The Wikipedia entry for the Madman Theory informs : “The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy. He and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, those leaders would then avoid provoking […]
Tag: leader
Computers no longer ‘morons’ – they’ve evolved to become ‘leaders’ [says new study]
“We want to start a theoretical and empirical discourse on the paradigm ‘computers as leaders’, because the world has changed since 1967, when Peter Drucker stated that computers are morons and make no decisions.” – explain Jenny S.Wesche [of Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Psychology, Division of Social, Organizational and Economic Psychology, Berlin, Germany] and Andreas […]
Can Leaders Have Too Much Charisma?
Can you reliably measure a leader’s charisma, and if you can, can you reliably say how much is too much? This study pokes at both those questions: “The double-edged sword of leader charisma: Understanding the curvilinear relationship between charismatic personality and leader effectiveness,” J. Vergauwe, B. Wille, J. Hofmans, R.B. Kaiser, and F. De Fruyt, […]
‘Power Posing’ and the hormone profiles of leaders [research studies]
Back in 2010, a seminal ‘Power Posing’ study from Columbia University and Harvard University in the US revealed : “That a person can, by assuming two simple 1-min poses, embody power and instantly become more powerful has real-world, actionable implications.” The research team found that ‘Power Posing’ not only had effects on observers of the […]
The Logic of Absurdity – and the puzzle of leadership irrelevance
“Leaders are often thought to be instrumental to the performance of the organizations they lead. However, considerable research suggests that their influence over organizational performance might actually be minimal. These claims of leader irrelevance pose a puzzle: If leaders are relatively insignificant, why would someone commit to leading?” Taking steps towards explaining the puzzle, Daniel […]
Leaders’ inspirational appeal increases post-mortem (new study)
“There is a great deal of interest in understanding what leaders can do to increase their charisma.” And a radical new concept on charisma-enhancement is presented in The Leadership Quarterly, Sept. 2016 – sadly for aspiring leaders, it involves their death. “In the present research, we seek to advance our understanding of the nature and […]