Extraverts Are Not Always the Most Successful Leaders

You may find it difficult to accept but Introverted leaders can be more effective than Extraverts in certain circumstances.

It all depends on who the leaders are managing, according to Grant and co-authors Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and David Hofmann of the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Their paper, forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal, is titled "Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity."

Extraverted leadership involves commanding the center of attention: being outgoing, assertive, bold, talkative and dominant. This offers the advantages of providing a clear authority structure and direction.

However, pairing extraverted leaders with employees who take initiative and speak out can lead to friction, while pairing the same group of employees with an introverted leader can be a pathway to success, the researchers note.

This has implications for leaders and managers at all levels who want to improve their own leadership styles.

"If you look at existing leadership research, extraversion stands out as the most consistent and robust predictor of who becomes a leader and who is rated as an effective leader," Grant says. "But I thought this was simplistic and incomplete. It tells us very little about the situations in which introverted leaders can be more effective than extraverted leaders."


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ESA's ATV Jules Verne operations team wins prestigious UK aeronautics prize

The UK's Royal Aeronautical Society has awarded its top Gold Medal Team prize to ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle operations team, in recognition of their achievement in operating ATV Jules Verne during its 2008 mission to the International Space Station.

The Gold Medal is conferred for work of outstanding achievement in aerospace.
ATV Jules Verne, ESA's first resupply and reboost vehicle, was launched in March 2008 and on 3 April became the first vessel to perform a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS).

During the vessel's five-month attached phase, Jules Verne delivered over 2200 kg of vital cargo, including food, clothes, equipment, fuel, water and oxygen, to the astronauts on the ISS.

The extremely accurate automated docking demonstrated Europe's world-class industrial capabilities and the superlative skill of the scientists, engineers and technicians who contributed to the construction, preparation, launch and operation.

"I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of the Agency and everyone across borders and organisations who worked long and hard to make ATV an outstanding success. The ATV's design and construction, the superb automated docking technology and her flawless first mission all tell a truly European success story," said Bob Chesson, Head of ESA's Human Spaceflight Operations Department.

In flight, ATV operations are managed by a combined ESA/CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales) mission operations team based at ESA’s ATV Control Centre, Toulouse, France. These experts are assisted by a network of support teams from ESA's Human Spaceflight, Operations and Technology Directorates, at CNES, and at dozens of industrial partner companies from 10 European countries under the prime contractorship of EADS Space Transportation, France.