Failure at the top: How power undermines collaborative performance.

Abstract

All too commonly, we see groups of leaders fail to accomplish their stated goals when working together -legislators who cannot agree on a bill, heads of state who cannot draft meaningful environmental policy, or boards of trustees who make disastrous decisions for their school. The current research examines whether groups of leaders fail as often as they do in part because of the power each leader is accustomed to possessing. Multiple studies found high power individuals, when working in groups, performed worse than did other groups: individuals randomly assigned power in an initial task were less creative when they then worked together in groups on a subsequent task (Study 1A). Individuals with higher power who worked together in groups were also less likely to reach agreement on a difficult negotiation task, whether these groups comprised actual executives from an extant organization (Study 2) or students randomly assigned power in the laboratory (Study 3). Mediation analyses suggest that groups of high power individuals performed worse because they fought over their relative status in the group, were less focused on the task, and shared information with each other less effectively.Keywords: power, groups, status, conflict, performance, creativity, negotiation FAILURE AT THE TOP 3 Individuals in positions of leadership are given inordinate power. They have disproportionate control when they interact with those they lead and their ideas, decisions, and opinions hold more sway than those of others. But, what happens when leaders have to interact and work with other leaders? How does the power they are accustomed to possessing shape their effectiveness when working with others who also hold power? This question is critical because it is often the case that important decisions and problems are addressed not by individual leaders but by groups of leaders -in government legislatures, boards of directors, or meetings between heads of state, for example. If groups of leaders fail, the damage can be profound. Legislators who cannot agree on a fiscal budget risk severe economic costs, boards of trustees who set bad policies for their university can reduce the quality of their education, and leaders of disputing countries who cannot resolve their differences risk escalating their conflict into war.The research literature has been surprisingly quiet on this question. Although a substantial body of research has examined how the possession of power can shape myriad cognitive, affective, and motivational processes (for reviews, see Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003;Guinote & Vescio, 2010), this work has focused heavily on how the possession of power affects people in individual tasks or making individual decisions. Relatively little research has examined the effects of power in interactive or group contexts, let alone examined contexts in which powerholders interact and work with each other.The current research aimed to fill this lacuna.On the one hand, one might hypothesize that power would help groups of leaders...

Hormonal underpinnings of status conflict: Testosterone and cortisol are related to decisions and satisfaction in the hawk-dove game

“…This hypothesis requires direct testing in future research, but there is some indirect evidence supporting it. For example, dyads and groups with too many high-status individuals have impaired collective performance on tasks requiring coordination due to increased intragroup conflict, whereas status differentiation improves collective performance by improving coordination and reducing conflict (Ronay et al, 2012;Swaab et al, 2014;Wiltermuth et al, 2015;Hildreth and Anderson, 2016;Kilduff et al, 2016). Furthermore, groups in which high-testosterone individuals hold high-status positions and low-testosterone individuals hold low-status positions enjoy high levels of group self-efficacy, a psychological factor that may be involved in group coordination and productivity (Zyphur et al, 2009).…”

Power Corrupts, but Control Does Not: What Stands Behind the Effects of Holding High Positions

“…For example, when the hierarchy was unstable, dominant leaders were inclined to exclude threatening group members ( Maner & Mead, 2010 ). Also, when put in teams, leaders competed over position in a newly formed group, thus undermining collaboration and team performance ( Hildreth & Anderson, 2016 ). It is then possible that a tenuous hold of a high position decreases personal control, while strengthening the need to assert power, resulting in yet stronger negative interpersonal consequences.…”

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking

“…Furthermore, power can decrease judgment accuracy when power holders are overconfident or not motivated, which has been documented in the social domain (Fiske & Berdahl 2007, Nissan et al 2015. Finally, when people in power work together in panels and committees, they often have conflicts and their individual (as well as the group's) performance deteriorates (Hildreth & Anderson 2016). To conclude, there is a power advantage in performance across many contexts and tasks, but the links between power and performance are nuanced and depend on the task and the motivation to complete it.…”