“Leadership? No, Thanks!” A New Construct: Worries About Leadership

• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12322

“Leadership? No, Thanks!”A New Construct:

Worries About Leadership

ZEYNEP AYCAN

1

and SALOME SHELIA

2

1

Department of Psychology and Department of Management, Koç University, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey, 34450

2

Department of Psychology, Koç University, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey, 34450

Leadership is considered a key career aspiration. However, in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous

(VUCA) environment, is such a goal indisputably desirable? Tapping the emotion domain, we propose a new

construct, worries about leadership (WAL), defined as the worries people have about the possible negative

consequences of assuming a leadership role. Four studies investigated discriminant, convergent and predictive

validities of WAL scale using diverse methodologies: survey, lab experiment and naturalistic field study. Findings

confirmed theoretically proposed dimensions of WAL: worries about failure, work-life imbalance, and harm. WAL

was found orthogonal to Motivation to Lead (MTL; Chan & Drasgow, 2001) and correlated with neuroticism and

prevention focus. Correlation of WAL scores with physiological indices of emotions was insignificant, albeit in the

expected direction. WAL predicted leader emergence above and beyond MTL. These findings have significant

theoretical and practical implications contributing to more nuanced understanding of leader emergence.

Keywords: leadership emergence; worries; emotions; motivation to lead; scale development

Introduction

“Leadershipis a choice, not a position.”Stephen Covey

If leadership is indeed a choice, whose choice is it and

how is a decision made? Becoming a leader has not been

viewed as the decision of an individual from an agency

perspective (Bandura, 1989). Fortunately, a new line of

research has emergedthat places the decision in the hands

of leaders-to-be. In 2001, Chan and Drasgow coined the

term “motivation to lead”(MTL), defining it as an

individual-difference construct“… that affects a leader or

leader-to-be’sdecisionto assumeleadershiptraining, roles,

and responsibilities, and that affects his or her intensity of

effort at leadingand persistence as a leader”(p. 482).

While intention to become a leader can intuitively be

implied in the leader emergence process, MTL is so far

the only construct that explicitly links leadership

emergence to an agentic process. Taking the line of

research initiated by Chan and Drasgow (2001) a step

further, we assert that emotion, together with motivation,

plays a role in an individual’s decision to b ecome a leader.

The specific emotion we focus on is worry. This paper

proposesa new construct called“worries about leadership”

(WAL), defined as the worries people have about the

possible negative consequences of assuming a leadership

role. In this manuscript we attempt to addressthe question

of whether WAL as an emotion-based individual

difference variable indeed impacts leader emergence.

Leadership evokes worries especially in today’sso-

called VUCA environment—conditions of vulnerability,

uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (Johansen,

2012). The young workforce of today is less interested

in vertical careermoves within organizational hierarchies,

and more interestedin horizontal and lateral moves within

and across organizations, compared to previous

generations (e.g., Chudzikowski, 2012). The Leadership

Identity Construction framework of DeRue and Ashford

(2010) asserts that individuals actively assess the level of

risk involved in a role when deciding whether to claim

leader identity. A nationwide survey conducted by the

Harvard Business School with 3,625 full-time employees

of various organizations revealedthat only 34% aspired to

leadership positions and only 7% to C-level positions

(Torres, 2014). The respondents who did not aspire to

such positions expressed worries about the possible

negative consequences of assuming leadership, such as

failing to fulfill requirements of the role or jeopardizing

their work-family balance. These findingssignal the need

Correspondence: Zeynep Aycan, Koç University, Department of

Psychology and Department of Management, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey

34450. E-mailzaycan@ku.edu.tr

European Management Review, Vol. 16, 21–35, (2019)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12322

©2018 European Academy of Management