We can tell who鈥檚 likely to become a leader before we鈥檙e even aware of it, assessing a person鈥檚 behaviour and body language without realising that we鈥檙e doing it.
When a group of people who don鈥檛 know each other meet for the first time, leaders and followers naturally emerge 鈥� it helps us solve many social challenges. We use a variety of signals, such as charismatic behaviour and vocal cues, to infer leadership qualities. But at Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and her team wondered whether such signals might also trigger more automatic changes in who we pay attention to.
To investigate, they videotaped meetings of real project teams who had never previously met over a period of seven weeks. At the end of this period, independent mentors rated each team member on whether they had emerged as a leader or follower.
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The team then edited the videos into 42 brief, soundless clips, and showed them to 18 new people.
Active body language
As they watched the videos, the team measured where each person was looking, and for how long. They found that the volunteers looked more often at people who went on to become leaders within the group, and they looked at them for a longer time on average too.
鈥淭his is not something we would be consciously aware of,鈥� says Gerpott. She says it might be a mechanism that was evolutionarily useful. 鈥淚n the past it might have been very helpful to recognise very quickly who was the person you should follow.鈥�
Behave like a natural-born leader
- Use lots of active gestures, like talking with your hands
- Have positive body language, facing yourself towards other group members
- Use speech and facial expressions to show that you are listening and open to interacting
- Don鈥檛 worry about smiling 鈥� it doesn鈥檛 seem to make a difference
- Don鈥檛 yawn, frown, or stare blankly when others are talking
- Talk a lot towards the beginning of meetings
- As the discussion develops, don鈥檛 focus on the problems 鈥� be the one to suggest solutions
To find out how the leaders were able to trigger changes in others鈥� attention, the team analysed how the people behaved. They found that emerging leaders used active gestures, such as constantly moving their bodies and large hand movements, more often, but less frequently had passive facial expressions, such as yawning or staring blankly. Smiling made no difference 鈥� both followers and leaders used positive facial expressions an equal amount.
鈥淭o make yourself stand out as a leader you need to use more active body language, and make sure you are not being passive in your facial expressions when others are talking,鈥� says Gerpott. 鈥淭ry to engage non-verbally in the discussion. Being present with your whole body and expressions can help you be perceived as a leader.鈥�
Solutions, not problems
at the University of British Columbia, Canada, recently found that vocal pitch can signal if someone intends to . Gerpott鈥檚 team is now studying how vocal cues and body language may work together to signal leadership.
The team鈥檚 unpublished data suggests that talking a lot helps to signal leadership, but that over time, what a person is actually saying becomes more important.
鈥淚nitially talking a lot and being present in the discussion is important, but as the discussion develops it鈥檚 more about what you say. Being a solution-orientated person who doesn鈥檛 focus on problems is what seems to pick you out as a leader,鈥� says Gerpott.
Eye-catching men
The team鈥檚 results also suggest women face further obstacles in becoming leaders. In situations where women went on to emerge as leaders, people spent slightly less time looking at them than they did at men who went on to become leaders in other scenarios.
鈥淚f we confirm that there鈥檚 a preference for male emergent leaders then that could explain why more men end up in leadership roles,鈥� says Gerpott. 鈥淧erhaps it鈥檚 easier for men to emerge as leaders because of this automatic bias that we have to focus our attention on them 鈥� we have to overcome this bias to focus on women.鈥�
She suggests that this could be a cultural, rather than an evolutionary, issue. 鈥淚n cultures in which female leaders dominate we may find a different result.鈥�
But Ho says this gender-related finding might be a result of there being more male leaders than female leaders in the study. 鈥淚t鈥檚 possible that the observers developed a tendency to gaze toward males simply because of increased exposure to male leaders during the experiment,鈥� says Ho.
He adds that the difference was so small that it may not be meaningful in real life. 鈥淭hat is not to say that there aren鈥檛 sex and gender effects in establishing leadership potential, but I鈥檓 not sure how confidently we can say that they manifest themselves through eye gaze behaviour.鈥�
The Leadership Quarterly
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