The Avengers Leadership

Which person would be leader that you would follow, The person with the high IQ or the person with an encouraging attitude? Well, in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s main team, The Avengers, either choice would be an acceptable answer. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers (or Iron Man and Captain America if you prefer) have each proven themselves over the course of the Avengers films as very capable leaders.

That being said, which of the two was the more successful as a leader? Well, as it turns out, one way to determine the better leader comes from analyzing their emotional intelligence. There are several, different components in emotional intelligence, including regulation, awareness, social skills, motivation, and empathy (Porter, 2003, p.229). Those are the skills that we will be taking a look at today.

Let’s begin with self-regulation since that seems pretty obvious, at least to me. In the film, Captain America: Civil War, we know that Captain America’s arguments against the Sokovia Accords do make perfect sense since they would be giving up their control to the United Nations. While I do side with Cap in this case, Tony’s readiness to create a way to manage their team in the future does show that he is willing to create specific rules to put limits on both himself and his fellow teammates.

Motivation is another easy point to give. Since his debut in Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers has been able to inspire others with relative ease. His determination to continue to fight when he doesn’t have to but knows it’s the right thing to do shows that he is a symbol of justice that others admire. During the battle of New York in The Avengers, Steve takes charge right away telling his teammates the best ways each of them can contribute in the fight and they all follow with question. As it turns out that when a leader is charismatic their leadership skills are more communicative. A team’s commitment and satisfaction with its leader are linked to the communication style of the leader (Vries, 2009). Cap is definitely a charismatic motivator for the Avengers.

Next let’s talk about social skills as this one is a bit trickier. In the first film, Iron Man, Tony Stark does not hold his tongue and he communicates with allies like Rhodey very easily. With this in mind one might think that Tony has greater social skills than Steve, and this would be correct… at first. Steve is a bit shy in his first movie and a little awkward when the Avengers Assemble for the first time (but you probably would be too if you suddenly woke up 70 years into the future). However, by his next solo outing Steve seems to much better at communicating and leading, even with people he just met like Sam.

As for empathy, one would probably think of Captain America when comparing the two in this aspect yet I would actually say that Iron Man is the more empathetic character. Empathy is of course the abilities to understand and experience another’s feelings, which tends to make the empathetic listener someone who helps people feel reassured (Kellet, 2002). Avengers: Age of Ultron has the biggest example of Tony’s empathetic nature. Tony feels so distraught over the death of a young man with a promising future after meeting with his mother that, although he never met him, he attempts to make radical changes to how he runs the team. In my eyes, Steve is less of an empathetic leader and more of a sympathetic leader.

Self-awareness can be another tricky one to give to one avenger over the other. It’s no secret that Tony has a tendency to screw up. An excellent example comes from, again, Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Tony convinces Banner to help him create a peace keeping program only for Ultron to possibly be one of the most destructive foes the Avengers have faced. Yet while Tony doesn’t always see the repercussions for his actions, he does know what he wants and understands the best way to go achieve his goal. Steve on the other hand, always thinks his plans through when he needs to reach his goal. He can also quickly adapt to changes to assure he completes his mission. For this reason, Steve Rogers is definitely a much more self-aware leader.

In conclusion, Captain America takes the cake as the better leader of the two. Don’t get me wrong, Iron Man is a clearly a great member of the team and displays amazing leadership skills but compared to Cap, he just falls short.

Citations

Kellett, J. B., Humphrey, R. H., & Sleeth, R. G. (2002). Empathy and complex task performance: Two routes to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly,13(5), 523-544. doi:10.1016/s1048-9843(02)00142-x

Porter, L. W., Angle, H. L., & Allen, R. W. (2003). Organizational influence processes. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Vries, R. E., Bakker-Pieper, A., & Oostenveld, W. (2009). Leadership = Communication? The Relations of Leaders’ Communication Styles with Leadership Styles, Knowledge Sharing and Leadership Outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology,25(3), 367-380. doi:10.1007/s10869-009-9140-2

“Avengers 4 Concept Art LEAKED!!!” by AntMan3001, Flickr.
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“Avengers Logo” by BrickinNick, Flickr.
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