Trait Approach

Chapter 2

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 Overview
 Great Person Theories

 Historical Shifts in Trait Perspective

 What Traits Differentiate Leaders From

Nonleaders?

 How Does the Trait Approach Work?

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 Great Person Theories
Trait Approach: One of the first systematic
attempts to study leadership

 “Great Man” Theories (early 1900s)

 Focused on identifying innate
qualities and characteristics
possessed by great social, political,
and military leaders
Does this assume they cannot be
acquired?
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 Major Leadership Traits
Traits to be perceived by others as a leader:
 Intelligence—
 Verbal, perceptual, and reasoning capabilities.

 Self-Confidence—
 Certainty about one’s competencies and skills.

 Determination—
 Conscientious (i.e., initiative, persistence, drive).

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 Major Leadership Traits

Traits perceived by others as a leader: (2 more)

 Integrity—
 The quality of honesty and trustworthiness.

 Sociability—
 Leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social
relationships.
 Could an effective leader be an introvert?

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 Five-Factor Personality Model and Leadership
Meta-Analysis
(Judge et al, 2002) this will look familiar
RESULTS--a strong relationship between personality traits
and leadership
 Extraversion--
 Most important trait of effective leaders
 Conscientiousness--Second most important
 but highest r with overall job performance (Sacket & Walmsley,
2014)
 Openness--next most related
 Low Neuroticism
 Agreeableness--only weakly related to leadership

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 Strengths and Leadership
 Strengths
 ability to consistently demonstrate exceptional work.
(Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Rath, 2007)
 having certain talents and developing them by
additional practice.
 Leadership capability is enhanced when we
 discover our fully utilized strengths, underutilized
strengths, and weaknesses. (MacKie , 2016)
 In what ways can this happen?

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 Emotional Intelligence and Leadership
Definition Underlying Premise
Ability to perceive and:  people who are
– apply emotions to life’s more sensitive to
tasks their emotions and
– reason/understand their impact on
emotions others will be
– express emotions more effective
– use emotions to facilitate leaders
thinking
– manage emotions within
oneself and relationships
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 Different Ways to Measure EQ
 MSCEIT (2000): mental abilities
 to perceive, facilitate, understand, and manage
emotion
 Goleman (1998): personal and social
competencies
 self-awareness, confidence, self-regulation,
conscientiousness, and motivation
 Shankman and Allen (2015): awareness of
three aspects of leadership
 context, self, and others

 How much overlap with facets of IQ?

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 How Does the Trait Approach Work?
 Focus of trait approach
 Strengths
 Criticisms
 Application

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 Focus of Trait Approach
Personality
Leader
Assessments
 Focuses exclusively on  Organizations use personality
leader assessments to find the
 What traits leaders “right” people
 Assumption--will increase
exhibit
 Who has these traits organizational effectiveness
 Specify characteristics/traits
for specific positions
• Personality assessment
measures for “fit”
• Instruments: LTQ, Myers
Briggs DISC Strengh Finder

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 Strengths
 Intuitively appealing  Highlights leadership
 Perception component in the
leaders are different - - leadership process
they possess special  Deeper level
traits
 People “need” understanding of how
leader/personality
• to view leaders as
gifted related to leadership
• “implicit leadership process
theory”  Provides benchmarks
 Credibility due to  for what to look for in a
• a century of research leader
support

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 Criticisms
 Fails to delimit a  List of most important
definitive list of leadership traits is highly
leadership traits subjective
 Endless lists have  Much subjective experience
emerged and observations serve as
basis for identified leadership
 Doesn’t take into
traits
account situational  Research fails to look at
effects
 Leaders in one situation
traits in relationship to
may not be leaders in leadership outcomes
another situation  Not useful for training and
development
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 Application
 Provides direction as to which traits are
Leadership Traits
good to have
• Intelligence
 Through various questionnaires,
• Self-confidence
individuals can determine whether they
• Determination
have the select leadership traits and can
• Integrity
pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses
• Sociability
 Can be used by managers to assess where they stand
within their organization and what is needed to
strengthen their position
 If a valid instrument it used for 360 assessment!!!
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