92. People Are Swayed by a Dominant Personality

Anyone who has made a decision in a group or facilitated a focus group has had the experience of seeing and hearing a dominant member of the group monopolize the conversation and the decision. Just because decisions are made in a group setting doesn’t mean that the entire group really made the decision. Many people give up in the presence of one or more dominant group members and may not speak up at all.

Why Does The Leader Become the Leader?

Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff (2009) researched group decision-making. They formed groups of four students each and had them solve math problems from the GMAT (a standardized test for admission to graduate business school programs). Using standardized math problems allowed the researchers to evaluate how well the group solved the problems they were given. It also allowed them to compare each member’s competence by looking at their previous SAT math scores from their undergraduate admission to college.

During the problem-solving session the researchers videotaped the group conversations and reviewed them later to decide who was the leader of each group. They had multiple sets of observers view the videos to see if there was consensus about who the leaders were. They also asked the people in the groups to identify the leader of their group. Everyone agreed on who the leader was in each group.

Anderson and Kilduff were interested in why the leaders became the leaders. Before the groups started, everyone filled out a questionnaire to measure their level of dominance. As you might imagine, the leaders all scored high on the dominance measure. But that still doesn’t suggest how they became leaders. Did they have the best math SAT scores? (No.) Did they bully everyone else into letting them be the leader? (No.)

The answer surprised the researchers: The leaders spoke first. For 94 percent of the problems, the group’s final answer was the first answer that was proposed, and the people with the dominant personalities always spoke first.

What If You aren’t the Dominant Personality?

I learned the hard way what happens when you are the presenter but there is someone even more dominant than you in the room.

I was supposed to lead a 2-hour presentation for a small team of consultants. I arrived early, with my presentation all prepared. One of the first activities I had planned was for each person there to briefly share recent projects they had completed. I had asked them to come prepared with a short presentation.

I turned to the person on my left, a powerful vice president at the company, and asked if he would like to start. He attached the projector cord and proceeded to show pictures of a few of the other people in the room that he had taken off the Web, complete with goofy captions that he had written. After that he gave an hour’s presentation on the work he had been doing, leaving very little time for the rest of the people to present, much less for the rest of my planned presentation.

It’s not always easy to stay in charge of the presentation. Here are some of the lessons I learned from that experience, which you might be able to learn from too:

• Never hand over the control of the presentation to someone else unless you don’t intend to get it back. If you allow other people to present, make sure you are through with your presentation before you hand over the controls.

• If other people are supposed to present, ask them to send you their slides, comments, or outline ahead of time. Discuss with them how long you have allotted for them to speak and get their agreement that that amount of time will work for them.

• If you know the people who will be attending the presentation, don’t start with the most dominant person. Remember that the person who talks first has a lot of power.

• The higher in the organization people are, the shorter their attention spans. Do not plan long sessions where you expect high-level dominant people to sit quietly.

• It doesn’t matter if you are not naturally a dominant personality, or if there is someone in the room more dominant than you. If you are the presenter, you need to speak up first so that you can take a leadership role.