Leadership skills are widely in demand across the workplace, even among roles where no formal leadership takes place.  This seems like a largely additive process, with the more leadership skills you have in your team, the better off you are, but new research from Rotterdam School of Management reminds us that this isn’t always the case.

This is especially so when organizations grapple with the age-old semantic debate between management and leadership.  The former often has negative connotations, with images of a jobsworth who knows a lot about the procedure but little about inspiration.  This, the authors state, lends us to prefer leaders over managers in the majority of instances, even though there are numerous overlaps in behaviors between the two.

This preference can result in people being recruited for their leadership skills, despite the role really needing someone with more managerial capabilities.

Leadership bias

“Decision makers are commonly advised to guard against biases against female or minority candidates, but much less attention is given to the risk of over-valuing candidates with leadership skills,” the researchers say.  “There is a tendency among people to prefer and select the prototypical leader, even for a situation that really calls for prototypical managing activities.”

The results emerged after 703 people were quizzed on the kind of leadership-related activities they found most important for the role.  These included things such as being inspirational, encouraging and motivational, with these traits usually rated more important than more tactical tasks, such as budgeting, supervising and hiring.

“We found that people have a romantic view of leadership over management, and this preference may come at the high cost of failing to appreciate the value of management in many situations,” the researchers explain. “When a company is in crisis or significant change, you need leadership. In other situations, you need a manager, someone who hires, supervises and budgets.”

They urge organizations to be more aware of this, often unconscious, bias, especially in areas such as recruitment and team selection.  They believe that a good way to counter it is to slow down the decision-making process and engage the rational part of our brain rather than the emotional part.  This can help us to focus in on the most important aspects of the role rather than what we intuitively believe is required.