Eye-tracking study shows how leaders are identified

Are you that person who doesn't like to be stared at? According to a study published in The Leadership Quarterly, people are actually looking at their skills of leadership. Hierarchical social structures develop naturally in group settings.

As a result, some people become leaders, while others are happier in their positions, allowing others to take responsibility. Check out more information about the eye tracking study.

Read more: Understand how companies stand out by investing in leadership

Characteristics of a born leader

Below we list some characteristics considered essential in the position of a leader and that many people have naturally. Check out!

• Ability to influence;
• Don't be afraid to expose yourself;
• Excellent communication skills;
• Willingness to help and listen;
• Take initiative, be proactive;
• Be multitasking;
• Be curious and empathetic;
• Take responsibilities;
• Sense of justice and focus on the solution.

applied study

Previous research has shown that leadership roles were assigned to individuals based on a variety of factors, assuming that people can infer leadership just by watching something, without to listen.

Study author Fabiola H. Gerpott and his colleagues used 18 participants from the Netherlands to watch short clips from 42 meetings with a car company's program staff.

The participants were asked to focus on the social interactions that took place in the videos, and the researchers used eye tracking on the participants. The videos were based on non-verbal behaviors, including body movements and facial expressions.

Results obtained in the study

The findings suggest mentoring emerging leaders can also happen quickly and without much thought, according to the researchers. This attentional bias has been interpreted as an evolutionary mechanism for detecting leadership potential in others (a technique that helped humans survive in the past).

Furthermore, the findings suggest a slight head start in the observers' reflexive orientation (i.e., the number of fixations) to emerging male leaders relative to emerging female leaders, but not in terms of attentional engagement (i.e., the length of their to look).

Conclusion

This study took a long time to understand whether people can recognize non-verbal cues of leadership. However, there are some limitations. First, the majority of observed emerging leaders were male, making difficult to determine whether gender differences will persist in the absence of a more uniform.

Furthermore, previous studies suggest that people use observation of others as a revolutionary tool, suggesting the possibility that participants were watching emerging leaders in the video because the rest of the team was watching also.