Who Doesn’t Want to Share Leadership? The Role of Personality, Control Preferences, and Political Orientation in Preferences for Shared vs. Focused Leadership in Teams

An increasing number of institutions decide to adopt the premises of shared or distributed leadership models and reduce the level of organizational hierarchy. Such models were shown to positively affect employee well-being, creativity, and – indirectly – effectiveness. However, while shared leadership assumes a relatively equal division of control in interdependent situations, some people display preferences to dominate or submit. What is more, unequal/equal division of power may be preferable to people with a more conservative/liberal political orientation. In the current research we examine whether the shared leadership model is likely to be equally attractive to all employees. We focus on the effect of personality traits, control preferences, and political orientation on preferences for shared vs. focused leadership. One-hundred-and-eighty-four participants declared their team preferences (focused vs. shared leadership), as well as answered questions regarding their personality (HEXACO), control preferences, and political orientation through the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. Control preferences, as well as political orientation were related to preferences for shared vs. focused leadership. Specifically, while dominance and conservative political orientation was associated with higher preference for focused leadership, collaboration predicted higher preference for shared leadership. Personality traits did not predict the preferences for focused vs. shared leadership.