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Richard Arvey
Human Resources and Industrial Relations
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Identical twins Dan and
Dean Oberpriller, 55-year-old Minneapolis-based entrepreneurs, have
always held leadership positions and had strong leadership role
models. They both graduated with majors in journalism at the University
of Minnesota and spent several years in the upper ranks of Minnesota's
premier advertising agencies before striking out on their own.
Were the Oberprillers born as potential leaders or did their environments
shape their future roles as leaders? "The nature versus
nurture question has been around for centuries," said Richard
Arvey, a Carlson School professor of human resources and industrial
relations and an adjunct faculty member of the Unversity's psychology
department. Arvey studied pairs of twins and the leadership roles
they've held over the years to get the answer: 30 percent of leadership
is based on genetics, while 70 percent is dependent on environmental
factors.
What does this mean? "People are not as malleable as we think,"
said Arvey. "While environmental influences-70 percent-determine
many of our leadership behaviors and the roles we obtain, our genes
still exert a sizable influence over whether we will become leaders."
Therefore, leadership is both inherited and acquired. "And
although 30 percent may not seem like a high number, statistically
it is strong," Arvey said. "Leaders aren't just made."
The availability of the Minnesota Twin Registry-a University of
Minnesota database tracking the 10,000 surviving pairs of twins
born in Minnesota between 1936 and 1981 for research purposes-enabled
Arvey to examine the issue in a scientific way. By studying pairs
of twins that were reared apart, researchers have proven that similarities
in terms of personality, interests, and attitudes are due to genes
rather than environmental influences. The environments make them
different, while their genes make them similar.
Arvey and his colleagues drew on the registry and its findings to
survey 325 pairs of identical and fraternal male twins who were
born between 1961 and 1964 and raised together. "Identical
twins share 100 percent of their genes, and fraternal twins share
about 50 percent. This allowed us to look at twins who were raised
together and tease apart the contributions of genetics versus environmental
factors in leadership," Arvey said. Their findings are scheduled
for publication in the January 2006 journal issue of Leadership
Quarterly. Co-authors are Maria Rotundo, University of Toronto;
and Wendy Johnson, Matt McGue, and Zhe Zhang, University of Minnesota
graduate students.
To tease apart these contributions, participants were asked a series
of questions centered on the desire to influence others, to be the
center of attention, to persist when others give up, and to be with
people. All are questions found to have a genetic component. "If
you answer these questions positively, you are probably genetically
wired for leadership," said Arvey. Next, he took an inventory
of the leadership roles they had held throughout their lives, including
titles such as supervisor, director, vice president, or president. "A
great deal of personality is genetic based," explained Arvey.
"If your personality is such that you aspire to and have held
these positions, then these roles also suggest a genetic link. This
study does not identify a specific gene, but looks at whether an
individual has gravitated to these positions in the past."
This was a first step in looking at genetics in the workplace, Arvey
said, and there's still much to be done. If 70 percent of leadership
is environmentally based, what are the various environmental influences
that make a leader? How do genetics and the environment interact
in creating a leader? What if gender is factored in? "These
are all questions waiting to be answered," Arvey said. "It
also doesn't mean that if you are a leader, you'll be a good one."
The study looked at who became leaders and why, not at leadership
effectiveness.
The Oberprillers were not a part of the study, but agree that genetics
is a key factor in their desire to lead. "Our father owned
a bakery, and we assisted him at an early age," Dan said. "Although
he was an entrepreneur, he actually discouraged us from going into
the bakery business. So in this regard, I think our genetics played
a stronger role in our desire to lead our own businesses. But we
can't factor out all the other people along the way who encouraged
us and were an environmental influence." Their mother was very
active in the community and a leader in getting people to vote and
in arranging political caucuses.
Another interesting factor to point out is that Dan and Dean have
worked together on and off over the years and decided early on in
their lives that they would not compete. "We decided to share
the leadership tasks of whatever we undertook together, including
our own advertising company, DBK&O," said Dean. "We
had fiery exchanges, but worked out a division of labor. We could
trust each other."
Although both of them believe they were born to lead, they were
able to temper their leadership desires, in order to cooperate in
whatever environments they were in, Arvey said.
Reprinted with permission from the May-June 2005 edition of Insights@Carlson
School, a publication of the Carlson School of Management.
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