According to common perception, extroverts are the best candidates to become leaders in organizations. A recent study, however, has found that people who are strongly extraverted aren’t much liked by the team.

Extraverts, we have a problem

A quite unexpected finding from the study led by Jasmine Hu, management and human resources associate professor at the Fisher College of Business (The Ohio State University, USA) was that people don’t really like being led by an obvious extravert.

Only moderate levels of such extroversion-related traits as warmth and assertiveness have been proven to gain people’s trust. This is definitely the case when finding a ‘sweet spot’, can make a difference.

The study report has been made public in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The experiment

The first cohort involved 260 college students. Assigned to 78 teams on a random basis, they had to work on a variety of projects in respective groups during a whole semester.

At the beginning of the time stretch, the participants had to self-rate by two key extroversion traits, namely their desire to act dominantly and forcefully (assertiveness) and their readiness to behave in an outgoing and friendly way (warmth).

At the same time, the students had to undergo a special test to determine their pro-social motivation, which is the readiness to care about benefits other people may have from their activities.

During the semester under research, the participants were asked to estimate each of their teammates in terms of their leadership qualities and roles.

This was done to find out whether a person was perceived as an informal leader by their respective teams. Team members were also asked to rate how much they liked the leader and how willing they were to seek advice from him or her.

The second cohort included 337 workers of a large Chinese retail company, who were tested on the same basis.

The results of both cohorts were extremely similar, which shows that the findings could be considered valid for various ethnicities and companies.

Only moderate levels of extraversion-related traits such as warmth and assertiveness gain people’s trust.

The findings

It surprised the researchers that team members actually tend to have a less favorable attitude towards leaders showing too high levels of warmth and assertiveness. Apparently, possessing moderate amounts of these qualities is optimum.

More specifically, extroverted persons tended to be chosen as leaders more often as compared to participants who did not possess the relevant traits.

On the other hand, leaders who were perceived as too warm or too assertive tended to be less popular within the teams, while their advice was sought less often as compared to people who were only moderately extraverted.

Why we don’t like extraverts

As Hu explains, people don’t like leaders who are too pushy, so they are not willing to establish closer relations with them. This is the case when being too friendly and warm can have negative implications for a leader.

However, there was another discovery. It is possible to change the attitude of teammates by making them believe you are sincere and have others people’ welfare in mind.

In today’s social environment, it’s essential for leaders to be pro-socially motivated.

According to Hu, the same principle will work with formally assigned leaders or supervisors.

Pro-social motivation is important for leaders.

Will it work in dating?

It’s likely the same approach would work in dating as well. Men who are too extraverted, open and warm, may be perceived as possible womanizers and insincere.

Having some extraverted qualities in moderate amounts, however, would be extremely attractive to Ukrainian women who believe that a man should be a leader in a relationship.

In any case, demonstrating with not only your words but your  whole behavior that you genuinely care for the wellbeing of the woman and that you are doing it sincerely, would certainly help you to gain trust and love.

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