Study: Good Leadership Requires a Moderate Amount of Assertiveness

A recent study found that organizational leaders who are perceived as under-assertive or highly assertive tend to be viewed as less effective. The results indicate that too much or too little perceived assertiveness may be the most common weakness in would-be leaders.

The study appears in the February 2007 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association (APA). The article's title is, "What Breaks a Leader: The Curvilinear Relation Between Assertiveness and Leadership." Daniel Ames, Ph.D., a Columbia Business School professor, and Francis Flynn, Ph.D., a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, conducted the research.

In a series of studies with several samples of leaders and potential leaders, researchers questioned employees regarding their perceptions of coworkers' leadership strengths and weaknesses. As might be expected, the strengths which subjects mentioned most frequently included intelligence, self-discipline, and charisma.

However, researchers were surprised to find that assertiveness - either too much or too little - was by far the most commonly reported weakness. More than 50 percent of the comments regarding weaknesses made mention of assertiveness. Within that 50 percent, 48 percent mentioned excessive assertiveness and the rest referred to a lack of assertiveness.

"Assertiveness dominated reports of leadership weaknesses, though it wasn't nearly as common in colleagues' comments about strengths," said Ames. "When leaders get assertiveness wrong, it's glaring and obvious, but when they get it right, it seems to disappear. We say it's like salt in a sauce: when there's too much or too little, it's hard to notice anything else, but when it's just right, you notice the other flavors. No one compliments a sauce for being perfectly salted, and it's just as unusual for a leader's perfect touch with assertiveness to attract much notice."