Research Hit: Debating Skills Help in Climbing the Leadership Ladder
New research shows debating may be a critical skill for leadership
I suppose debating is a key communication skills in business in general
Yes, but it is rarely trained - but funnily enough many good schools in England when I grew up had debating clubs - for the sole purpose of refining debating skills. It was considered good back then as a key skill for precisely leadership roles whether in business or politics.
And what was this research?
This research out of MIT by Jackson Lu et al. conducted two separate experiments:
First 471 employees of a Fortune 100 company were randomly assigned to a debate training or no training group and followed up on 18 months later. They found that those in the debate training group were 12% more likely to have been promoted to a leadership role.
But couldn’t that just be through receiving training in general?
Yes, it could be, it could be that any developmental programmes will boost chances of moving up. And that is where the second experiment comes in. Here they took 975 university participants (on various programmes) and split them randomly into three groups. Debate training, non-debate training, and no training. They then conducted group activities and measured who came to be the group leader. Again there was a significant advantage to those in the debate training group
Why so?
The authors ascribe it to more assertiveness - or rather being able to get you point(s) across better. This is also notably different to aggressiveness. Debating skills allow you to get your point(s) across and also use multiple ways to do this from being convincing, using soft approaches, or stronger approaches. It probably also increases confidence in communication skills in general or speaking up at meetings.
So those old-fashioned school debating programmes were actually a good idea!
Seems so - can’t imagine them being still active now - a debating club sounds very boring in the modern world. But if you have career ambitions it could be a very good idea!
Jackson G. Lu, Michelle X. Zhao, Hui Liao, Lu Doris Zhang.
Breaking ceilings: Debate training promotes leadership emergence by increasing assertiveness.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2025
DOI: 10.1037/apl0001273
A much undervalued skill in business.