Can Being Promoted to Leadership Change Who You Are?
New research finds people adapt and grow more conscientious when promoted to supervisory roles at work
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“It’s not who I am underneath, it’s what I do that defines me,” so says the titular hero from the 2005 blockbuster, Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale as the billionaire caped crusader. Instead of the hero Batman, a group of academics were inspired by what is probably one of the more profound lines in modern cinema and sought to find out whether people, as the quote suggests, do shape fundamentally who they are.
Specifically, it led Li Wendong, Associate Professor at the Department of Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School, to team up with seven other academics to examine whether taking on a leadership role — along with the added job responsibilities — can actually change people’s personality traits.
Prof. Li and the other researchers involved in the study titled “Can Becoming a Leader Change Your Personality? An Investigation With Two Longitudinal Studies From a Role-Based Perspective” hoped to find evidence that, rather than personality traits remaining relatively stable as traditionally assumed, they could change and develop during a person’s adult years.
“One of the crucial factors in driving adult personality development is taking on new roles at work,” he says. “As they take on wider responsibilities and play more important roles in organisations, novice leaders are expected to be more conscientious than when they were employees – more efficient, organised, vigilant, achievement-oriented, and dependable to subordinates.”