Should Leaders Be Extroverts? Only if They Care, Too

We've all heard -- at least, I have -- that extroverts do better in life than introverts.  I have two in my family who qualify for the latter.  I'm most decidedly, often to their annoyance (especially when I start up chats with strangers waiting in line),  in the first.

But  now a new study is saying that leaders who are too extroverted just might, well, not be so good after all.

According to newswise.com, extroverts who are often seen as natural leaders in organizations, "may have too much of a good thing."

Researchers found that informal leaders were better liked and more sought after for advice when they hit a middle “sweet spot” on levels of assertiveness and warmth, two facets of extroversion, the web site reports.

Probably not so unusually, team members reacted less favorably to leaders who were high on assertiveness or warmth.

“Overly extroverted leaders can come across as too pushy or too annoying,” newswise quotes Jia (Jasmine) Hu, lead author of the study and associate professor of management and human resources at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. “A moderate amount of assertiveness and warmth may be optimal.”

The study did find, not surprisingly, one factor that helped highly extroverted leaders receive better marks from their peers: pro-social motivation, or the desire to look out for others’ welfare.

The researchers did two related studies.  The first involved 260 business undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to 78 self-managed teams.  The students worked in their teams on a variety of projects through a full semester.

At the beginning of the semester, students rated themselves on two facets of extroversion. One was assertiveness, which is the desire to be dominant and forceful. The second was warmth, which is how friendly and outgoing they were.

The students’ pro-social motivation was measured by asking them how much they agreed with statements like “I care about benefiting others through my work.”

Later in the semester, students rated each member of their team on how much they showed leadership in their group activities. Based on these ratings, the researchers chose the person on each team who was seen by most of their peers as the leader.

Team members also rated how much they liked each of their team members and how much they went to him or her for advice in solving problems related to their tasks.

A second, nearly identical study involved 337 employees on work teams in a large retail company in China. Like with the students, these were self-managed teams without formal leaders.

Both studies had very similar results.

Leaders who were extroverted tended to be better liked and more sought after for advice by their team members – but only up to a point, according to the web site.

Leaders who rated themselves as very assertive or very warm tended to see a drop-off in how much their fellow team members liked them and sought their advice.

Hu says it was a case of too much of a good thing.

“If you’re too assertive as a team member, people think you’re pushy and they don’t like that,” she explains.  “And if you’re too warm and friendly, that can be overwhelming for others who feel pressured to respond in the same enthusiastic way.”

But fellow employees can put up with more extroversion if they think you’re doing it for others.

“If you’re pro-socially-motivated, people see more benefits to your assertiveness and warmth.  They know you’re not doing it just to promote yourself, but have a genuine interest in the whole team. That means a lot,” Hu concludes.