Do Some Leaders “Look” More Competent Than Others? (A study says yes…)

By Mike Hoban

Do some leaders have faces which make them seem more competent? Apparently the answer is yes, at least according to the results of a recent study sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. But don’t recalibrate your senior leader recruitment processes quite yet.

The study, called “A Corporate Beauty Contest” (seriously) looked at several aspects of how a leader’s looks can influence others’ perceptions of their competence or likeability. The researchers found that the faces of CEOs were judged to appear more competent but less likeable then those of non-CEOs (subjects did not know who was who in the faces they observed). And CEOs with “baby faced” features (the researchers’ phrase) were seen as less competent but were seen as being more likeable than their colleagues who had more “mature” facial traits.

Interesting, but “So what?” you might ask. As it turns out, those CEOs judged to be more competent because of their facial features in fact had an average total compensation 7.5% higher than those who looked less competent. Yet, the study found no correlation between the looks-driven perceived competence of the CEOs and the performance of the firms they headed. They just looked more competent. A rather fascinating distribution of the mien…

So it appears there might be such a thing as having facial gravitas. And there is some historical evidence that one’s looks can indeed influence how leader-like they are regarded by others. In the first televised presidential debate for the 1960 election, John Kennedy, with his striking and tanned visage conveyed an energetic world leader look, while opponent Richard Nixon, with his heavy evening shadow and sometimes brooding appearance exuded an image that many viewers found to be far less presidential. Perhaps less “competent?”

The study of physical characteristics to explain or even to predict human behavior goes way back. Phrenology, which posited that personality can be understood as a result of the shape of the skull, was embraced by many in the scientific and medical communities in the 19th century and was used by some advocates for personnel selection decisions. So back then, getting a good job was apparently just a matter of using your head. (Pause here for effect)

And while phrenology was ultimately relegated to the pseudo-science dust bin, last year University of Cambridge researchers suggested a correlation between the success of financial traders and the proportion of length between their ring and index fingers. It looks like the exploration of physical characteristics to explain human behavior will continue to be of interest to researchers and to the general public alike.

What’s the HR lesson here? Perhaps that we need to be careful in making decisions about people based on some unspoken, amorphous and perhaps biased image of what success looks like. But, c’mon, everyone learned that in Personnel 101. Yet, the study found that a certain set of facial traits apparently have helped CEOs cultivate fatter wallets, so there is some sort of halo effect occurring even in high-level personnel decisions. Other research results in the 1990s also found a correlation between employees’ attractiveness and their pay.

And of course, Kennedy went on to win the presidency, aided in part no doubt by his countenance. But was he really more “competent” than Nixon even though he might have looked that way to voters? I’ll let the historians debate that, but the answer is probably no.

But there’s also some caution that needs to be exercised in reading too much into this limited study which used college students (of course) as subjects and which had all male pictures in the CEO/non-CEO image gallery. And with this next new generation of employees in the workforce, it is likely that a more important factor in career success will be Facebook rather than face look.

Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).    

Comments

[Rafael Quinones]

Very scary!!! However, this proves equal in other areas and not just the performance of senior leadership. Our perceptions guide our expectations. A friend of mine was the Housing Director at a major University. His work pet peeve was how much students complained about dirty bathrooms. He kept adding cleaning maintenance to the schedule, but no reduction of complains were ever noticed. He finally realized that the perception of everyone is that clean bathrooms smell good. He reduced the number of scheduled cleaning maintenance to the original number and had new automatic air fresheners installed in all bathrooms (to meet student’s expectations.) The number of complains were reduced to almost none.

[Wally Graham]

Mike
If this study has any scientific significance, a guy with your executive good looks and phrenological lump dispersement is destined to head Microsoft, Citicorp, or become governor of Illinois. Or you might land the BP CEO job when that opening occurs in the next few months.