Attributing leadership personality and effectiveness from the leader's face: an exploratory study

The paper aims to explore the processes by which individuals make attributions about a leader's personality and effectiveness based upon information contained within a photograph of a leader's face.

A mixed methodology approach is taken which combines an individual survey with a follow‐up focus group conducted with five classes of MBA students. In the survey, respondents were asked to rate the photographic images of ten CEOs for personality traits and leadership effectiveness that were apparent in the face; in the focus group, they were asked to reflect upon the processes they had utilized in order to make their attributions.

The study demonstrated that the vast majority of the participants actively used the face to attribute personality traits of the leaders as well as their ability to lead. The survey revealed that perceived leadership effectiveness was positively correlated to perceived extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and narcissism. The focus group revealed three strategies that were used when placing these attributions on a leader. These were drawing on explicit facial traits, using the leader's non‐facial traits and general appearance, and telling stories about the leader.

This was an exploratory study set up in an artificial laboratory‐like environment featuring a limited and homogenous collection of CEO photographs and involving a limited and relatively homogenous group of participants. However, it does show that the face is an important and rich source of information from which individuals can make detailed attributions about a leader's personality and their potential leadership ability. The functionality of making such attributions as well as its moral and ethical basis needs to be properly examined and discussed.

The study highlights the leader's face and the visual portrayal thereof, as a potentially important, yet rarely analyzed, aspect of leadership. It foregrounds photographs of leaders, most notably those taken of CEOs, as organizational artifacts that have been largely ignored but worthy data sources. Leadership scholars could profitably focus upon both the production and consumption processes associated with the visual portrayal of leadership.