Revisiting extraversion and leadership emergence: A social network churn perspective.

Abstract

One of the classic relationships in personality psychology is that extraversion is associated with emerging as an informal leader. However, recent findings raise questions about the longevity of extraverted individuals as emergent leaders. Here, we adopt a social network churn perspective to study the number of people entering, remaining in, and leaving the leadership networks of individuals over time. We propose that extraverted individuals endure as emergent leaders in networks over time, but experience significant changes in the people being led, including the loss of people who once considered them a leader but now no longer do. In Study 1 (N = 545), extraverted individuals had a larger number of new and remaining people in their leadership networks, but also lost more people, above and beyond differences in initial leadership network size. In Study 2 (N = 764), we replicated and extended these results in an organizational sample while controlling for alternative explanations such as formal rank, network size, self-monitoring, and narcissism. Extraversion predicted the number of people entering, remaining in, and leaving leadership networks over time. Our findings suggest that while extraverted individuals tend to emerge as leaders, they are also more likely to experience greater network churn-they tend to lead different people over time and leave people in their wake who once perceived them a leader but now no longer do. We discuss the challenges posed by this network churn perspective for extraverted emergent leaders and highlight its importance for our understanding of extraversion and emergent leadership.

Three nightmare traits (TNT) and the similarity effect determine which personality traits we like and dislike

“…According to the TNT framework (De Vries 2016;, the combination of the TNT with high levels of extraversion may actually aggravate the negative effects of the TNT on (work-related) outcomes. First of all, extraversion is the most observable personality trait (Vazire, 2010) and the trait that is most strongly related to leader emergence (Landis et al, 2022). People who are high on extraversion are thus more likely to become influential, even though they have traits that turn out to be undesirable in situations in which they have power (Barends et al, 2019;Lee et al, 2013).…”

What has been Missing in Leader Emergence? A Systematic Exploration and Future Research Directions

“…Walter, Cole, and Humphrey's 2012 study expanded the understanding of leader emergence to encompass both formal and informal dimensions (Walter et al, 2012). This informal dimension, which emphasizes leader-like responsibilities and authority, underscores others' perceptions of one's leadership abilities and an individual's selfperception as a leader (Chen & Li, 2023;Gheorghe & Curșeu, 2023;Landis et al, 2022;Truninger et al, 2021).…”

A theoretical integration of leader emergence and leadership effectiveness: Over, under, and congruent emergence

“…Grant et al, 2011). However, as discussed below when we address contextual influences on such relationships, it is important to acknowledge the possibility that the positive relationship between extraversion and perceptions of leadership might be more complex than generally thought (Kalish & Luria, 2021; Landis et al, 2022).…”

“…Organizational factors such as situation strength might also influence our model. For example, recent research by Landis et al (2022) suggests that in weaker contexts such as those with little formal hierarchy (e.g., MBA cohort), extraverted individuals will be more likely to be perceived as leaders than their less extraverted peers, but those who perceive them as such are likely to change over time due to high levels of churn in the extraverted individuals' social networks.…”