Leadership Research Summary:
• Research on leadership emergence has mainly focused on adulthood and relied on retrospective accounts of childhood factors. Based on a prospective cohort study of 7719 boys born in 1953, of which 5928 were later drafted, we explored individual differences in leadership emergence in childhood and early adulthood. The data set consisted of register data from different time points and a survey of the cohort in the 6th grade. As expected, cognitive ability, tallness and muscular power were decisive for assessment of military officer suitability.
• However, the study also found a moderate to strong impact on this assessment score from social class, leadership aspirations in childhood, birth order, self-regulatory skills in school, parental support, and previous participation in extracurricular activities. Similarly, social class, cognitive ability, developmental experiences, and birth order were important for nominations as class party organizer in the 6th grade. Delay of gratification was not associated with these nominations at all and was neutralized by cognitive ability in relation to officer suitability. The results strongly support a life-cycle approach to leadership emergence.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
• Individual and environmental conditions in childhood and adolescence are not absent in the discourse on leadership emergence, be it in early life or later in adult life. For empirical studies in this area researchers mostly have to make do with retrospective accounts from those already in a leader position, cross-sectional data, small (and selected) samples, secondary data, or data collected at a later stage and from other sources than our primary study objects.
• With access from the Project Metropolitan researchers were able to remedy some of these shortcomings in studies of leadership emergence. The main assets of the data set from the project was its comprehensiveness in terms of incorporating a whole cohort in a large urban area and in terms of the breadth of data sources and topics covered. Of particular importance is the school survey performed when the respondents were in the 6th grade.
• The cohort was followed through early adulthood into their thirties. After the dataset was anonymized in 1986, no more surveys could be performed but it has been possible to follow the cohort through registers as they now move into the age of retirement (Stenberg, 2018).
• The study only includes the male members of the cohort and only those who were drafted (N = 5928). With data on birth order and family socioeconomic status when they were 10, through an extensive survey when they were in the 6th grade, and on to circumstances related to the draft, we cover the cohort members’ first 20 or so years. This is a fairly long period as such but is also a particularly formative period in life.
• By following the cohort prospectively, researchers were also able to avoid departing from study populations already selected for the outcome researchers are actually interested in. Having said that, this was not an investigation of formal leadership or the practice of leadership, but the assessment or ascription of leadership at two points in the cohort’s lives.
• Overall, researchers found that early life experiences in terms of family socioeconomic status, parental support, and birth order were all important for leadership emergence at both points in life, although somewhat differently. Interestingly family socioeconomic status did not affect leadership ascription in childhood, but was all the more significant in early adulthood – even when controlling for a number of other factors, including IQ.
• Cognitive ability has been identified as a crucial factor in leadership emergence, and this study is no exception. Still, cognitive ability is but one important factor related to leadership emergence and it might even have its limits. The positive effect of IQ on leadership assessment at the draft did show a curvilinear pattern. Leadership ascription is contextual and the children seem to appreciate the younger sibling for organizing class parties while the draft board is looking for the responsible elder brother.
• As so much social and behavioral research has reported, cognitive ability and social class showed very strong influences on outcomes both in childhood and later in early adulthood. And this was also the case in a society with relatively small class differences. The lesson for leadership studies may be that including childhood factors is relevant not only for fostering (good) leaders, but also for understanding followers (Elgar, 2016). That is, to observe and highlight not only how some children are chosen, or choose themselves, as leaders – but also to encourage reflection about what qualifications are made relevant and which in fact are relevant.