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Chapter 10 Leading People and Organizations
Leaders give their followers direction. Leaders are key players in determining the success or failure of coordinated tasks and organizational initiatives.
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What’s in It for Me?
Reading this chapter will help you do the following:
- Define what leadership is and identify traits of effective leaders.
- Describe behaviors that effective leaders demonstrate.
- Specify the contexts in which various leadership styles are effective.
- Explain the concepts of transformational, transactional, charismatic, servant, and authentic leadership.
- Develop your own leadership skills.
Figure 10.2 The P-O-L-C Framework
Perhaps this is obvious, but leadership is the first of five facets constituting a manager’s leading function in the P-O-L-C framework. LeadershipThe act of influencing others toward a goal. may be defined as the act of influencing others to work toward a goal. Leaders exist at all levels of an organization. Some leaders hold a position of authority and may use the power that comes from their position, as well as their personal power, to influence others; they are called formal leadersThose who hold a position of authority and may utilize the power that comes from their position, as well as their personal power to influence others.. In contrast, informal leadersThose without a formal position of authority within the organization but demonstrate leadership by influencing those around them through personal forms of power. are without a formal position of authority within the organization but demonstrate leadership by influencing others through personal forms of power. One caveat is important here: Leaders do not rely on the use of force to influence people. Instead, people willingly adopt the leader’s goal as their own goal. If a person is relying on force and punishment, the person is a dictator, not a leader.
What makes leaders effective? What distinguishes people who are perceived as leaders from those who are not perceived as leaders? More importantly, how do we train future leaders and improve their leadership ability? These are important questions that have attracted scholarly attention in the past several decades. In this chapter, we will review the history of leadership studies and summarize the major findings relating to these important questions. Around the world, we view leaders as at least partly responsible for their team’s or company’s success and failure. Company chief executive officers (CEOs) are paid millions of dollars in salaries and stock options with the assumption that they hold their company’s future in their hands. In politics, education, sports, and profit and nonprofit sectors, influence of leaders over the behaviors of individuals and organizations is rarely questioned. When people and organizations fail, managers and CEOs are often viewed as responsible. Some people criticize the assumption that leadership always matters and call this belief “the romance of leadership.” However, research evidence pointing to the importance of leaders for organizational success is accumulating.Hogan, R., Curphy, G. J., & Hogan, J. (1994). What we know about leadership: Effectiveness and personality. American Psychologist, 49, 493–504.
10.1 Who Is a Leader? Trait Approaches to Leadership
Learning Objectives
- Learn the position of trait approaches in the history of leadership studies.
- Explain the traits that are associated with leadership.
- Discuss the limitations of trait approaches to leadership.
The earliest approach to the study of leadership sought to identify a set of traits that distinguished leaders from nonleaders. What were the personality characteristics and physical and psychological attributes of people who are viewed as leaders? Because of the problems in measurement of personality traits at the time, different studies used different measures. By 1940, researchers concluded that the search for leadership-defining traits was futile. In recent years, though, after advances in personality literature such as the development of the Big Five personality framework, researchers have had more success in identifying traits that predict leadership.House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo Vadis? Journal of Management, 23, 409–473. Most importantly, charismatic leadership, which is among the contemporary approaches to leadership, may be viewed as an example of a trait approach.
The traits that show relatively strong relations with leadership are as follows:Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765–780.
Intelligence
General mental ability, which psychologists refer to as “g” and which is often called IQ in everyday language, has been related to a person’s emerging as a leader within a group. Specifically, people who have high mental abilities are more likely to be viewed as leaders in their environment.House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo Vadis? Journal of Management, 23, 409–473; Ilies, R., Gerhardt, M. W., & Huy, L. (2004). Individual differences in leadership emergence: Integrating meta-analytic findings and behavioral genetics estimates. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 12, 207–219; Lord, R. G., De Vader, C. L., & Alliger, G. M. (1986). A meta-analysis of the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions: An application of validity generalization procedures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 402–410; Taggar, S., Hackett, R., & Saha, S. (1999). Leadership emergence in autonomous work teams: Antecedents and outcomes. Personnel Psychology, 52, 899–926. We should caution, though, that intelligence is a positive but modest predictor of leadership. In addition to having high IQ, effective leaders tend to have high emotional intelligence (EQ). People with high EQ demonstrate a high level of self-awareness, motivation, empathy, and social skills. The psychologist who coined the term emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman, believes that IQ is a threshold quality: it matters for entry- to high-level management jobs, but once you get there, it no longer helps leaders because most leaders already have high IQ. According to Goleman, what differentiates effective leaders from ineffective ones becomes their ability to control their own emotions and understand other people’s emotions, their internal motivation, and their social skills.Goleman, D. (2004, January). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 82(1), 82–91. Many observers believe that Carly Fiorina, the ousted CEO of HP, demonstrated high levels of intelligence but low levels of empathy for the people around her, which led to an overreliance on numbers while ignoring the human cost of her decisions.Karlgaard, R. (2/18/2002). Vote Carly, Forbes, 169(4), 37.
Figure 10.3 Big Five Personality Traits
Source: Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 59, 1216–1229.
Psychologists have proposed various systems for categorizing the characteristics that make up an individual’s unique personality; one of the most widely accepted is the Big Five model, which rates an individual according to openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Several of the Big Five personality traits have been related to leadership emergence (whether someone is viewed as a leader by others) and leadership effectiveness.
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, is an extraverted leader. For example, to celebrate Microsoft’s 25th anniversary, Ballmer enthusiastically popped out of the anniversary cake to surprise the audience.
For example, extraversion is related to leadership. extraverts are sociable, assertive, and energetic people. They enjoy interacting with others in their environment and demonstrate self-confidence. Because they are both dominant and sociable in their environment, they emerge as leaders in a wide variety of situations. Out of all personality traits, extraversion has the strongest relationship to both leader emergence and leader effectiveness. Research shows that conscientious people are also more likely to be leaders. This is not to say that all effective leaders are extraverts, but you are more likely to find extraverts in leadership positions. An example of an introverted leader is Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist. He is known as an introvert, and he admits to not having meetings because he does not like them.Buckmaster, Jim. (2008, May). How does he manage? Classified Web site boss. Management Today, 15.
Another personality trait related to leadership is conscientiousness. Conscientious people are organized, take initiative, and demonstrate persistence in their endeavors. Conscientious people are more likely to emerge as leaders and be effective as leaders. Finally, people who have openness to experience—those who demonstrate originality, creativity, and are open to trying new things—tend to emerge as leaders and tend to be effective as leaders.
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is not one of the Big Five personality traits, but it is an important aspect of one’s personality. The degree to which people are at peace with themselves and have an overall positive assessment of their self-worth and capabilities seems to be relevant to whether they will be viewed as a leader. Leaders with high self-esteem support their subordinates more, and when punishment needs to be administered, they punish more effectively.Atwater, L. E., Dionne, S. D., Camobreco, J. F., Avolio, B. J., & Lau, A. (1998). Individual attributes and leadership style: Predicting the use of punishment and its effects. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 19, 559–576; Niebuhr, R. E., & Davis, K. R. (1984). Self-esteem: Relationship with leader behavior perceptions as moderated by the duration of the superior-subordinate dyad association, Personality and Social Psychology Buletin, 10, 51–59. It is possible that those with high self-esteem have greater levels of self-confidence and this affects their image in the eyes of their followers. Self-esteem may also explain the relationship between some physical attributes and emerging as a leader. For example, research shows a strong relationship between height and being viewed as a leader (as well as one’s career success over life). It is proposed that self-esteem may be the key to the connection of height with leadership, because people who are taller are also found to have higher self-esteem and therefore may project greater levels of charisma as well as confidence to their followers.Judge, T. A., & Cable, D. M. (2004). The effect of physical height on workplace success and income: Preliminary test of a theoretical model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 428–441.
Integrity
Figure 10.5 Traits Associated with Leadership
Research also shows that people who are effective as leaders tend to have a moral compass and demonstrate honesty and integrity.Reave, L. (2005). Spiritual values and practices related to leadership effectiveness. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 655–687. Leaders whose integrity is questioned lose their trustworthiness, and they hurt their company’s business along the way. For example, when it was revealed that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was using a pseudonym to make negative comments online about the company’s rival Wild Oats, his actions were heavily criticized, his leadership was questioned, and the company’s reputation was affected.Farrell, G., & Davidson, P. (2007, July 13). Whole Foods’ CEO was busy guy online. USA Today, Section: Money, 04B.
Condoleezza Rice had different responsibilities as the provost of Stanford University compared with her role as secretary of state for the United States. Do you think these differences affected her behavior as a leader?
There are also some traits that are negatively related to emerging as a leader and being successful as a leader. For example, agreeable people who are modest, good natured, and avoid conflict are less likely to be perceived as leaders.Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765–780. The key to benefiting from the findings of trait researchers is to be aware that not all traits are equally effective in predicting leadership potential across all circumstances. Some organizational situations allow leader traits to make a greater difference.House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo Vadis? Journal of Management, 23, 409–473. For example, in small, entrepreneurial organizations where leaders have a lot of leeway to determine their own behavior, the type of traits leaders have may make a difference in leadership potential. In large, bureaucratic, and rule-bound organizations, such as the government and the military, a leader’s traits may have less to do with how the person behaves and whether the person is a successful leader.Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765–780. Moreover, some traits become relevant in specific circumstances. For example, bravery is likely to be a key characteristic in military leaders but not necessarily in business leaders. Scholars now conclude that instead of trying to identify a few traits that distinguish leaders from nonleaders, it is important to identify the conditions under which different traits affect a leader’s performance, as well as whether a person emerges as a leader.Hackman, J. R., & Wageman, R. (2007). Asking the right questions about leadership: Discussion and conclusions. American Psychologist, 62, 43–47.
Key Takeaway
Many studies searched for a limited set of personal attributes, or traits, which would make someone be viewed as a leader and be successful as a leader. Some traits are consistently related to leadership, such as intelligence (both mental ability and emotional intelligence), personality (extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, self-esteem), and integrity. The main limitation of the trait approach was that it ignored the situation in which leadership occurred. Therefore, it is more useful to specify the conditions under which different traits are needed.
Exercises
- Think of a leader you admire. What traits does this person have? Are they consistent with the traits discussed in this chapter? If not, why is this person effective despite the presence of different traits?
- Can the findings of trait approaches be used to train potential leaders? Which traits seem easier to teach? Which are more stable?
- How can organizations identify future leaders with a given set of traits? Which methods would be useful for this purpose?
- What other traits can you think of that would be relevant to leadership?