Decades of research have established that there are certain things about people that make us more likely to see them as leaders, things which also make them more likely to be promoted into leadership positions.

For instance, people tend to still have subconscious biases favoring men when they are assessing whether people have leadership potential, and this bias is one of the main reasons for the gender gap in leadership promotions that has persisted since the 20th century.

Factors that determine leadership emergence — things that make you look like a leader to others — often don't have anything to do with the factors that promote leadership effectiveness. For instance, tall men tend to get promoted disproportionately frequently into leadership roles, but neither height nor gender necessarily makes you a better leader.

Your research talks about the relationship between personality traits and communication skills. What did you gather from the study that has not been told in the past?

We've tended to assume that extroverts have an advantage when it comes to leadership roles because their superior communication skills make them look more like natural leaders. Meta-analyses and reviews demonstrating the link from extroversion to leadership emergence have been remarkably inconsistent, a fact that has been mostly overlooked.

Our two studies provide consistent and replicated evidence that only half of the statement at the top of this paragraph is true: Yes, people with superior communication skills have a leadership advantage; but no, it's not extroversion that's important, since extroverts aren't necessarily any better at interpersonal communication than introverts or ambiverts.

What are the practical takeaways from your research for someone hiring for leadership roles?

The big takeaway from our research may be more for individuals than for organizations and managers. For years, introverts have read and been told that they're at a disadvantage, compared to extroverts, in terms of being viewed as leaders and being promoted into leadership roles. This was troublesome because extroversion is not something that can be taught; it's a stable personality difference, part of who you are. If this was true, then there would be nothing introverts could do to resolve or improve that disadvantage. But our research shows that it's communication skill, not extroversion, that is the important driver of leadership perceptions. That's important because communication skills can be learned, which means anyone can develop their communication skills to enhance their chances of being viewed as leadership material by others.

For someone hiring for leadership roles, the importance of leadership effectiveness versus emergence can't be overstated. We should be hiring for factors that enhance leadership effectiveness, not for factors that just make people look like a leader. Communication skills can certainly enhance the role of a leader, but extroversion on its own is likely not as important. To the contrary, some research shows that introverts may have advantages in many leadership situations, such as when more deliberate and methodical paces are appropriate (but that last bit is not part of our research).

Did you find any gender differences or other demographic differences while evaluating the results?

We only measured the participants' genders in this research. We did note that women tended to have higher scores on communication skills than men, which may have something to do with gender socialization and roles in which men stereotypically value independence and action, whereas women are associated with

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