Children who experience persistent poverty often cannot exert control over their circumstances - and they are frequently victims of negative environments than are children from affluent environments.Ĭhildren from lower socioeconomic backgrounds frequently witness their parents exposed to the harsh realities of poverty. Poverty also has a significant effect on children’s sense of personal mastery, or their belief they can exert control over their environment. Hiring managers routinely select those from more recognized, successful schools to fill leadership roles, leaving those who grew up in poverty at a distinct disadvantage. But even more importantly, perceived intelligence is an even stronger predictor of leadership emergence. First, general intelligence is one of the strongest links to leadership emergence, and growing up in poverty significantly affects children’s academic development. The effects of poverty on children’s schooling is a direct hit to their leadership emergence for several reasons, the researchers note. Considering that low income is also a significant predictor of children leaving home earlier or becoming parents at a younger age, poorer students also face a higher chance of dropping out of school early and missing valuable years of education. Teachers tend to perceive children from less affluent families more negatively, seeing them as less socially skilled than their peers and holding them to lower academic expectations.īetween teachers’ bias, inferior school quality, and a lack of opportunities, it should come as no surprise that persistent exposure to poverty ultimately affects children’s cognitive, behavioural, and emotional development. Teachers tend to perceive children from less affluent families more negatively, holding them to lower academic expectationsĮven when children from low socioeconomic backgrounds end up in better schools, they’re often treated differently than students from more affluent families. High-quality schools also tend to have more appropriate role models filling staff roles, more positive peer relationships, and fewer discipline issues, which means students of different socioeconomic backgrounds are receiving profoundly different socializing experiences.

Teacher quality is lower than it is in schools located in richer neighbourhoods, and both teacher absenteeism and turnover are higher. Schools in lower socioeconomic areas are often forced to work with inadequate resources and typically offer fewer opportunities - such as team sports or extracurricular activities - for youth to sharpen their social and leadership skills. There are several reasons for that correlation. Unfortunately, in Canada, schools in high-income neighbourhoods have become increasingly correlated with higher test scores, while students in lower socioeconomic neighbourhoods fall behind. One of the most significant ways in which poverty affects leadership emergence is through its effect on children’s schooling, Barling and Weatherhead say. What they discovered is that poverty significantly affects a person’s chance of snagging leadership roles in the future - but it does so rather sneakily, targeting a few other factors that contribute to how leadership emerges. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Finally, the researchers noted which participants had ended up in leadership roles by 1998. They then analyzed the participants’ sense of personal mastery - their belief that they could overcome failures and control their own lives - as of 1992. Barling and Weatherhead first noted the participants’ poverty status, gender, and the quality of their schooling as of 1979, when the participants were children. But what if not everyone is kicking off the race at the same starting line?Ī recent study by Smith School of Business researchers Julian Barling and Julie Weatherhead revealed one important - and often ignored - predictor of leadership emergence that falls squarely outside of an individual’s realm of control: whether or not people grow up in poverty.īarling, professor of organizational behaviour and Borden Chair of Leadership, and Weatherhead, a graduate student, analyzed data collected from 9,964 American study participants who self-reported their socioeconomic status, labour force participation, and childhood experiences on an annual basis over the course of 33 years. In the race to join the ranks of leaders, you have no shortage of advice on the necessary skills to develop: effective communications, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, a growth mindset.

Growing up poor makes you stronger