Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of Newscorp, is a titan. Yes, that’s the term that people use very loosely when they describe people who head media companies, but doesn’t Murdoch seem as though he would be a titan no matter what he did? I can picture Rupert Murdoch coaching Little League, working as a janitor, or participating in a knitting class – and I still think he’d come across like a titan. The man has a ruthless, tough, incredibly aggressive and success-driven persona which seems like a force of nature akin to a hurricane or volcano eruption.He created one of the largest and most successful media conglomerates in the world; rules it like Augustus once ran the Roman Empire; and maintains an iron grip on power despite the fact that he is at an age when most CEOs are playing shuffle board or chasing after their nurses.

Every move Murdoch has ever made has paid off by making his organization more powerful and his shareholders more wealthy. Can you imagine working for Murdoch or even standing up in a shareholder meeting, and questioning him over putting his young children into highly visible and senior positions within the organization? His glare alone would probably vaporize you on the spot. And yet who didn’t feel a slight kernel of doubt when Murdoch anointed his 30 year old son, Lachlan, as the head of Star Europe and his heir apparent? There was something oddly anachronistic, robber-baronish and even Enron-esque to the practice of treating a global company like a private fiefdom. Indeed, the royal family quality of the saga was reinforced when Lachlan mysteriously resigned.

So why do the Rupert Murdochs of the world, and the many corporate leaders we rarely hear about like Ned Johnson at Fidelity or Brian Roberts at Comcast, lose so little sleep over how such behavior gets perceived by the rest of us? For a simple reason: they don’t see it the same way. Much of the motivation and rationale for favoritism and nepotism can be uncovered by considering the real nature of leadership. Leaders are people, too. Their emotions and perspectives shape and influence their decisions in ways that we don’t always get at first glance. For example, few of us appreciate how lonely it can be at the top. It may sound like a cliché, but therein lies a grain of truth. A leader’s life is consumed by his role. Very little of his life is set aside for extracurricular activities. What might be extracurricular to us is work-related to the leader. The fishing trip. The golf game. The dinner party. The African safari. Try separating the leader from his thought processes, pending decisions, and thirst for relevant ideas and information even for a minute… go ahead, I dare you. It just doesn’t happen. Is it any surprise, therefore, that the leader views his work as an extension of his personal life? The line is blurry, if it even exists. Why should it matter to anyone if people the leader knows from the social realm slide into the work realm? For the leader, it’s virtually the same universe. In other words, a leader is simply not hung up on the idea of separating friends and family from the job, despite the opinions of the chattering class.

This is not to say that the leader chooses people for his inner circle who have no reasons to be there. To the leader, those reasons are very sound, and they relate to trust, certainty, and predictability. It seems ironic and it may not be macho to admit, but the powerful people who run organizations are actually in positions of extreme vulnerability. So much depends on them, and yet they are also completely dependent on others. Who the leader turns to for advice, confidential conversation, strategic thinking, information, opinion, perspective and emotional support really matters. Why would any leader question the value of having trusted lieutenants in place around him? It’s only natural that a leader often finds such trusted lieutenants by turning to the family, social or work environments that he knows so well.

Moreover, knowing someone and feeling comfortable with them is not the primary reason the leader has chosen them. What matters to the leader is that he knows how that person thinks, what skills and capabilities they bring to the job, and how reliably they perform. The leader knows that his best friend, a former colleague at his last company, has an absolutely flawless sense of timing when it comes to marketing new products. So he brings that friend over to become the new head of marketing as the company is gearing up for its next major product launch. Others, not privy to this experience, may question that decision because they don’t have the same data the leader possesses. To the leader, it’s about certainty and predictability. He’s worked with his friend before. He knows that friend’s character, and thinks he knows his strengths and weaknesses. He is comfortable with the friend and likes him. And he has experienced, in person, how well that friend delivers in a pressure situation. More than anything else, leaders hate surprises. Once they’ve made a decision, they want to check it off the list and move on, certain that it will be accomplished. They don’t want the anxiety of wondering: Will this person really come through?

But there’s more to the taboo of favoritism than just trust and reliability. Would it surprise you if politics also entered the equation? Politics, at senior levels, can be incredibly brutal. Trusted friends and family members make important political allies. They are inclined to watch the leader’s back, and support him at critical moments because of the depth of their relationship. They may also owe the leader a great deal, and the leader may be more than willing to draw interest on those debts whenever necessary. On a board of directors, for example, why wouldn’t the chairman and CEO want the board stacked with as many allies as possible? He wants his decisions to go his way. He wants a supportive board, not one that is waiting for his first bad move. He wants to know that he can walk into the room and discuss challenges relatively openly rather than be always on the look out. If the board directors owe the leader for various reasons, so much the better. Leadership, after all, has a transactional component to it. It is the process by which a leader accomplishes his objectives.

Finally, there’s a third and somewhat more selfish (if still understandable) motivation for loading up on friends and family. Leaders, never lacking in ego, think they probably ought to live forever. Short of being able to clone yourself, one form of immortality comes from seeing your own likeness in front of you. The leaders I have worked with who have been succeeded by people they have mentored closely are enormously proud of that accomplishment. To a degree, they see that individual as an extension of themselves. Gail Sheehy, in her book, New Passages,  calls it “generativity.” Leaders who see their children take over are similarly moved. There’s a sense that the organization, which the leader has worked so hard to build, will be even more of a legacy if it is in the hands of one’s children. There’s also a feeling of well-earned privilege in that transfer of power. It took a lot to get as far as the leader has gotten. He earned it; he should be able to take advantage of that effort by passing the keys to the next generation. It may not be a selfless emotion, or a particularly sound one, but it’s a real emotion, one that influences some of the most critical decisions the leader ever makes.

Anthony Smith is Co-Founder and a Managing Director of Leadership Research Institute and author of ESPN: The Company (Jossey-Bass, September 2009). He is also the author  The Taboos of Leadership: 10 Secrets No One Will Tell You about Leaders and What They Really Think (Jossey-Bass, May 2007). This article originally appeared in different form in his book, The Taboos of Leadership.