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A Bias against 'Quirky'? Why Creative People Can Lose Out on Leadership
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Published : February 16, 2011 in Knowledge@Wharton
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A Bias against 'Quirky'? Why Creative People Can Lose Out on Leadership Positions: Knowledge@Wharton
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"idea pitcher," while the other half had the job of evaluating those ideas. The challenge was to come up
with an idea for how an airline might generate more revenue from passengers. Among the idea pitchers,
half were told to come up with a creative solution to that problem, which was defined as one that was both
novel and useful. The other half were told to come up with an idea that was simply useful. Students had
10 minutes to pitch the evaluators on their ideas, and then the evaluators rated them on several factors
including how creative the idea was and what sort of leadership potential each one had.
Again, those who came up with creative ideas were viewed to have significantly less leadership potential
than those who simply came up with a useful solution. To be sure that this wasn't just a personality issue --
that somehow the creative people were coming across as less likable -- Mueller's team also asked
questions about how competent and warm the idea pitchers were. That revealed that both groups were
viewed as being equally warm and competent. So the problem was simply the presentation of a clever
idea, not a perceived personality defect.
According to Mueller, these findings are consistent with how people have traditionally defined business
leadership in the past. "The value that leaders have for groups is in creating common goals so the group
can achieve something," Mueller notes. "And goals are better the clearer they are -- you don't want
uncertainty. So leaders need to diminish uncertainty and create standards of behavior for everyone in the
group. And they create those standards by conforming to them."
She contrasts that thinking with how people describe a creative person. Other academic literature has
found that when people are asked what comes to mind when they think of a creative person, "in addition
to 'visionary' and 'charismatic,' people also use words like 'quirky,' 'unfocused' [and] 'nonconformist.' The
fact is people don't feel just positively about creative individuals -- they feel ambivalent about them."
Of course, Mueller says not every organization fails to promote creative types. Some firms, like IDEO
and Apple, are specifically geared toward nurturing creativity and valuing innovation; the value of those
qualities is ingrained in their culture, Mueller states, not just something that is given lip service by the top
brass. To show this, Mueller and her colleagues performed a third study. In this case, they took a group of
183 students at a large Northeastern university and broke them into two groups. The first group was
primed to think about leadership and charisma together by being asked to list five attributes that define a
charismatic leader. "When you have the word 'charismatic' activated in your mind, you may be thinking
more along the lines of creativity," Mueller notes.
After listing those attributes, the group was given a story about a person voicing an idea, again for how an
airline could generate more revenue from passengers. Half the group were given the story with the
individual putting forth a useful, but not novel, idea for solving that problem while the other half were
given the story with the person coming up with a creative and useful suggestion (in this case, it was to
charge for online gaming during the flight). They all were asked to rate, on leadership potential, the
person who came up with the idea. In this case, the group exposed to the creative idea rated that person as
having higher leadership potential than the group whose story contained someone putting forth just a
practical idea.
But what if people were not thinking specifically about charismatic leaders? The second group out of that
same pool of 183 students was not primed to think about charisma and leadership together. They were
simply asked to list attributes of a leader; the word 'charismatic' was not mentioned. Then these students
were broken into two groups and put through the same exercise of rating either a creative idea or just a
useful one. In this case, the results were the opposite of the first group studied -- they ranked the
leadership potential of the person who had a creative idea below that of the individual who simply came
up with a useful idea.
Debunking Stereotypes
According to Mueller, this study points to the conflicting feelings that people often have around truly
creative thinkers. In the paper, she and her co-authors write that leaders who are the most original may be
overlooked "in favor of selecting leaders who would preserve the status quo by sticking with feasible, but
relatively unoriginal solutions." They suggest that the reality created by this bias could explain why the
IBM survey of leaders found that many expressed doubt or a lack of confidence in their ability to take
charge in times of complexity. Those leaders were ostensibly promoted "based on this prototypical
All materials copyright of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Page 2 of 3
A Bias against 'Quirky'? Why Creative People Can Lose Out on Leadership Positions: Knowledge@Wharton
(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2713)
perception of leadership and now find themselves in a world that has vastly changed, one that requires
much more creative responses and thinking."
That means that companies need to "debunk the stereotypes" against creative people, Mueller says. "The
fact is, some people are selected for a leadership [track], while others are not. So companies need to think
about this issue, and their performance appraisal systems should be changed accordingly. Managers need
help in understanding what stereotypes they might have in their minds and how to overcome them."
The key is how companies view the traits associated with creativity. "There are some cultures where it is
less of a problem than others," Mueller notes. "The question is, 'How do you think about descriptions like
'quirky' and 'unfocused'? If those traits are viewed only negatively, then you have more of a problem." It
is important for firms with that view to examine these biases because "many companies want to be
creative and they just don't know what they are doing wrong. Diagnosing that you are one of those
companies is the first step in solving it."
Of course, Mueller is not arguing that every quirky, creative whiz is suited for a corner office. "Leaders
require multiple skills, and creativity is just one of them," she says. "Some creative people don't have all
those skills. But the challenge is to recognize those who do."
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