Leadership Studies
Lecture #6 Notes
Charisma and Personality
What will you learn today?
Leadership in relation to neuroscience
Increasing engagement through the use of charisma/transformational leadership
Personality traits and dangerous leadership
Table of Contents
Leadership and neuroscience (Chapter 6)
Theories of Charismatic and Transformational Leadership (Chapter 12)
Pathology in the high ranks
Leadership and Neuroscience
From phenotype to genotype
Leadership development industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry
You want your company to be led by a competent leader if you don’t have one, you are
willing to pay a lot of money for research!
Prior Research
When people become leaders, which traits make them effective, fail, or stagnate in their
position?
Surveys, self-reports, interviews individual traits could not be caught in an all-
encompassing, holistic trait theory
Can neuroscience move us further in the search of a new leader? Can we link brain
activity to leadership?
A key challenge for researchers is to attempt to make a theoretical connection between
brain activity and overt leadership behavior and qualities
o Without such a theory, research endeavors might simply involve a search for
vaguely conceived neurological variables and traditional psychometrically based
measures of leadership
Right Brain
Henry Mintzberg suggested that the left-right brain difference might be relevant to
management and leadership
Ahead of his time; scanning the human brain was not an option at the time
Finkelstein and Hambrick (1996)
o Took the idea of Mintzberg
o Proposed that managers with a dominant…
Left hemisphere of the brain (focuses largely on logic, rational thinking)
may make good planners
, Right hemisphere of the brain (focuses on imagination, creativity, visual
imagery) may make good managers or leaders
Advancements in neuroscience methodologies, theories, and findings over the last
decades have led to renewed interest in brain lateralization theories
Neuroscientific construct ‘coherence’coherence’
o Has facilitated the study of the origin of complex behaviors associated with
leadership
Inspirational Leadership
Neo-charismatic theories share the view that outstanding leaders go beyond simply
performance vs. reward transactions; have a deep impact on their followers and
organizations, including the potential to be a major force in realizing new visions,
change, etc.
Inspiration lies at the core of transformational/visionary/charismatic leadership
Coherence
One of the more commonly applied metrics in social, cognitive neuroscience research
A way of measuring the interconnectedness of areas in the brain
o In other words… tracking coordinated activity or communication between
various areas of the brain
Ideal for the examination of complex behavioral concepts (e.g. inspirational leadership
behavior)
Typically reported in the form of a percentage
Brain Regions
Focus on the frontal regions of the brain, in opposition to the distal and posterior regions
Frontal part of brain especially involved in regulation and expression of emotions, as well as
higher cognitive functioning (e.g. goal-directed or visionary behavior)
Lecture #6 Notes
Charisma and Personality
What will you learn today?
Leadership in relation to neuroscience
Increasing engagement through the use of charisma/transformational leadership
Personality traits and dangerous leadership
Table of Contents
Leadership and neuroscience (Chapter 6)
Theories of Charismatic and Transformational Leadership (Chapter 12)
Pathology in the high ranks
Leadership and Neuroscience
From phenotype to genotype
Leadership development industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry
You want your company to be led by a competent leader if you don’t have one, you are
willing to pay a lot of money for research!
Prior Research
When people become leaders, which traits make them effective, fail, or stagnate in their
position?
Surveys, self-reports, interviews individual traits could not be caught in an all-
encompassing, holistic trait theory
Can neuroscience move us further in the search of a new leader? Can we link brain
activity to leadership?
A key challenge for researchers is to attempt to make a theoretical connection between
brain activity and overt leadership behavior and qualities
o Without such a theory, research endeavors might simply involve a search for
vaguely conceived neurological variables and traditional psychometrically based
measures of leadership
Right Brain
Henry Mintzberg suggested that the left-right brain difference might be relevant to
management and leadership
Ahead of his time; scanning the human brain was not an option at the time
Finkelstein and Hambrick (1996)
o Took the idea of Mintzberg
o Proposed that managers with a dominant…
Left hemisphere of the brain (focuses largely on logic, rational thinking)
may make good planners
, Right hemisphere of the brain (focuses on imagination, creativity, visual
imagery) may make good managers or leaders
Advancements in neuroscience methodologies, theories, and findings over the last
decades have led to renewed interest in brain lateralization theories
Neuroscientific construct ‘coherence’coherence’
o Has facilitated the study of the origin of complex behaviors associated with
leadership
Inspirational Leadership
Neo-charismatic theories share the view that outstanding leaders go beyond simply
performance vs. reward transactions; have a deep impact on their followers and
organizations, including the potential to be a major force in realizing new visions,
change, etc.
Inspiration lies at the core of transformational/visionary/charismatic leadership
Coherence
One of the more commonly applied metrics in social, cognitive neuroscience research
A way of measuring the interconnectedness of areas in the brain
o In other words… tracking coordinated activity or communication between
various areas of the brain
Ideal for the examination of complex behavioral concepts (e.g. inspirational leadership
behavior)
Typically reported in the form of a percentage
Brain Regions
Focus on the frontal regions of the brain, in opposition to the distal and posterior regions
Frontal part of brain especially involved in regulation and expression of emotions, as well as
higher cognitive functioning (e.g. goal-directed or visionary behavior)
