Anna Bligh recently became Australia’s first elected female state premier following a popular vote in Queensland. Prior to the elections, her party, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), had ruled Queensland for the past 11 years. In her pre-election campaign, Bligh highlighted the benefits of sticking with an experienced government. Political observers noted that she was a beacon of stability and resilience in the face of an uncertain economic climate. Following her win, fellow ALP politicians commended Bligh, attributing her victory to the consistency she had shown in putting forth policies. Anna Bligh’s story of triumph inspires, but it also sounds all too familiar.

The leadership standard of today calls for consistent individuals who stick to their guns and are true to themselves. People often take the view that leaders ought to be firm, resolute, grounded in staunch principles. However, a recent study conducted by Martin Kilduff, a professor of management at the University of Cambridge, points to the contrary –- that natural leaders are not consistent, not rigid, highly malleable and opportunistic.

The study, recently presented at Singapore Management University (SMU), identified formal and informal leaders in organisations. The former refers to people who are in positions of leadership and authority while the latter refers to people who are looked upon as leaders within social groups and cliques. According to Kilduff, a leader can possibly fulfil both categories – formal and informal, but such leaders are a rarity within organisations as they will need to command a high level trust amongst ‘followers’. Can it be said then, that most formal leaders are not trusted by their employees?

New structures, New Leaders

Modern organisations tend to favour flat hierarchies with many divisions which serve as fertile grounds for complex social networks. This is paradoxical, according to Kilduff, because “you can have the illusion of local cohesion and global fragmentation.” He added, “If you’re working in one of these organisations, there’s a fear that you might be in a clique, which is fine if it’s cohesive. But when you zoom out and look at the organisation as a whole, you might see a lot of fragmentation. The question is – who is connecting it all together?”

Informal leaders have a gift of connecting across social divides, acting as a broker for relationships. These are adapters, blending easily into different social situations and changing their behaviours to meet the demands of varying environments. Kilduff terms such personalities, high self-monitors, or ‘chameleons of the social world’. “Because they are very aware and concerned about their behaviour, high self-monitors tend to make good actors,” he noted. Another way to term these leaders would be ‘homo sociologicus’ – “People described in sociology as constantly acting, putting on impressions, worrying about the front-stage, back-stage; it’s about staging performances, being in the public eye, socially constructing your persona”.

Kilduff’s study shows that in organisations, high self-monitors tend to move into central positions within social networks. They enjoy earlier promotions and show stronger job and geographical mobility. If they are managers, they would usually help others deal with negative emotions. Though they are generous in dispensing advice to colleagues, high self-monitors are often emotionally detached from work and in relationships. They are task-oriented and agreeable. Do high self-monitors make good leaders in organisations? The research literature shows high self-monitors tend to emerge as leaders in the eyes of their colleagues.

Low self-monitors, or ‘homo psychologicus’, describes people who are driven by attitude and behavioural consistency, based on fixed principles, ideals and values. This is a leadership-type that most people are used to. While Kilduff does not dispute the merits or demerits of low-self-monitors, he pointed out that low self-monitors tend to look internally for how they act and provided an example to illustrate this: “Imagine; you’ve gone to see a manager who is very angry with some worker and is in a very bad mood, and you’re up next, waiting to go in. You’ve done nothing wrong. With a low self-monitor, the mood may carry over.”

Between these two types of leaders – the high and low self-monitors, how are they perceived? Mood swings aside, many people question the ability of high self-monitors in leadership. Because of the ever-changing nature of high self-monitors, the view is that they are manipulative, untrustworthy, inauthentic, guilty of self-promotion and have low behavioural integrity.

A Case for the Informal Leader

Leaders who are consistent are often trusted. For Kilduff, high self-monitors can be consistent on the outside but inconsistent on the inside. He takes Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as examples, in that they have a certain demeanour in the way they present themselves – usually optimistic and upbeat. It may not represent the way that they feel inside, but it is a consistent image for their public. Kilduff noted that high self-monitors are consistent in that respect; they can have a bad day but they are not going to show it, not unless the social situation calls for it. Emotional detachment from work allows high self-monitors better control of their conduct and behaviour. But does this not make them mere leaders of impression management?

High self-monitors are active talkers, perceptive of their environment and proactive in offering help and advice. This is typical of leaders in informal social groups. High self-monitors make great mediators in conflict management because of their sensitivity to others and proficiency in impression management. They can overcome other people’s negative attributions and poor first impressions. Their skills in social interaction also allow them to serve as a broker in difficult situations. Kilduff takes the view that leaders have to be good at managing under difficult circumstances, and a high self-monitor is likelier to succeed in such a case. “This flexibility, the high self-monitoring flexibility, is key to leader emergence; to have different people trust him or her but not each other, and to be able to manage those relationships – that’s one key to how their leadership emerges in organisations,” he said.

Adapting to dynamic environments takes effort, even for gifted behavioural shape-shifters. Kilduff observed, “If you are a low self-monitor, you don’t actually have to do much; you’re just yourself, you can let it all hang out and you’re in a comfortable space to be in, which is why a lot of people enjoy being low self-monitors. If you’re a high self-monitor, you can’t just be yourself, you worry about the impression that other people are forming (about you), how you present yourself and what side to exhibit and what to repress. It’s a much more stressful role-enactment experience. There is some evidence that high self-monitors are more stressed out and experience internal role conflict.” Other studies show that high self-monitors are overworked, vulnerable to external problems and tend to suffer from obesity.

Despite their efforts, high self-monitors have also been accused of being inauthentic, due to their ever-changing manner. Kilduff debunked this, likening high self-monitors to actors. “Have you ever been to the theatre or to the movies, and as you watch the actors portray emotions, they seem so very real that it brings tears to your eyes, it deeply moves you - yet, you realise it is completely staged, simulated - fake,” he said. High self-monitors make good actors because of their highly adaptive chameleon-like nature. They can adjust their style, behaviour and manner to suit the social climate. Compare that with a low self-monitor who has little talent for putting on a convincing demonstration of emotions. Unlike high self-monitors, low self-monitors do not make good actors - they may sincerely feel an emotion but they may not be very good at displaying it for public consumption. Could that not make low self-monitors seem inauthentic as well?

The Enigmatic High Self-monitor

Not much is known about the inner-workings of high self-monitoring individuals. Traditional personality-type indicators allow us to understand a person’s behavioural traits. In psychology, the big five temperaments are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Kilduff discussed research suggesting that these indicators only do a good job at predicting the personality-types of low self-monitors. “They don’t do a good job of predicting high self-monitors’ behaviours because high self-monitors let the environment interfere with their personality. If the social situation calls for them to be extroverted when they are actually introverted, they will actually become more extroverted. Their behaviour is consistent with environmental pressures,” he added.

The differentiating factors that distinguish the leadership of high self-monitors are that these people tend to be perceptive in recognising problems quickly, resolving them, and generous with providing help and advice. They are also good with brokering relationships across social divides. As Kilduff puts it, high self-monitors “take an active stance when it comes to talking, they take the initiative, they provide help and they are happy to give it, without the obligation of having to return the favour.” Thus, for these reasons, people trust them and gravitate towards them - at least informally.