Quiet impact: Leadership emergence in self-perceived introverts

The below outlines the main elements of our theoretical framework.

Leadership Emergence

Hanna, Smith, Kirkman, and Griffin’s extensive review (2020), presents a comprehensive review of emergent leadership, a construct describing informal ways in which leaders emerge. Unlike formal leadership, emergent leadership develops organically as individuals gain influence and are recognized as leader-like by peers (Lanaj & Hollenbeck, 2015). The paper argues that while research on emergent leadership has expanded significantly, it suffers from conceptual ambiguity, inconsistent operationalization, and fragmented findings, necessitating an integrative framework for future research.

Hanna et al (202) distinguish emergent leadership from related constructs such as shared, participative, and formal leadership roles (Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007).  They emphasise three defining elements: lateral influence (influence derived informally from peers), unit of analysis (individual versus group emergence), and temporal duration (whether leadership is situational or sustained) (Hanna et al., 2020). These distinctions enable greater conceptual clarity and comparability across studies, and will be useful in relation to this study with its focus on how the perceptions of individuals, in relation to perceptions of others, colour and condition their likelihood to emerge as leaders.

The organizing framework that emerges from this work, maps antecedents, mediators, moderators, and outcomes of emergent leadership. At the individual level, traits such as extraversion, demographics, and behaviours are marked out as frequent predictors of leadership emergence (Ensari et al., 2011), while at the team level, dynamics and emergent states appear to shape leader emergence (Zhang et al., 2012). Mediators include both task-oriented factors, such as communication quality, and socially oriented factor, such as trust (Druskat & Pescosolido, 2006). Outcomes span effectiveness-based measures (e.g., performance, coordination) and affect-based ones (e.g., trust, satisfaction) (Cogliser et al., 2012).

The review highlights methodological shortcomings of much previous work on leadership emergence, stating that many studies rely on subjective peer ratings of “who emerged as leader,” which risks definitional inconsistency (Javidan et al., 2006). However, the study does not consider how self-perception aligns with perception of others, in emerging as a leader.

The authors connect prior research to three broader leadership theories: (1) Functional leadership theory (McGrath, 1962; Morgeson et al., 2010), which frames emergent leaders as filling functional needs of teams; (2) Identity-based process models (DeRue & Ashford, 2010), where leadership emerges through cycles of claiming and granting identities; and (3) Relational models theory (Wellman, 2017), which explains how group norms shape whether leadership emerges hierarchically or communally. These theories highlight how emergent leadership is both contextually contingent and socially constructed.
Of the three approaches outlined in this review, we adopt (3), the relational view of leadership, for the reasons outline in what follows.

Relational Leadership 

The concept of leadership as relational, over the past 15 years has been adopted widely in research within the public sector. It is a distinctive approach that emphasizes relationships, context, and ethical considerations ( Ospina, 2017). Thus, offering an alternative to traditional bureaucratic and New Public Management models, which have been associated with negative outcomes such as workplace bullying (Garvey & Mackenzie, 2024). This concept of leadership focuses on building trust, fostering collaboration, and addressing complex societal challenges (Vallentin, 2022).  Relational leadership requires leaders to be morally accountable, engage in dialogical practices, and recognize the polyphonic nature of organizational life (Ospina, 2017).

This form of leadership is conceptualized as a complex, dynamic process embedded in everyday interactions, relationships and very often, behavioural preferences, rather than an individual trait or role (Cunliffe & Eriksen, 2011). It emphasizes the importance of trust, learning, and discursive relations (Branson et al., 2016) and requires leaders to be morally accountable and engage in dialogical practices (Cunliffe & Eriksen, 2011). 

The concept involves navigating multi-faceted relationships across organizational structures (Branson et al., 2016) and managing relational purposes (Russell, 2003). Relational leadership is viewed through various paradigmatic perspectives, including entity, constructionist, and critical approaches, but essentially emphasises the ways in which leadership is embedded in everyday dialogical practices, organisational cultures and social practices (Uhl-Bien, 2006). It is in essence, a socio-cultural approach to leadership.  Importantly for this study, this approach emphasizes the two-way influence between leaders and followers, the importance of followers' perceptions, and the need to consider leadership as a property of the group system (Garvey & Mackenzie, 2024).

The perspective shifts focus from individual traits to the complex, patterned processes of leader-follower interactions (Carter et al., 2015). In viewing leadership as relational, leadership emergence is viewed as a distal-proximal process influenced by various antecedents and boundary conditions which meld with self-perceptions of the individual to colour, condition and may curtail, their ambitions to be leaders in their field (Badura et al., 2022).

In adopting this approach for our theoretical framework, we recognise that leadership is culturally and organisationally situated, and that emerging as a leader in one organisation, may be substantially different to emerging as one in another. 

From here we move to our approach to the concept of introversion, arguing for a behavioural rather than trait-based perspective. 

A critical approach to the Trait perspective on introverted leadership

The trait-based approach to introversion conceptualizes introversion as a stable, enduring characteristic within the broader framework of personality. This perspective, rooted in the Five-Factor Model (FFM), (McCrae & Costa, 2008), positions introversion as the polar opposite to extraversion, encompassing traits such as social withdrawal, preference for solitude, and lower levels of excitement-seeking (McCrae & Costa, 1999). Introverts are characterized by a tendency toward introspection, lower sensory thresholds, and a focus on internal stimuli rather than external social engagement (McCrae, 2002). More recently the trait activation (TAT) model has gained traction. TAT seeks to compensate for limitations of a strict trait determinism in earlier theorising by conceptualising traits in interaction with situations (Tett et al., 2021). 

However, the trait-based approach has considerable limitations in its practical applications. A dominant concern in much of the personality literature is the link with organisational performance leading to an implicit view that some personality characteristics are more valuable than others. Much of the research on introversion and extroversion in workplace settings has focussed on extraversion rather than introversion, leading to a characterisation of introversion as less valuable (Blevins et al., 2022). Consequently, this portrayal of introverts leads to organisational conditions that favour extroverts and facilitate situations in which there are fewer opportunities to perform for introverts, for example in leadership roles.

Due to the way that) introversion is conceptualised in practical settings (such as recruitment and selection) introverted individuals are prevented from attaining leadership roles: Even in cases where they may desire them (Karlsen & Langvik, 2021; Spark & O'Connor, 2021). As a result data on the performance of introverted leaders may be scarce and assumptions about how introverted leaders’ performance should be measured may prevail (Blevins et al., 2022) favouring extroverted norms for leadership and tasks that are inappropriate for introverts. This in turn perpetuates the view that introverted traits are less valuable.  
The reductionism that is inherent in the trait approach as applied to organisations excludes a more critical view of the use of personality in organisations, while also brushing over the complexity of introversion as a facet of personality by reducing it to a fixed spectrum, potentially neglecting its situational variability.

Research suggests that individuals may exhibit "situational introversion," where their behaviour aligns with introverted tendencies in specific contexts but not others (Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009). In addition, this framework tends to pathologise introversion by juxtaposing it against culturally favoured extraversion, particularly in Western societies, which may lead to biased interpretations of introverted behaviours (House et al., 2004). This conceptualisation of introversion also relies on psychometric testing which can introduce response biases, such as social desirability effects, thereby compromising validity (Paulhus & Vazire, 2007). While trait-based approach is often adopted by behavioural psychologists, in terms of leadership, and what it known about organisational and societal cultures, its limitations necessitate a more nuanced understanding of introversion as both a dynamic and context-sensitive construct

Self-reporting and introversion

In line with our socio-cultural approach to introversion, this paper focusses on self-identifying or self-reporting introverts. The concept of introversion has become widely known in public discourses due to dissemination of personality theory, the use of psychometric tests in occupational testing and presence of personality concepts in coaching and leadership development. As a result, people’s understanding of their personality may be shaped by experiences of psychometric personality assessment, but may equally well be due to self-categorisation, following exposure to feedback from others or from reading about introversion in public media. Here we adopt a perspective that explores the effect of believing oneself to be an introvert, rather than of introversion as measured by psychometric test.  We remain agnostic on the trait perspectives and are not specifically concerned in this study with individual debates relating to the existence of traits or the extent of these traits in our study population. Instead, we are more concerned with who the social construct and internal narratives of introversion shape self-identified introverts’ perspectives on their experience and desire for leadership roles. Adopting a constructivist approach, we are equally concerned about the impact of others on the framing of introverts (Goffman, 1974), particularly in organisational cultures in which extroverted traits are more valued than those associated with introverts. 

The recognition that people use personality constructs in their self-reflection and understanding of themselves, has led some theorists to study so-called lay theories of personality and the implications of beliefs regarding lay dispositions on people’s behaviour ( Ross & Nisbett, 2011). Plaks et al. (2009) argue that how people construe personality (their own and other) has implications on their own behaviour. They distinguish between entitative and incremental perspectives. An Entitative perspective on personality implies that personality, and therefore behaviours are relatively fixed and constrained by the internal characteristics that make someone an introvert. An incremental view of disposition implies that behaviours and personality are malleable, subject to maturation, development and learning implying that introversion may be more context dependent and subject to change to a larger degree than negative perspective would imply. We discuss this later in relation to leadership emergence.

Poon and Koehler (2006) adopt a knowledge activation framework in studying the types of dispositional theories (entitative vs incremental) people adopt. They report research showing that people’s dispositional judgments (for example in judging other people’s behaviours) are more confident when entity knowledge is activated. Given the dominance of the entitative view on introversion in public media and psychometric assessment one might be willing to consider the level of confidence people might have if they adopt an entitative view of their own personality. Research into how people use lay theories has identified laypeople’s causal theories of behaviour that they use for accounting for their own and other people’s behaviour.  Böhm and Pfister (2015) propose a causal explanation network model people use both prior knowledge and observed information to infer causes for behaviour. They propose 7 inference rules for each of the seven causal factors (Goals, Dispositions, Temporary States (e.g., emotions), Intentional Actions, Outcomes, and Events). Importantly this model provides a basis for understanding how people reason about a persons’ actions, their goals and their outcomes. Applied to a leadership emergence model for self-identified introverts, how people frame their own introversion within this causal network is likely to be important in deciding whether to pursue leadership roles. However, there is to date little research in this context, that provides evidence of how self-identified introversion influences career decisions and beyond.

The relationship between self-identified introversion and measured introversion is likely to be a complex question. To our knowledge, no one has studied the relationship of personality profiles with self-identified introversion. Recently Bröhl et al. (2022) studied self-identified highly sensitive persons and assessed their personality profiles. They found that self-identified sensitive persons showed higher scores on Openness to experience, neuroticism and the lowest levels on extraversion. However, it is unclear how personality patterns (e.g. as measured within a Five Factor model) would relate to self-identified introversion, but based on the work by Brohl the answer is likely to be more nuanced.