Three Nightmare Traits in Leaders

Introverted and yet effective? A faceted approach to the relationship between leadership and extraversion

Introduction

Extraversion and its facets of assertiveness and sociability were identified as stable predictors for leader emergence and effectiveness. However, recent research suggested that extraversion may lie in the eyes of the beholder; it might not be the leader's possession but their followers' attribution of the trait that shapes these criteria of leader success.

Methods

In our study, we reverse-engineered this relationship and assessed the effects of effective leadership behaviors on personality perceptions. More specifically, we created scenarios of a leader responding to coordination challenges with passive-avoidant, transactional, or transformational leadership behaviors. We presented 204 participants with these scenarios and assessed how extraverted, assertive, and sociable they perceived the leader to be.

Results

Interestingly, and not fully meeting our expectations, ascriptions of extraversion and its facets of assertiveness and sociability did not directly relate to the effectiveness of the behaviors, as the moderately effective transactional leadership style garnered the highest ascriptions of extraversion and its facets. Further, ascriptions of extraversion to the transformational behavior of intellectual stimulation were remarkably low, matched only by the laissez-faire dimension of the passive-avoidant leadership style.

Discussion

We integrate and contrast these unexpected but explainable findings with current research, discuss potential associations between introversion and empowering leadership practices and provide suggestions for future discourse, illustrating the potential of investigating the presence of an introverted leadership advantage in the workplace of tomorrow.

Dark side of leadership and information technology project success: the role of mindfulness

Purpose

The success of projects is a major challenge for information technology (IT) project-based businesses (PBOs). Employees' negative emotions (NE) disrupt the employees' usual work activities by creating obstacles to routine operations. Organizations should take steps to lessen these NE. The current study assessed the mediating role of NE and the moderating influence of employee mindfulness in the association between despotic leadership (DL) and IT project success (PS).

Design/methodology/approach

Time-lagged data were collected from 341 employees working in various IT-based project organizations in Pakistan using purposive sampling.

Findings

Results were consistent with the authors' hypothesized framework, as DL increases employees' NE, which in turn negatively affects IT PS. In addition, mindfulness plays a buffering role in mitigating the damaging impact of DL on NE.

Originality/value

Previous researchers focused on the positive aspects of leadership and its influence on PS and paid limited attention to the dark leadership style. The authors' study's findings help understand how project-based organizations can reduce employees' NE.

The Dark Side of Expressed Humility for Non-humble Leaders: A Conservation of Resources Perspective

Although existing studies to date predominately focus on the beneficial effects of leader expressed humility on followers, knowledge about how those behaviors impact the leaders themselves is scarce. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we develop and test a model that specifies for whom and how expressing humility has detrimental effects on leaders' emotional exhaustion and the downstream implications of this effect for leaders' turnover intentions and work-to-family conflict. Data from a multisource, time-lagged survey of 55 team leaders and 281 followers showed that expressed humility was positively associated with leaders' emotional exhaustion when Honesty-Humility was low, after controlling for Emotionality, sleep quality, overall job satisfaction, and hindrance stressors. In addition, we found that expressed humility was positively and indirectly related to leaders' turnover intentions and work-to-family conflict via emotional exhaustion when Honesty-Humility was low. Overall, our research sheds light on why and under what conditions the dark side of humble leader behaviors is going to emerge and take its toll on the leaders themselves. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.