- March 05, 2026
- By Gregory Muraski
A surprisingly accessible skill—debate training—can meaningfully shape who emerges as a leader in U.S. organizations, according to a new study co-led by a researcher in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that individuals who receive structured debate training are more likely to advance into leadership roles, largely because the training strengthens a key leadership trait: assertiveness. It was led by Hui Liao, the Long Jiang Endowed Chair in Business, and Jackson Lu of the MIT Sloan School of Management, Michelle X. Zhao of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, and Lu Doris Zhang of the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The study won the 2025 Best Paper in Management Education and Development Award from the Academy of Management’s Management Education and Development Division.
In the first of two experiments, 471 employees at a Fortune 100 company were randomly assigned to receive nine weeks of debate training or no training. Eighteen months later, those who completed the training were significantly more likely to advance in leadership levels. Increased assertiveness statistically explained the effect.
A second experiment with 975 university participants reinforced the results. Individuals who received debate training were more likely to emerge as leaders in group tasks than those who received alternative training or none at all.
Liao emphasized that assertiveness is not the same as aggressiveness. “What we see in our research is that assertiveness is really about the ability to speak up, communicate with clarity and contribute with confidence—skills that matter more than ever in today’s attention-driven workplace.”
Importantly, the benefits of debate training were consistent across gender, ethnicity and birthplace, suggesting broad applicability, Liao and her coauthors wrote. But at the same time, they cautioned that organizations must not place the full burden of leadership advancement on individuals. Firms, they argue, should recognize and reward a wider range of communication and leadership styles.