Leadership-Interview-Transkript - Sozialpsychologie - Goethe ...

motivation and other kinds of processes. So it´s a very simple world in which there is little
leadership. Anthropologistsyou know they study this and they say or they have documented in
the very simplest of societies, foraging societies in which people were gathering and they
lived in relatively small groups. In the simplest of those there is virtually no hierarchy. And so
there is informal leadership, you could grow up and be a sort of responsible person and your
adult life might be regarded as a wise woman or a wise man. But there is no chief, you know
as when tribes got more complex. Evidently they needed leadership to coordinate the various
activities and so they got to the level of chiefs. And then you should get more complex
societies, there is many forms of leadership. So, I think it goes with social complexity, but
even a small amount of complexity creates a need for leadership.
Rolf van Dick: So, if we need leaders, what would you define as good leadership in these
more or less complex worlds, societies, organizations? What differentiatesgood from not so
good leaders?
Alice Eagly: Right, well. If you look at the end product in the sense of that good leaders get
the job done. So if it´s an organization, the organization functions well in the daily bases plus
it has good outcome. Say if you are manufacturing automobiles, you´re manufacturing nice
automobiles that people buy. Otherwise you fail, the organization will fail. Good leadership
would have to create that positive outcome. For university successfully educate lots of
students who go on very successfully in life. Then it has to work thought these processes
whereby leaders understand how to design and coordinate these units and structures, how to
motivate people, how to coordinate. So, leadership is certain multi-process-multi-functional in
an organization. Leaders often inspire, they are good role models, they are able to motivate
and mentor and to create conditions into which people in their organizations thrive in various
ways, cause if they thrive they will be better workers, they will be better colleagues. So it is a
complex task depending on the level of leadership as a small team versus a large organization.
Rolf van Dick: But creating the right situation, the right structures, motivating people,
inspiring people, if you think that´s the essence of good leadership…Do you think everyone
can become a good leader? Is it trainable, learnable?
Alice Eagly: I think it´s nature and nurture. You know, maybe that intrinsically some people
are going to be…have more of the sort of temperamental qualities. They are more extrovert
and maybe sort of they have agentic qualities. I think there is…everybody doesn't start out on
the same ground, but then there is a lot of success in formally and informally training people.
Of cause people in modern organizations may have leadership training going on that´s rather
formal but I think in the larger world people often learn to by example. You know there were
in an organization and they saw somebody doing it in a way that seems to work and then they
sort of model themselves after that person. And so if you have none of that, if you haven't had
formal training or you haven´t sort of observed leadership worth the pain in ways that was
positive than it´s maybe sort of hard even if you are sufficiently sort of temperamentally
suited. So I think it´s nature and nurture and then it´s pretty trainable. But then you can´t
make anyone into a star.
Rolf van Dick: So, we talked about role models that we need. Who has inspired you? Who
have you encountered that was a model for you in terms of good leadership?
Alice Eagly: Well, I´m a professor, so the only real leadership role I ´ve held, a formal role
was as the head of a department of psychology, you know the whole department of
psychology. So it´s managerial not high in the structure of university but nonetheless