The leader-second dyad : how complementarity and status impact collective performance

Although leadership is one of the most well-studied topics in management, the role of the second-in-command (second) on teams and in organizations has been left largely unexplored. The handful of prior investigations into seconds have only examined the impact of their presence or absence in organizations. The investigation conducted here is among the first to explore how the characteristics of leader-second dyads influence the performance of the units they lead. A review of the limited literature on seconds, as well as a related literature on pooled leadership, suggests that the degree of similarity or difference between leaders and seconds can influence the dyad’s effectiveness. However, prior research provides little insight into the types of differences that are important or the nature of the relationship between particular leader-second differences and effectiveness. Both for this reason, and because leader-second dyads are a largely unexplored phenomenon, I conducted a series of interviews with leaders and seconds. The results of this qualitative investigation focus attention on the constructs of personality, expertise, and status distance. To confirm and elaborate on these findings I conducted an archival study of leaders and seconds at the top of large firms, where they are typically the CEO and COO of the organization. I find that leader-second differences in extraversion and openness improve collective performance, however, differences in agreeableness harm it. I also find that status distance moderates these effects such that lower distance makes the effects of personality differences more positive. The hypothesized effects of differences in expertise were not supported. These results suggest that characteristics of leader-second dyads, such as personality differences and status distance, have an impact on performance of the people these dyad lead.