Extroverted Leaders
Evidence of the dynamic between personality and taking the lead
Image: nzherald.co.nz; Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary just back from the summit of Mt Everest after the first successful climb of the world's highest mountain in May, 1953. Ed Hillary features in ‘21 Remarkable People’ - see below.
Between 1990 and 1998 the nearly 1,000 participants in Dunedin’s legendary longitudinal development study grew from 18-year-olds leaving school and striking out from their families to 26-year-olds who, more or less, had established themselves as adults.
Looking at these individuals’ Brent Roberts and colleagues found an intriguing dynamic between how their personalities developed and their work. Some components of extroversion predicted who would assume leadership at work (where assessments at age 18 were associated with having responsibility for others at 26). And there was a feedback process – leadership responsibility in turn contributed to extroversion (assessed at age 26).
There are two aspects (that’s the technical term) to extroversion. One is ‘agentic’ extroversion (an emphasis on dominating and taking the lead), and the other ‘affiliative’ extroversion (attracted to the opportunities for cheerful sociability). There seem to be two different reward systemsunderpinning these two aspects. The enthusiastic affiliatives are more sensitive to the opioid reward system. The assertive agentics are more tuned into the dopamine-based drive and approach system.
Roberts and his team were able to tease out what parts of extroversion featured in the dynamic they identified in this give-and-take between personality and the work world.
The young Dunedin people who took charge tended to rate higher on agentic extroversion. That was demonstrated as forceful and decisive behaviours and taking charge of their social environment. They were more likely at age 26 to be looking after people, including having responsibility for hiring and firing. The affiliative extraverts did well in their work and derived satisfaction from it, but were not likely to have taken charge of others.
Looking at the other side of the work-personality dynamic – the effect of leadership on personality – those with people responsibilities at 26 demonstrated a boost to their agentic or dominance extroversion. To a lesser extent, experienced leaders showed increases in affiliative or sociable extroversion.
These results fit a recent meta-analysis of the relationship between these two aspects of extroversion and measures of transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness. The agentic aspect of extroversion was correlated with both transformational leadership style and indicators of effective leadership. The affiliative aspect of extroversion was not related to transformational leadership and appeared counter-productive in terms of effectiveness as a leader – positive, sociable people may not ensure that others get things done.
Looking at personality through the 10 aspects (agentic and affiliative for extroversion, and two each for the other four OCEAN dimensions) could provide a more sensitive and accurate way of understanding people.
Personality can flex and develop – we can be positive about the value of leadership development which encourages the practice of agentic behaviours.
Stewart Forsyth is an organisational psychologist and executive coach and also the author of 21 Remarkable People – available from Amazon or Apple or other eBook sources.