Christmas Party

With Christmas around the corner, I asked my mentor the other day why he has been volunteering to organise the department Christmas party for years. I was intrigued.

Actually, I shouldn't have been.

A story from BBC News today gave me the reason. That comes from an experiment conducted by a graduate student at Stanford University's School of Business. Volunteers were first requested to select an answer from a number of emotional responses to different hypothetical scenarios. Stories like "driving down the road, hitting a small animal" allowed an assessment of participants' "guilt proneness." The participants then completed group tasks in which they had an opportunity, but no real incentive, to take charge - somewhat like organising the Christmas party for the office. In this innovative experiment, the research team found that the higher one's level of guilt proneness, the more likely he or she was to step up as a leader in the activity. But the real surprise comes with their observation that the guilt-prone participants performed better than those who were extroverted (a trait often associated with leadership skill, mind you) but not prone to guilty feelings.

By further evaluating the performance feedback for people in real management positions, the team confirmed that those who were more prone to feelings of guilt were more often rated by their clients, colleagues, and former managers to be effective leaders.

Now I see. The willingness of my mentor to organise the Christmas party turns out to be the hallmark of effective leadership.