don’t rule from the grave
Buffett’s decision to become chairman emeritus appeared in line with his advice against of trying to retain influence for too long.
In his Thanksgiving letter, Buffett applauded the abilities of Abel, who is some three decades younger and took over as CEO at the start of 2026.
“He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator,” Buffett said.
He also wrote about his three children, whom he said possess the “maturity, brains, energy and instincts” to disburse the family’s large fortune. Earlier this year, Buffett’s net worth was nearing $150 billion.
After he dies, Buffett wrote last year, his children will be free to adapt to changes in tax policy and other factors as needed to continue the family’s philanthropic work.
“Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do so,” he said.
An earlier version of this story appeared on November 10, 2025.
