The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [86]
DOES A PERSON’S LANGUAGE PREDICT THEIR FUTURE LEADERSHIP ABILITY?
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually in predicting and selecting the future leaders in industry, government, the military, and other large organizations. Most consulting firms that specialize in leadership selection and the companies they consult with make many of their decisions on intuition and/or questionable research methods. Even the very best scientifically grounded methods in selecting leaders are far from perfect in their hit rates.
Reliably selecting leaders is very difficult. The biggest problem is that a person could be a brilliant leader in one setting but terrible in another. In the past, I consulted with a company where the corporate head was unable to lead his management team in a direction that satisfied anyone. This same person had been a brilliant leader in a very different company just two years earlier. He hadn’t changed in his approach, intelligence, or abilities. The only thing that had changed was the setting.
A second problem that consulting firms face is in building assessment tools. For example, some firms give prospective leaders a raft of questionnaires. Others have people undergo grueling interviews or problem-solving tasks. Yet others just send their prospective leaders into a company and have them give a talk, shake a few hands, and undergo a series of meetings with the relevant people in the organization. By themselves, each of these methods is only slightly better than a flip of the coin in selecting between two candidates with similar backgrounds.
If we know that there is a particular language profile for effective leaders, can we use natural language to select future leaders? In reality, it is too early to tell. Word analyses can help us determine how people think, relate to others, and view themselves. They will be far less helpful in predicting how people will react in completely novel settings with an unpredictable group of people with different motivations and backgrounds.
DOES A DOMINANT LANGUAGE STYLE MAKE A PERSON A BETTER LEADER?
After almost a hundred years of group research, scientists in psychology, sociology, and business now appreciate that different groups work effectively depending on the task, the group structure, and the people in the group. In the Burris project, for example, the more the leader used high-status language, the more likely it was that the group would come up with objectively better results. The effects were not large, however. In another project with a looser group structure, just the opposite was found: Dominant language by the leader resulted in the groups’ performing worse.
We return to the same problem of the tension between a leader’s characteristics and the job that needs to be accomplished. Dozens of studies have shown that if a company, a sports team, or an entire country is generally productive, with very little infighting and not facing any major threats, leaders who are warm and friendly are particularly effective. Such leaders would probably not exhibit extremely dominant language. However, if the organization is facing a series of hardships from outside as well as conflicts from within, most people want a stronger, no-nonsense leader who will get the job done. A no-nonsense style often includes a leadership style marked by clear chains of command and an agreed-upon social hierarchy.
CAN LEADERS BECOME MORE EFFECTIVE BY CHANGING THEIR LANGUAGE?
Yes, I think so. But