Nicolás Machiavelli, the infamous author of “The Prince,” wrote in the 16th century that the ideal leader establishes and breaks solemn agreements. Create alliances with weak allies to defeat a powerful enemy and then eliminate them one by one. Blames his successor to his own mistakes and executes his opponents in public.
San Francisco de Asís was the antithesis of a Machiavellian leader. Born in 1181, the future saint renounced the wealth of his father and spent the rest of his life wandering around Northern Italy as a beggar and preacher. Francisco won the reputation of being extremely humble, but it was certainly not weak. He treated with potatoes, noble and even with an Egyptian sultan. He founded a religious order, the Franciscans, who survives until today.
At present, Machiavellian leaders abound in the business world. Perhaps even more surprising is that many other business leaders resemble Francis: humble and modest, but in no way weak. In our research, we argue that two types of motivation help explain these broad and lasting differences in leadership.
‘The two faces of power’
Psychologists have been fascinated for a long time for people’s unconscious motivations and how to measure them. An influential evaluation, developed in the 1930s, is the thematic apotception test (TAT). Short stories about ambiguous images are written, and the researchers analyze the stories to see what topics emerge: what worries or worries the writer and how the world sees.
In 1970, the psychologist David McClelland coined the phrase “The two sides of power” to describe two different types of power that motivate people, based on their tat analysis: personal power and socialized power. Personal power is the motivation to master others. McClelland said that people eager for personal power tend to use images that evoke the law of the jungle, where the strongest survive destroying their adversaries. Socialized power, on the other hand, seeks to benefit others.
McLelland said that personal power was associated with behaviors such as excessive alcohol consumption, bets, aggressive impulses and the accumulation of “prestige supplies”, as convertible. On the other hand, people concerned about the most socialized aspect of power join more organizations and are more likely to become leaders, including sports teams.
A few years later, McClelland and consultant David Burnham published an article entitled “Power is the great motivator”, where they deepened in this fundamental link between motivation based on the power and effectiveness of leadership. Through a series of biographical anecdotes and the analysis of a large company, they demonstrated that managers with a high degree of socialized power were more effective than managers motivated by personal power.
Motivation measurement
It seemed to us that personal power, the “law of the jungle”, motivated the types of behavior described with approval by Machiavelli. Likewise, socialized power seemed to underlie the energetic but altruistic behavior of San Francisco and the so -called humble modern leaders.
But we faced a problem: how to measure motivation. Powerful people, such as world -class executive directors, are little inclined to carry out aptitude exams or answer questionnaires for academics that are recognized humble.
In the 1990s, the psychologist David Winter demonstrated that speeches, interviews and diplomatic texts reveal unconscious motivation, as well as the thematic apotception test, which demonstrates a way of studying the perspective of leaders on power. For example, someone driven by the desire for personal power often tries to control or regulate those around him; Try to persuade and convince; and cares about fame, status and reputation.
However, Winters procedures to analyze texts are manual and complex; It is difficult to process a lot of documents. In addition, he focused on personal power; Socialized power was not included in its coding procedures.
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Words and actions
To overcome these limitations, we use computer -assisted text analysis to analyze the language of executive directors in interviews and telephone conferences.
In a 2019 Studies series, reviewed by pairs and summarized in the minutes of the Academy of Management, our team identified 40 Machiavellian and 40 Humile Executive Directors. First, we analyze in detail the types of words and phrases that distinguished both groups, shedding light on the type of power that motivates each one.
Using these patterns, we create two “dictionaries” of words and phrases that expressed personal power and socialized power. Language on strong and energetic actions, control, impress management, punishment and fear of failure, to name some issues, constituted the Dictionary of Personal Power. “Defeat”, “Invadir” and “Ametralla”, for example, appeared among the words of the personal power list. Topics such as rewards, mentoring and positive relations characterized the dictionary of socialized power.
Then, we use a computer program to analyze hundreds of interviews and quarterly telephone conferences. The program calculated the personal and socialized power scores of each of the executive directors.
Our team also developed indices of maquiavelic behavior and humble leadership (such as defame to competition, breach agreements or make significant donations to beneficial organizations, respectively) and analyzed the 80 executive directors.
We find very high correlations between the motivation of power and the behavior of the executive directors. Executive directors with high personal power scores, according to our analysis of their interviews and telephone conferences, also tended to show a Machiavellian behavior. The humble behavior of executive directors was positively related to socialized power.
People and profits
Do these abstract statistical results really mean something? Obviously.
Numerous CEOs from our humble executives list founded or directed exceptionally successful and centered companies, including Warren Buffet from Berkshire Hathaway, Danny Wegman from Wegmans and James Goodnight of the SAS Institute. Several of these “humble” CEOs appeared several times on the annual list of the best companies to work from Fortune.
The list of Machiavellian CEOS included Kenneth Lay, known by Enron, and John Rigas, one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, who was convicted of fraud. Mark Hurd, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, appeared on the complex list of the worst executive directors of the history of technology. In general, criticisms of “prioritizing profits to people”, the abuse of employees, scandals, exorbitant expenses, demands and accusations or condemnations for fraud characterize many of our Machiavellian CEOS.
McClelland and Burnham were right. Power really is the “great motivator”, but it is the type of power that makes the difference.
*William D. Spangler He is an associate professor of administration, University of Binghamton, New York State University; Aleksey Tikhomirov He is Professor of Public Administration and Policy, University of Binghamton, New York State University
This text was originally published in The Conversation
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