Forthcoming master’s thesis

Every society needs leaders. The better they are, the greater the general well-being of society and the country. When planning my master’s thesis I took as my starting points the GLOBE study Culture, Leadership, and Organizations (House, 2004), the study 11 Essential Traits of Great Managers (Culture Amp, n.d.), McClelland’s theory of achievement motivation (1978), ancient views of the principles of successful government (Professor Zore’s lectures, autumn 2023; Marcus Aurelius, 2002), the concepts of happiness (Wright, 2004), resilience (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003), vitality (Cameron, Dutton and Quinn, 2003), enthusiasm, theories of power (Voyer and McIntosh, 2013; Martí et al., 2009), charisma (House, 2004) and the pros and cons of narcissism in leaders (Maccoby, 2017). For the concepts I am researching, I have defined success, power, social and emotional intelligence (Butler and Chinowsky, 2006; Kerr et al., 2006, Kumar and Vivek, 2014), intuition (Hallo and Nguyen, 2021), the origins of motivation (Vidic and Burton, 2011; Barbuto, 2005), time and energy management, charisma, vision, values, attitude to mistakes (Gruden, 2024), the victims of the 1% at the top, the importance of ethical leadership, the fleeting nature of power, position and status and the fear of losing these, the dangers of becoming a victim of one’s own ego and the illusion of ruling the world or overestimating oneself, networking, the isolation of leaders (Mann, 1959), the psychological pressures of life at the top, self-confidence, authenticity (Avolio and Gardner, 2005), self-care and mindfulness and emotional regulation in business and life (Kumar et al., 2014).

I am preparing my thesis under the supervision of Dr Boštjan Bajec and the co-supervision of Sašo Dimitrievski. Its title is The psychological principles of exceptional success in Slovenian business and politics. My aims are to identify and research the key elements of the psyche of “winners” – people who tend to achieve their goals and plans in this world – and to present, through qualitative analysis, in-depth insights into the psyche of successful individuals in the business and political environment in Slovenia while identifying shared traits and differences among individuals, within groups and among groups. I would like to extend my particular gratitude for their support and collaboration in this research to Blaž Brodnjak, Aleksander Mervar, Tibor Šimonka, Dušan Mes, Jože Mermal, Ivan Simič, Rok Snežič, Janez Škrabec, Zoran Janković, Gregor Golobič, Milan Kučan, Saša Arsenovič, Alenka Bratušek, Katarina Kresal, Stojan Petrič, Iztok Seljak and other Slovenian entrepreneurs, politicians and CEOs who have preferred to remain anonymous. I was interested above all in how members of Slovenia’s business and political class understand the concepts mentioned above, what has made a significant contribution to their success, and in the absence of which psychological factors would it have been impossible, in their subjective judgment, to achieve success. I wished to identify in three groups of interviewees – politicians, CEOs and business owners – the heterogeneous and universal characteristics that, in their opinion, determined (or predetermined) their breakthrough in the Slovenian business and political environment and their ability to remain at the top.

References

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Barbuto, J. E. (2005). Motivation and Transactional, Charismatic, and Transformational Leadership: A Test of Antecedents. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 11 (4), 26–40.

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Gruden, L. (2024). The Bitter Path Towards 1%. Interno gradivo Pristop Group – še v recenziji.

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