New research from Stanford business school suggests that people who tend to feel guilty when they do something wrong exhibit strong performance as leaders. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported on the Stanford study, which is due to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study is also summarized here on the Stanford business school website.
Conducted by Stanford doctoral candidate Rebecca Schaumberg and Francis Flynn, a professor of organizational behavior, the study involved 520 people and three experiments. For each of the experiments, Schaumberg and Flynn gave the subjects online personality tests that measured their tendency to feel guilt or shame, among other traits.
Though we often think that guilt and shame are the same emotion, psychologists distinguish between the two. After doing something wrong, guilt-prone people want to make things right, while those who experience shame, tend to feel bad about themselves but do nothing to correct their errors. The questionnaire asked about scenarios like spilling wine on a cream-colored carpet at a co-worker’s housewarming. A guilt-prone person would feel terrible and try to clean up the mess, while someone prone to shame might feel awful but do nothing. The questionnaire also tested whether the subjects exhibited the qualities of extroverts, a trait often associated with leadership skills.
In the first experiment, the researchers put groups of four or five subjects in a lab and asked them to perform two group tasks, like figuring out a marketing campaign for a new product. Then the researchers asked the subjects to rate one another on how they performed, and whether they demonstrated leadership qualities like taking charge of the job, leading the conversation and making sure everyone got to express their opinion. In each group, those who got high marks as leaders also scored high on the guilt scale when they filled out the questionnaire. One surprise was that the guilt-prone subjects performed better as leaders than those who were extroverted but not prone to guilty feelings.
In a second experiment, Schaumberg and Flynn talked to the former managers, clients and co-workers of incoming Stanford MBA students and asked about the subjects’ leadership skills. Again, they found that those students who were seen as leaders were also likely to be guilt prone.
In a third experiment, Schaumberg and Flynn found that managers who were guilt prone were more likely to support lay-offs at their company. Though this seems counter-intuitive, Schaumberg explains that a manager can feel guilty about laying people off but also feel an obligation to do what’s right for the company.
Schaumberg got interested in the topic when she noticed that driven, hard-working people often say they are motivated by guilt, though most of us don’t think of guilt as an emotion that drives great leaders. This is where the distinction between guilt and shame comes in. People who feel ashamed tend to retreat from problems, while those who feel guilty, are motivated to find a remedy.
Comments
Focusing on guilt and shame as important aspects of effective leadership (which invariably includes a strong dose of humility borne of experience), also highlights a critical distinction from more power-driven leadership which can be narcissistic or psychopathic — notable for the absence of guilt, shame, empathy, compassion and associated humanistic emotions, in their behaviors and reactions.
An excellent point.
Very interesting. Guilt-prone people are those who will tend to take any actions in case they feel they’ve done something wrong, which is one of the main characteristics of someone who might be a true leader.
Not surprising. Only individuals with strong character will be willing to rectify their mistakes. It needs guts to admit one’s fault and correct them. In other words – doing the right thing.