Dr. John Antonakis - Back to Basics

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John Antonakis believes that the key to moving forward is getting back to basics: "We need to go back to basics, do some clean experiments, use clean behavioral measures, and then we can build the scaffolding on firm concrete and not on Jell-O that we have right now." We had a great conversation about this and other areas of our field. I hope you enjoy it.

About Dr. John Antonakis

John Antonakis is a Full Professor of Organizational Behavior at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne. His research focuses on predictors and outcomes of leadership, leadership development, psychometrics, and research methods.

He has published articles in many top journals such as Science, Psychological Science, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Operations Management, and Harvard Business Review. He has also published three books and 20 book chapters and has presented his research at dozens of conferences. He has received about 2.38 million Swiss Francs in funding for his research.

John is Editor in Chief of The Leadership Quarterly, and is on the editorial boards of many other top journals in management and applied psychology. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), as well as an elected member of the Society of Organizational Behaviour (SOB).

Learn More About John's Work:

• John at Google Scholar
• John's Textbook - The Nature of Leadership
• John's TED Talk

Quotes From This Episode:

• On Charismatic Leadership Theory - "All the literature was written in a very abstract way... there are a lot of theoretical accounts of charismatic leaders, but it wasn’t properly defined. It was defined as if it was undefinable."
• "We said that charisma is basically symbolic, emotional, and value-laden...so values meaning that you speak about your morals, your values, what you’re defending. Symbolic means that you can speak in pictures, and emotion is that you can signal your emotions - your confidence, your emotional state, with your body, what you say, and on your face... These things are easy to observe, they’re easy to code objectively and easy to manipulate."
• "The process of becoming a doctor requires that one studies medicine and then gets certified to practice and uses interventions that have been tested. This doesn’t happen in leadership. People become leaders for all sorts of reasons."
• "We need to focus more on making the world of leaders selection more professional."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Stoner by John Williams
• AlphaGo Documentary

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals with a keen interest in the study, practice, and teaching of leadership. Today, ILA is the largest worldwide community committed to leadership scholarship, development, and practice. 

Connect with Your Host, Scott Allen

• Scott's other Podcast - The Captovation Podcast