Empathy and the emergence of task and relations leaders

This empirical study of small workgroup peers investigated relationships among perceptions of emotional abilities (i.e., empathy, ability to identify others' emotions, and ability to express one's own emotions), cognitive abilities, and leadership emergence. While controlling for cognitive ability and complex task performance, we found that people rated highly on empathy garnered attributions of leadership from their peers. Our study found that an actor's empathy (1) related positively to ratings of task leadership and ratings of relations leadership and (2) mediated the effect of other emotional abilities (i.e., the ability to identify others' emotions and the ability to express one's own emotions) on task and relations leadership. Emotional abilities were unrelated to cognitive abilities or complex task performance. Cognitive abilities and complex task performance earned actors higher ratings on task leadership, but not on relations leadership. The article concludes by relating the results to the new research on authentic leadership.