The Meekest and Mightiest Make the Worst Leaders According to Stanford Business School Research.

STANFORD, Calif. -- (This story reports on research at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and appears in today's Stanford Knowledgebase, the free monthly electronic newsletter of thoughts, ideas and lectures at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/knowledgebase.html.)

Charisma, intelligence, drive, and conscientiousness are some of the characteristics that make a leader. But what is it that can break a leader? Is it merely the lack of such qualities? No, says Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member Francis Flynn. His research has found that the greatest identifiable trait that can hold someone back from becoming a great leader is being too assertiveCoor not assertive enough.

Flynn's paper, soon to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emerges from a striking phenomenon he observed while teaching an organizational behavior course at the Columbia Business School with Daniel Ames. The major class assignment required students to obtain anonymous feedback on their leadership and management styles from former work colleagues. "Again and again, the issue of too much or too little assertiveness came up in evaluations of students' weaknesses," says Flynn, now an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. "It was hard to miss, yet we realized this issue had barely been addressed in the research literature."

Analyzing three years' worth of written and survey data on students, as well as students' assessments of their own former bosses, Flynn and Ames found that excessive or inadequate assertiveness was the No. 1 issue listed in the weakness column when it came to evaluating individuals' leadership potential. "It was mentioned twice as frequently as any other issue. It appeared as a clear factor in weakness comments more than lack of intelligence, conscientiousness, and charisma combined," Flynn says. Specifically, what the researchers found was essentially an "inverted U" between the ratings of a person's assertiveness and his or her leadership ability: Up to a certain point it was positively associated, but then it went back down.

"The analogy we use is that assertiveness is like salt in a sauce: Too much spoils the dish, but too little is equally distracting," Flynn says. Interestingly, at the "just right" point, assertiveness disappears as a leadership quality, either positive or negative. "While getting assertiveness wrong in one direction or the other dominates perceptions of weakness, getting it right is not a major theme in perceptions of strengths," Flynn says. "In other words, nobody ever compliments the chef on a perfectly salted dish."

What Flynn and Ames discovered was that when people were determined to be extremely assertive, the social costs of their behaviorCoothers' hurt feelings and damaged relationshipsCowere seen to override the positive aspects of their ability to get the job done. Conversely, when they were deemed too passive, their inability to move projects along and achieve goals was what stuck in people's minds, not their ability to preserve social harmony. "People pay more attention to what's bad about assertive or non-assertive behavior than what's good about it," Flynn explains.

The researchers therefore stress that a critical management skill is knowing how to get your way and get along. "We're not suggesting that people should always be moderately assertive as a general guideline," Flynn elaborates. "A better way to think about it might be that a good leader knows how to pick their spotsCowhen to come on strong and when to hang back."

Flynn also notes that women are at more of a disadvantage than men when it comes to being judged negatively on either end of the assertiveness scale. "When women are very assertive they violate gender stereotypes, and they are punished for it. Yet when they fulfill the stereotype of the meek woman they also suffer," he says. "When it comes to assertiveness, women seem to have a more restricted range in which to operate."

A big part of effective assertiveness management, he says, is being aware of how your behavior affects others. As it turns out, this is easier for the meek than the mighty. "Very unassertive people generally realize they're too passive and are getting stepped on," Flynn says, "but aggressive people tend to have no clue as to how they're being perceived. Getting honest or anonymous feedback from others can help with this." For women, he says, copycatting can be effective. "Our research has shown that women who calibrate themselves to act more assertively when they're around assertive men, and less assertive when they're around more mild-mannered men, are rated more favorably in organizational settings," he says.