Abstract
The present study investigates whether the leadership effectiveness of CEOs from major U.S. companies changes in times of the Financial Crisis. The focus lays on important leadership qualities and their corresponding linguistic markers. These have been previously identified to be either, a crucial part of effective leadership or leadership in general. Leadership qualities are measured through the quantitative content analysis software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, 2015. The written language use of 104 CEOs within 594 letters to shareholders are investigated on possible changes of (a) Extroversion (as measured through first-person plural words), (b) Power Motive, (c) risk taking, and (d) Narcissism (as measured through first-person singular words). The results revealed significant changes of extroversion (first-person plural words) and risk-taking scores. The findings show that the Financial Crisis provoked substantial changes in linguistic indicators of leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, in times of crises, some favorable leadership qualities seem to become highlighted, whereas other important aspects dramatically decrease.
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