Being Conscious of One’s Own Heroism: An Empirical Approach to Analyzing the Leadership Potential of Future CEOs

Abstract

From the disciplinary field of the science of heroism, there is a need to deepen the processes that this science comprises, and at the same time, to test methods of inquiry to account for the variety of processes associated with this science. Linked to this sensitivity, the objective of this contribution is to jointly analyze, in a sample of future CEOs, what they imagine about heroism, their psychological types, and their values orientation. The sample consisted of 45 students (21 men and 24 women) between 22 and 47 years old (M = 26.69, SD = 4.47), who were part of a master’s program oriented toward training future CEOs to be leaders. The analytical instruments were the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a story that each participant developed about him/herself as the main hero or heroine, and a questionnaire on personal values. In the psychological types observed, the functions of thinking and sensing predominated, with intuition and feeling residing at a lower level of consciousness. With regard to the stories, the majority of the sample offered tales in which the hero/heroine was confronted with a mystery to solve (or mission to fulfill), faced difficulties, and, finally, achieved harmony between the personal and the collective. Regarding the values, significant associations are observed between the gender, the characteristics of the psychological types, and the content of the story about their own hero / heroine. In sum, the research carried out offers an empirical approach to the study of the subjective elements of heroism, combining quantitative and qualitative aspects in an educational setting, and broadening the perspectives on the science of heroism.

Collective and Individual Sources of Women’s Creativity: Heroism and Psychological Types Involved in Enhancing the Talent of Emerging Leaders

“…Thanks to the story about the inner heroine-an expressive writing activity with the potential for deep and experiential learning [116]-we are able to differentiate not only the stories that introduce the most creative ingredients from a set, but also the articulation between this imaginary of the collective unconscious and the contents of the personal unconscious. The MBTI functions as a valid instrument in leadership research [43,96,97] because it reveals the current exchange of psychic energy in the individual and, in parallel, shows which aspects should be worked on in the future.…”

“…The combination of instruments used in this research constitutes an important contribution to the corpus of scientific knowledge because, although they have been validated separately in various studies [104,109], they have rarely been used together (an exception in [43]). This contribution is further enhanced by the fact that this methodology has not often been seen in empirical research based on analytical psychology, and also, above all, because of the fact of instrumentalizing this perspective, thereby enabling it to dialogue with other more consolidated approaches to leadership research.…”

“…This questionnaire consisted of writing a story in which the respondent was the protagonist ("heroine") [43]. The respondents were asked to include a beginning, a development (rising and falling action), and an end (denouement).…”

“…The limitations of this study-such as the nature and size of the sample-also suggest possible paths to initiate new research on heroism in leadership from the perspective of analytical psychology. Although we focused our research on women as emerging leaders, this does not mean we ignore the fact that this reality is affected by gender inequalities and tensions [85]; rather, our findings are an invitation to go deeper into the joint analysis of men and women (collectively, individually, unconsciously, and consciously), a line of research supported by promising incipient evidence [43].…”

“…As representations that respond to needs transformed into goals [36], values guide human actions [37], being sensitive to historical and cultural aspects. The importance of values has been shown in the case of leadership [38][39][40][41][42]-and specifically with regards to their relationship with leaders' psychological typology and conception of heroism [43].…”