When you are recruiting or developing new leaders, what factors do you consider important in your applicants? Like most businesses, you would probably evaluate them based on their relevant skills, education and experience.
Forward-looking consultants and ‘cutting edge’ organisations, use Emotional Intelligence when recruiting or developing leaders. They tend to focus on positive affects like pride, optimism, enthusiasm, passion etc, as they are recognised as good indicators for leaders who produce better outcomes and positive results.
Negative affects, meanwhile, have been thought as less consistently useful: although bursts of appropriate anger can help to focus efforts, frequent expressions of negative emotions are generally considered to predict poor leadership because they result in followers having stress, lacking in motivation.
However, new research suggests that most companies could be making huge savings by identifying untapped and unrecognised pools of talent by focusing on negative emotional indicators when recruiting or developing leaders.
Stanford University researchers Rebecca Schaumberg and Francis Flynn, have shown that potential leaders will have negative emotional predispositions, such as guilt, which indicate whether they are likely to be good leaders or not.
They conducted a series of studies which looked at whether guilt proneness is a critical characteristic of leaders.
In their first study they asked 243 working people to look at a dummy profile containing fabricated responses to different scenarios. One group looked at a profile with responses showing a tendency towards guilt, the other group focused on responses showing a set of less guilt-prone behaviours.
In their second study, the researchers used 140 university staff and students who they had assessed on their ability to feel guilty. They asked them to form small groups to do specific tasks and rated their teammates in leadership potential based on the activities.
In their final study, they looked at 360 degree feedback (measuring leader effectiveness and guilt-proneness, among other indicators) from a group of managers working in a range of industries.
In all these studies, Schaumberg and Flynn found out that the research participants rated the person with higher guilt-proneness as being more capable and effective as a leader. They concluded; people who have a tendency to feel guilty have a higher degree of responsibility to do well, hence the potential to lead. Their guilt makes them conscious about the effects of their behaviours on others and drives them to be better leaders.
This research suggests: organisations may be missing leadership potential because they are unlikely to recognise people with these characteristics as potential leadership talent, plus, people with guilt-proneness may be hesitant about putting themselves forward to lead or take control, knowing that they may displace others hopeful for the role.
As good leadership talent is increasingly difficult to find and develop, organisations will need to think "outside the box” and focus on a broad range of indicators (including negative and positive emotions and behaviours) to provide insight into leadership potential.
Using the latest research to inform leadership development and recruitment is not only good practice, but will make sure you can develop untapped talent and stay ahead of your competition.
Reference: Schaumberg, R., & Flynn, F. (2012). Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown: The link between guilt proneness and leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0028127.
