Explore leadership similarity and its impact on teams. Learn how similarity-attraction affects hiring, team composition, and organisational diversity.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 9th January 2026
Leadership similarity—the tendency for leaders to attract, hire, and promote people similar to themselves—shapes organisations more profoundly than most recognise. Research consistently demonstrates that we prefer those who share our backgrounds, values, communication styles, and perspectives. This similarity-attraction principle produces leadership teams that often look, think, and act alike—with significant implications for organisational performance, innovation, and culture. Understanding this tendency is the first step toward managing it constructively.
What makes leadership similarity particularly consequential is its self-reinforcing nature. Similar leaders select similar successors, who perpetuate similar patterns, creating organisational cultures that resist diversity of thought even whilst proclaiming its value. Breaking this cycle requires conscious intervention—not because similarity is inherently wrong, but because unchecked similarity limits perspective, blinds organisations to threats, and homogenises thinking in ways that ultimately undermine performance.
Social psychology has extensively documented our preference for those who resemble us.
The similarity-attraction effect describes our tendency to like, trust, and prefer people who are similar to ourselves—in demographics, values, experiences, communication styles, and personality. This preference operates largely unconsciously, influencing everything from friendship formation to hiring decisions to leadership selection.
Similarity dimensions:
| Dimension | Examples | Leadership Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Demographic | Age, gender, ethnicity, background | Homogeneous leadership teams |
| Values | Work ethic, priorities, beliefs | Shared culture, potential blind spots |
| Communication | Style, pace, directness | Easier interaction, potential exclusion |
| Cognitive | Thinking patterns, problem-solving | Similar approaches, reduced innovation |
| Experiential | Education, career path, industries | Shared references, narrow perspective |
"We trust those who are similar to us because they are predictable—we think we understand how they'll behave."
Our preference for similar others likely evolved because similarity signalled reliability and reduced uncertainty. People like us are easier to understand, more predictable, and less likely to challenge our worldview. These benefits came at evolutionary advantage but create organisational costs when unchecked.
Attraction mechanisms:
The similarity-attraction principle profoundly influences who gets selected for leadership roles.
Hiring managers consistently demonstrate preference for candidates who resemble themselves—in background, education, personality, and style. This preference often operates unconsciously, rationalised as "cultural fit" or "chemistry" when it may actually represent similarity bias affecting judgement.
Hiring bias patterns:
| Factor | Similarity Bias Effect |
|---|---|
| Resume screening | Favour similar education, employers |
| Interviews | Rate similar candidates higher |
| Reference checks | Trust references from similar sources |
| "Cultural fit" | Often means "similar to us" |
| Final selection | Prefer comfortable over challenging |
Research by Lauren Rivera found that elite professional services firms frequently hired based on shared leisure interests, educational backgrounds, and social styles—factors unrelated to job performance but strongly related to similarity to existing partners. Similar studies in various industries confirm this pattern.
Research findings:
Similarity among leaders does provide genuine advantages that explain its persistence.
Similar leadership teams benefit from easier communication, faster decision-making, less conflict, higher initial trust, and shared assumptions that reduce coordination costs. These benefits are real—they explain why organisations naturally drift toward homogeneity even without conscious intent.
Similarity benefits:
| Benefit | Mechanism | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Communication ease | Shared references, styles | May exclude those who differ |
| Faster decisions | Less debate needed | May miss important considerations |
| Lower conflict | Fewer value clashes | May avoid necessary disagreement |
| Higher trust | Assumed shared interests | May be misplaced trust |
| Coordination efficiency | Shared assumptions | May create blind spots |
Similarity provides greatest value in stable environments requiring rapid, coordinated action—where shared understanding matters more than diverse perspectives. Military units, emergency response teams, and organisations in stable industries benefit more from cohesion than diversity of thought.
High-similarity contexts:
Unchecked similarity creates significant organisational vulnerabilities.
Excessive leadership similarity produces groupthink, innovation deficits, blind spots to threats and opportunities, exclusion of talent, and cultures that repel diversity. These costs often exceed the benefits of cohesion, particularly in complex, changing environments requiring adaptive leadership.
Similarity costs:
| Cost | Manifestation | Organisational Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Groupthink | Suppressed dissent, conformity pressure | Poor decisions, missed risks |
| Innovation deficit | Similar solutions, limited creativity | Competitive vulnerability |
| Blind spots | Shared assumptions unquestioned | Threats unrecognised |
| Talent exclusion | Different people screened out | Capability gaps |
| Cultural narrowness | Homogeneous norms | Engagement problems |
Groupthink occurs when desire for group harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. Similar leadership teams are particularly vulnerable because they share assumptions, value cohesion, and lack members willing or able to offer divergent perspectives. Irving Janis's classic analysis of policy failures—Bay of Pigs, Vietnam escalation—demonstrated how similar, cohesive groups make catastrophic decisions.
Groupthink indicators:
Effective organisations consciously manage similarity rather than eliminating or ignoring it.
| Strategy | Mechanism | Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| Structured hiring | Reduce discretion for bias | Standardised criteria, diverse panels |
| Diversity requirements | Counter natural drift | Targets, accountability |
| Devil's advocate | Force alternative views | Assign dissent roles |
| External perspectives | Import different thinking | Advisors, consultants, board members |
| Awareness training | Recognise own biases | Education, feedback |
Reducing similarity bias requires structural interventions, not just awareness. Blind resume review, diverse interview panels, standardised evaluation criteria, and explicit diversity requirements create systems that counter natural human tendencies toward homogeneity.
Intervention strategies:
The alternative to similarity-based teams is complementarity—deliberately assembling diverse perspectives.
Similarity-based teams assemble people who think alike, creating cohesion and efficiency. Complementarity-based teams assemble people with different but compatible strengths, creating diversity and adaptability. Both approaches have merits; the choice should match strategic needs.
Comparison:
| Similarity Approach | Complementarity Approach |
|---|---|
| Hire people like us | Hire people unlike us |
| Cohesion and speed | Diversity and creativity |
| Easier coordination | Richer perspectives |
| Risk of groupthink | Risk of conflict |
| Better for execution | Better for innovation |
Complementarity matters most in complex, changing environments requiring innovation, adaptation, and recognition of diverse stakeholder needs. Organisations facing disruption, entering new markets, or solving novel problems benefit from leadership teams that bring different perspectives rather than shared assumptions.
High-complementarity contexts:
Leadership similarity refers to the tendency for leaders and leadership teams to share common characteristics—demographics, values, thinking styles, backgrounds, and perspectives. This similarity often develops through hiring preferences that favour candidates resembling existing leaders, creating increasingly homogeneous teams over time.
Leaders hire similar people because the similarity-attraction effect makes us prefer those who share our characteristics—they feel more trustworthy, predictable, and easier to communicate with. This preference operates largely unconsciously, often rationalised as "cultural fit" when it actually represents similarity bias.
Leadership similarity benefits include easier communication, faster decision-making, reduced conflict, higher initial trust, and coordination efficiency. These advantages explain why organisations naturally drift toward homogeneity—similarity genuinely reduces friction in the short term.
Excessive similarity risks include groupthink (suppressed dissent leading to poor decisions), innovation deficits, blind spots to threats and opportunities, exclusion of diverse talent, and cultural narrowness that repels people who don't fit the dominant mould. These risks often outweigh similarity's benefits.
The similarity-attraction effect is the psychological phenomenon where we prefer, trust, and like people who are similar to ourselves. This preference influences friendship formation, hiring decisions, promotion choices, and leadership selection—often operating unconsciously whilst significantly shaping organisational composition.
Organisations reduce similarity bias through structured interventions: blind resume screening, diverse interview panels, standardised evaluation criteria, explicit diversity requirements, and accountability for outcomes. Awareness alone rarely changes behaviour; structural changes create lasting impact.
Similarity assembles people who think alike, creating cohesion and efficiency but risking groupthink. Complementarity assembles people with different but compatible strengths, creating diversity and adaptability but requiring more coordination. The optimal choice depends on strategic context—stability versus change, execution versus innovation.
Leadership similarity shapes organisations profoundly, creating teams that think alike through the natural human preference for those who resemble us. Understanding this tendency is essential because its effects compound over time—similar leaders select similar successors, perpetuating patterns that increasingly limit perspective and innovation.
Assess your own leadership team's composition. Do you share similar backgrounds, values, and thinking styles? Has your hiring favoured "cultural fit" in ways that actually mean similarity? Consider whether your team has the diversity of perspective needed for the challenges you face—or whether similarity has created blind spots you cannot see precisely because everyone shares them.
Implement structural interventions if similarity has become excessive. Blind screening, diverse panels, standardised criteria, and explicit diversity requirements counter natural human tendencies more effectively than awareness alone. The goal isn't eliminating similarity—some shared values and alignment matter—but consciously managing it rather than letting unconscious preference create homogeneity that ultimately undermines performance.