But expressing emotion may be a skill that can't be taught.
Nobody who saw a sobbing Howard Lutnick doubted those tears were real.
In anguished television interviews, the chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of Wall Street's toughest trading firms, said losing his brother and about 700 other employees had changed the way he wants to spend his life.
"I've got to take care of these families," he said. He also pledged $1 million to a Cantor Fitzgerald foundation for families of all trade center victims.
Lutnick has become the "role model of the CEO in crisis," said Alysia Vanitzian, a vice president of the Employers Group, an association of California companies.
"Not only is he grieving over his own loss of his family member, he is a CEO grieving over the loss of his employees," Vanitzian said.
Ed Reilly, president and CEO of the American Management Association, which is based in Manhattan, said executives are acquitting themselves well in how they are responding to the attack.
"The word around New York is that people are coping with this, the business community is pulling together," Reilly said.
With a few days' distance on his own initial performance, Kneeley sees where he slipped.
"My response at first was very mechanical, `The company's coming back together,' before I realized these guys didn't really care. They wanted to hear caring in my voice as well," he said.
