The Neuroscience of Inspirational Leadership: The Importance of Collective-Oriented Language and Shared Group Membership

Molenberghs, Pascal; Prochilo, Guy A; Steffens, Niklas K.; Zacher, Hannes; Haslam, S. Alexander

doi:10.1177/0149206314565242

Cited by 60 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 105 publications

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“…There is also emerging research on neursocience and inspirational leadership: Waldman and colleagues (2011a) focused on the socialized visionary communication of inspirational leaders and showed how such communication mediated the relationship between coherence in right frontal regions of the brain and follower perceptions of leader charisma. In a recent study by Molenberghs et al (2017), fMRI was used to investigate the different brain reactions of participants when confronted with inspirational and non-inspirational statements by either in-group leaders or leaders from an out-group. Findings indicate that inspirational statements by in-group leaders activated brain areas that are typically associated with controlling semantic information processing.…”

Section: Neuroscience Research and Leadershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience Research and Ethical Leadership: Insights from a Neurological Micro-foundation

Voegtlin¹,

Walthert²,

Robertson³

2019

Business and Society 360

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The chapter examines to what extent research from social cognitive neuroscience can inform ethical leadership. We evaluate the contribution of brain research to the understanding of ethical leaders as moral persons, as well the understanding of their role as moral managers. The areas of social cognitive neuroscience that mirror these two aspects of ethical leadership comprise research relating to understanding oneself, understanding others, and the relationship between the self and others. Within these, we deem it relevant for ethical leadership to incorporate research findings about self-reflection, self-regulation, theory of mind, empathy, trust and fairness. The chapter highlights social cognitive neuroscience research in these areas and discusses its actual and potential contributions to ethical leadership. The chapter thereby engages also with the broader discussion on the neuroscience of leadership. We suggest new avenues for future research in the field of leadership ethics and responsibility.

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Section: Neuroscience Research and Leadershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience Research and Ethical Leadership: Insights from a Neurological Micro-foundation

Voegtlin¹,

Walthert²,

Robertson³

2019

Business and Society 360

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“…Individual differences contribute to behavioral diversity within teams which can offer both challenges and opportunities in managing teamwork (Colbert, Barrick & Bradley, 2014;Kerns, 2015). The emerging findings from the field of neuroscience likely hold promise for managing teamwork (Molenberghs, Prochilo, Steffens, Zacher & Haslam, 2017;Ashkanasy, Becker & Waldman, 2014;Dimitriadis & Psychogios, 2016;Fabritius & Hagemann, 2017).…”

Section: Practice -Oriented Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Teamwork: A Key Leadership Practice

2019

JLAE

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How leaders manage teamwork impacts team performance and well-being. After a brief review of some relevant literature, a practice oriented framework for managing teamwork is offered and the value of engaging in this process is noted. A proven practical coaching approach and real world application example with an executive are provided to help further operationalize the framework. This approach is offered to help enhance a managerial leader's effectiveness when managing team dynamics and teamwork in workplace settings. Some challenges such as optimizing team behavioral diversity, managing geographically distributed teams, and applying recent developments in neuroscience are considered.

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“…The difference between the groups was that the latter performed the delegation task in the MRI scanner. Previous laboratory experiments on individual versus group decision making have typically used between 30-50 participants (37)(38)(39).…”

Section: Participants and Sample Size Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational and neurobiological foundations of leadership decisions

Edelson

Polanía

Ruff

et al. 2018

Science

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Decisions as diverse as committing soldiers to the battlefield or picking a school for your child share a basic attribute: assuming responsibility for the outcome of others. This responsibility is inherent in the roles of prime ministers and generals, as well as in the more quotidian roles of firmmanagers, schoolteachers, and parents. Here we identify the underlying behavioral, computational, and neurobiologicalmechanisms that determine the choice to assume responsibility over others. Leaders must take responsibility for others and affect the well-being of individuals, organizations, and nations. We identify the effects of responsibility on leaders' choices at the behavioral and neurobiological level and document the widespread existence of responsibility aversion, i.e., a reduced willingness to make decisions if the welfare of others is at stake. In mechanistic terms, basic preferences towards risk, losses and ambiguity do not explain responsibility aversion which, instead, is driven by a second-order cognitive process reflecting an increased demand for certainty about the best choice when others' welfare is affected. Finally, models estimating levels of information flow between brain regions processing separate choice components, provide the first step in understanding the neurobiological basis of individual variability in responsibility aversion and leadership scores. We identify and characterize the computations and neural mechanisms underlying choices to lead. This file includes:Hyperlinked Table of Contents Materials and Methods Supplementary ResultsFigs. S1 to S8 Tables S1 to S7 References and notes Appendix S1Appendix S22 Participants and sample size determination.We conducted the experiment with two separate samples of participants -marked throughout the manuscript as original and fMRI replication groups. The difference between the groups was that the latter performed the delegation task in the MRI scanner. Previous laboratory experiments on individual versus group decision making have typically used between 30-50 participants (37-39).Power calculations (40) based on the aforementioned studies average effect sizes suggested a stopping criterion of 40 participants as a reasonable estimate to ensure a statistical power of 0.8 (with an alpha level of 0.05). We thus recruited 40 participants for the original group (21 females; age 25.7 ± 0.66 standard error of the mean). In the fMRI replication group, we added, a priori, four additional participants (constituting one unit of participants, see below, resulting in 44 participants; 25 females; age 23.5 ± 0.43). This was done in anticipation of some minor data loss due to issues such as excessive head movement in the scanner, and because the minimum experimental session size could not be under eight participants (see task design below). The data for three participants were not fully collected (two participants failed the test quiz assessing comprehension of the instructions and one participant did not show up for the second stage), resulting in a fi...

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The Neuroscience of Inspirational Leadership: The Importance of Collective-Oriented Language and Shared Group Membership

Cited by 60 publications

References 105 publications

Neuroscience Research and Ethical Leadership: Insights from a Neurological Micro-foundation

Neuroscience Research and Ethical Leadership: Insights from a Neurological Micro-foundation

Managing Teamwork: A Key Leadership Practice

Computational and neurobiological foundations of leadership decisions

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