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, e xtroverts 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...