Question 081924

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A key principle of the training is that “emotions drive people, [and] people drive performance.” FedEx has tracked the improvements in managers’ emotional intelligence and reported an 8% to 11% increase in competencies due to the training—a statistically significant difference (Freedman, 2014).

In addition, the U.S. Army developed a brief internet-based training program for enhancing emotional intelligence. Because military personnel serve under dangerous and emotionally stressful conditions, the training was designed to help reduce the development of depression, anxiety, and/or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The training helped service members strengthen their emotional flexibility, adaptability, and coping by improving the ability to understand and control their emotions (Killgore, 2017).

There is a debate in the field regarding how big a role emotional intelligence plays in helping people be successful in life. Some researchers, such as Goleman (1995), suggested that emotional intelligence plays a major role in whether people are successful at school, home, and work. Others, such as Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) and Antonakis (2009), made softer claims for the significance of emotional intelligence in meeting life’s challenges. A major review of leadership research identifies “emotions in leadership” as a general category but does not specifically mention emotional intelligence (Dinh et al., 2014). It appears that emotional intelligence is not considered mainstream in leadership research. At the same time, Kotsou, Mikolajczak, Heeren, Grégoire, and Leys (2019) determined that the studies that have been done on the efficacy of emotional intelligence training have not included follow-up research to determine the long-term effects of such training.

A review of the literature by Ashkanasy and Daus (2002) summarizes what we can safely conclude: Emotional intelligence is distinct from, but positively related to, other intelligences (such as IQ). It is an individual difference; some people have more emotional intelligence than others. Emotional intelligence develops over a person’s lifetime and can be improved with training. Finally, it involves abilities to effectively identify and perceive emotion and the skills to understand and manage emotions.

In summary, emotional intelligence appears to play a role in the leadership process. The underlying premise suggested by the emotional intelligence framework is that people who are more sensitive to their emotions and the impact of their emotions on others will be leaders who are more effective. As more research is conducted on emotional intelligence, the intricacies of how emotional intelligence relates to leadership will be better understood.

HOW DOES THE TRAIT APPROACH WORK? The trait approach is very different from the other approaches discussed in subsequent chapters because it focuses exclusively on the leader, not on the followers or the situation. This makes the trait approach theoretically more straight forward than other approaches. In essence, the trait approach is concerned with what traits leaders exhibit and who has these traits.

The trait approach does not lay out a set of hypotheses or principles about what kind of leader is needed in a certain situation or what a leader should do, given a particular set of circumstances. Instead, this approach emphasizes that having a leader with a certain set of traits is crucial to having effective leadership. It is the leader and the leader’s traits that are central to the leadership process.

The trait approach suggests that organizations will work better if the people in managerial positions have designated leadership profiles. To find the right people, it is common for organizations to use trait assessment instruments. The assumption behind these procedures is that selecting the right people will increase organizational effectiveness. Organizations can specify the characteristics or traits that are important to them

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for particular positions and then use trait assessment measures to determine whether an individual fits their needs.

The trait approach is also used for personal awareness and development. By analyzing their own traits, managers can gain an idea of their strengths and weaknesses and can get a feel for how others in the organization see them. A trait assessment can help managers determine whether they have the qualities to move up or to move to other positions in the company.

A trait assessment gives individuals a clearer picture of who they are as leaders and how they fit into the organizational hierarchy. In areas where their traits are lacking, leaders can try to make changes in what they do or where they work to increase their traits’ potential impact.

Near the end of the chapter, a leadership instrument is provided that you can use to assess your leadership traits. This instrument is typical of the kind of assessments that companies use to evaluate individuals’ leadership potential. As you will discover by completing this instrument, trait measures are a good way to assess your own characteristics.

STRENGTHS The trait approach has several identifiable strengths. First, the trait approach is intuitively appealing. It fits clearly with our notion that leaders are the individuals who are out front and leading the way in our society. The image in the popular press and community at large is that leaders are a special kind of people—people with gifts who can do extraordinary things. The trait approach is consistent with this perception because it is built on the premise that leaders are different, and their difference resides in the special traits they possess. People have a need to see their leaders as gifted people, and the trait approach fulfills this need.

A second strength of the trait approach is that it has a century of research to back it up. No other theory can boast of the breadth and depth of studies conducted on the trait approach. The strength and longevity of this line of research give the trait approach a measure of credibility that other approaches lack. Out of this abundance of research has emerged a body of data that points to the important role of various traits in the leadership process.

Another strength, more conceptual in nature, results from the way the trait approach highlights the leader component in the leadership process. Leadership is composed of leaders, followers, and situations, but the trait approach is devoted to only the first of these—leaders. Although this is also a potential weakness, by focusing exclusively on the role of the leader in leadership the trait approach has been able to provide us with a deeper and more intricate understanding of how the leader and the leader’s traits are related to the leadership process.

The trait approach has given us some benchmarks for what we need to look for if we want to be leaders. It identifies what traits we should have and whether the traits we do have are the best traits for leadership. Based on the findings of this approach, trait assessment procedures can be used to offer invaluable information to supervisors and managers about their strengths and weaknesses and ways to improve their overall leadership effectiveness.

Last, the trait approach helps organizations identify leaders and select individuals for leadership training programs. Organizations often use a battery of personality tests when selecting and placing people within their organizations. For example, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience are effective traits for sales positions (Frieder, Wang, & Oh, 2018). Personality traits can be used to screen employees, once hired, who will benefit most from leadership training. For example, one study found that extraversion, agreeableness, intellectual curiosity, and emotional stability were positively related to both self-ratings and director ratings of leader development in a training program (Blair, Palmieri, & Paz-Aparicio, 2018). Thus, traits offer a way to predict who will succeed in certain positions and who is best suited to leadership development.

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CRITICISMS In addition to its strengths, the trait approach has several weaknesses. First and foremost is the failure of the trait approach to delimit a definitive list of leadership traits. Although an enormous number of studies have been conducted over the past 100 years, the findings from these studies have been ambiguous and uncertain at times. Furthermore, the list of traits that has emerged appears endless. This is obvious from Table 2.1, which lists a multitude of traits. In fact, these are only a sample of the many leadership traits that were studied.

Another criticism is that the trait approach has failed to take situations into account. As Stogdill (1948) pointed out more than 70 years ago, it is difficult to isolate a set of traits that are characteristic of leaders without also factoring situational effects into the equation. People who possess certain traits that make them leaders in one situation may not be leaders in another situation. Some people may have the traits that help them emerge as leaders but not the traits that allow them to maintain their leadership over time. In other words, the situation influences leadership.

Leader traits also may interact with the situation in that certain traits may predispose a person to assume leadership roles in organizations. For example, leaders with higher openness to experience may thrive in the innovative, energetic environment of a high-technology start-up company, but once that company is established and running on a routine, they may begin to feel stagnant, negatively affecting their performance. Yet, research on traits has not incorporated the situation (Zaccaro et al., 2018), including such factors as the leader–member relationship, team characteristics, or organizational culture that enhance or constrain the influence of traits on performance.

A third criticism, derived from the prior two criticisms, is that this approach has resulted in highly subjective determinations of the most important leadership traits. Because the findings on traits have been so extensive and broad, there has been much subjective interpretation of the meaning of the data. This subjectivity is readily apparent in the many self-help, practice-oriented management books. For example, one author might identify ambition and creativity as crucial leadership traits; another might identify empathy and calmness. In both cases, it is the author’s subjective experience and observations that are the basis for the identified leadership traits. These books may be helpful to readers because they identify and describe important leadership traits, but the methods used to generate these lists of traits are weak. To respond to people’s need for a set of definitive traits of leaders, authors have set forth lists of traits, even if the origins of these lists are not grounded in strong, reliable research.

Research on traits can also be criticized for failing to look at traits in relationship to leadership outcomes. This research has emphasized the identification of traits but has not addressed how leadership traits affect group members and their work. In trying to ascertain universal leadership traits, researchers have focused on the link between specific traits and leader emergence, but they have not tried to link leader traits with other outcomes such as productivity or employee satisfaction. For example, trait research does not provide data on whether leaders who have high intelligence and strong integrity have better results than leaders without these traits. The trait approach is weak in describing how leaders’ traits affect the outcomes of groups and teams in organizational settings.

A final criticism of the trait approach is that, other than for emotional intelligence, its usefulness for leadership training and development is limited. Even if definitive traits could be identified, teaching leaders to improve these traits is not an easy process because traits are not easily changed. For example, it is not reasonable to send managers to a training program to raise their IQ or to train them to become extraverted. While there is some evidence that the trait of emotional intelligence may be improved with training, it is unclear whether these effects are long lasting. The point is that traits are largely fixed psychological structures, and this limits the value of teaching and leadership training.

APPLICATION

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Despite its shortcomings, the trait approach provides valuable information about leadership. It can be applied by individuals at all levels and in all types of organizations. Although the trait approach does not provide a definitive set of traits, it does provide direction regarding which traits are good to have if one aspires to a leadership position. By taking trait assessments and other similar questionnaires, people can gain insight into whether they have certain traits deemed important for leadership, and they can pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses with regard to leadership.

As we discussed previously, managers can use information from the trait approach to assess where they stand in their organization and what they need to do to strengthen their position. Trait information can suggest areas in which their personal characteristics are very beneficial to the company and areas in which they may want to get more training to enhance their overall approach. Using trait information, managers can develop a deeper understanding of who they are and how they will affect others in the organization.

CASE STUDIES AND SELF-ASSESSMENT In this section, three case studies (Cases 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) are provided to illustrate the trait approach and to help you understand how the trait approach can be used in making decisions in organizational settings. The settings of the cases are diverse—directing research and development at a large snack food company, being head of recruitment for a large bank, and a profile of entrepreneur Elon Musk—but all of the cases deal with trait leadership. At the end of each case, you will find questions that will help in analyzing the cases.

Case 2.1 Choosing a New Director of Research

Sandra Coke is vice president for research and development at Great Lakes Foods (GLF), a large snack food company that has approximately 1,000 employees. As a result of a recent reorganization, Sandra must choose the new director of research. The director will report directly to Sandra and will be responsible for developing and testing new products. The research division of GLF employs about 200 people. The choice of directors is important because Sandra is receiving pressure from the president and board of GLF to improve the company’s overall growth and productivity.

Sandra has identified three candidates for the position. Each candidate is at the same managerial level. She is having difficulty choosing one of them because each has very strong credentials. Alexa Smith is a longtime employee of GLF who started part-time in the mailroom while in high school. After finishing school, Alexa worked in as many as 10 different positions throughout the company to become manager of new product marketing. Performance reviews of Alexa’s work have repeatedly described her as being very creative and insightful. In her tenure at GLF, Alexa has developed and brought to market four new product lines. Alexa is also known throughout GLF as being very persistent about her work: When she starts a project, she stays with it until it is finished. It is probably this quality that accounts for the success of each of the four new products with which she has been involved.

A second candidate for the new position is Kelsey Metts, who has been with GLF for five years and is manager of quality control for established products. Kelsey has a reputation for being very bright. Before joining GLF, she received her MBA at Harvard, graduating at the top of her class. People talk about Kelsey as the kind of person who will be president of her own company someday. Kelsey is also very personable. On all her performance reviews, she received extra-high scores on sociability and human relations. There isn’t a supervisor in the company who doesn’t have positive things to say about how comfortable it is to work with Kelsey. Since joining GLF, Kelsey has been instrumental in bringing two new product lines to market.

Thomas Santiago, the third candidate, has been with GLF for 10 years and is often consulted by upper management regarding strategic planning and corporate direction setting. Thomas has been very involved in establishing the vision for GLF and is a company person all the way. He believes in the values of GLF, and actively promotes its mission. The two qualities that stand out above the rest in Thomas’s performance reviews

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are his honesty and integrity. Employees who have worked under his supervision consistently report that they feel they can trust Thomas to be fair and consistent. Thomas is highly respected at GLF. In his tenure at the company, Thomas has been involved in some capacity with the development of three new product lines.

The challenge confronting Sandra is to choose the best person for the newly established director’s position. Because of the pressure she feels from upper management, Sandra knows she must select the best leader for the new position.

Questions

1. Based on the information provided about the trait approach in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, if you were Sandra, whom would you select?

2. In what ways is the trait approach helpful in this type of selection? 3. In what ways are the weaknesses of the trait approach highlighted in this case?

Case 2.2 Recruiting for the Bank

Pat is the assistant director of human resources in charge of recruitment for Central Bank, a large, full-service banking institution. One of Pat’s major responsibilities each spring is to visit as many college campuses as he can to interview graduating seniors for credit analyst positions in the commercial lending area at Central Bank. Although the number varies, he usually ends up hiring about 20 new people, most of whom come from the same schools, year after year.

Pat has been doing recruitment for the bank for more than 10 years, and he enjoys it very much. However, for the upcoming spring he is feeling increased pressure from management to be particularly discriminating about whom he recommends hiring. Management is concerned about the retention rate at the bank because in recent years as many as 25% of the new hires have left. Departures after the first year have meant lost training dollars and strain on the staff who remain. Although management understands that some new hires always leave, the executives are not comfortable with the present rate, and they have begun to question the recruitment and hiring procedures.

The bank wants to hire people who can be groomed for higher-level leadership positions. Although certain competencies are required of entry-level credit analysts, the bank is equally interested in skills that will allow individuals to advance to upper management positions as their careers progress.

In the recruitment process, Pat always looks for several characteristics. First, applicants need to have strong interpersonal skills, they need to be confident, and they need to show poise and initiative. Next, because banking involves fiduciary responsibilities, applicants need to have proper ethics, including a strong sense of the importance of confidentiality. In addition, to do the work in the bank, they need to have strong analytical and technical skills, and experience in working with computers. Last, applicants need to exhibit a good work ethic, and they need to show commitment and a willingness to do their job even in difficult circumstances.

Pat is fairly certain that he has been selecting the right people to be leaders at Central Bank, yet upper management is telling him to reassess his hiring criteria. Although he feels that he has been doing the right thing, he is starting to question himself and his recruitment practices.

Questions

1. Based on ideas described in the trait approach, do you think Pat is looking for the right characteristics in the people he hires?

2. Could it be that the retention problem raised by upper management is unrelated to Pat’s recruitment criteria?

3. If you were Pat, would you change your approach to recruiting?

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Case 2.3 Elon Musk

When he was 12, Elon Musk created and sold his first product. That video game, Blastar, was the start of Musk’s meteoric entrepreneurial career, which has seen him take on everything from electric cars to space travel to alternative energy.

Musk grew up in South Africa, the son of an engineer and a Canadian model. In grade school Musk was introverted and often bullied, but at 15 he learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling. He moved to Canada at 17 to attend university and three years later left Canada to attend the University of Pennsylvania where he earned degrees in economics and physics. In 1995, only two days into a PhD program in energy physics at Stanford, Musk dropped out to launch his first company, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal. An online city guide, Zip2 provided content for websites of both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Four years later, Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million.

The Musk brothers then founded X.com, an online financial services/payments company, which became PayPal. Three years later, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion.

Now a billionaire, Musk started Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building reusable spacecraft for commercial space travel. A year after launching SpaceX, Musk became the cofounder, CEO, and product architect at Tesla Motors, dedicated to producing affordable, mass- market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. He also launched several other side projects, including establishment of The Boring Company devoted to boring and building underground tunnels to reduce street traffic, becoming cochair of the nonprofit research organization OpenAI with the mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity, and development of the Hyperloop to create a more expedient form of transportation between cities.

But unlike his earlier ventures, both SpaceX and Tesla had considerable challenges. In 2008, Musk was nearly out of money after SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket, of which he was the chief designer, suffered three failed launches before it finally had a successful one. Meanwhile, Tesla was hitting speed bump after speed bump in the development of its vehicles, hemorrhaging money, and losing investor confidence as well as orders from customers who were unhappy with the long wait time to get their vehicles.

Musk faced these challenges the way he did as a bullied school kid: head on. “Leaders are . . . expected to work harder than those who report to them and always make sure that their needs are taken care of before yours, thus leading by example,” he said (Jackson, 2017).

At SpaceX, Musk continued to innovate, and the company accomplished a stunning number of achievements including successfully having rockets land safely back on earth after launches, transporting supplies to the International Space Station, and developing a rocket that could carry heavier payloads. By 2019, SpaceX had 6,000-plus contracts, worth $12 billion, with NASA and other commercial satellite companies. The company, which says its ultimate mission is to foster interplanetary life, is planning a cargo mission to Mars in 2022 (Space Exploration Technologies Corp., 2020).

Many credit SpaceX’s success to the unified culture at the company created by its fairly flat organizational structure and the fact that, despite its growth, the company still maintains a start-up mentality and feel.

“It’s an incredible place to work,” said one engineer. “There’s a great sense of connectedness between everyone. Everyone’s got the same goal in mind. Everyone’s working super hard to deliver a product successfully. It’s amazing when it all culminates in launch” (Mind & Machine, 2017).

Dolly Singh, the former head of human resources at SpaceX, said, “The thing that makes Elon Elon is his ability to make people believe in his vision” (Snow, 2015). Jim Cantrell, SpaceX’s first engineer, added, “He is the smartest guy I’ve ever met, period. I know that sounds overblown. But I’ve met plenty of smart people, and I don’t say that lightly. He’s absolutely, frickin’ amazing. I don’t even think he sleeps” (Feloni, 2014).

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But to turn Tesla around, Musk had to roll up his shirtsleeves. The company, which was four years behind on the production of its Model 3, was under severe public scrutiny from investors and industry analysts. After missing one deadline after another, Musk restructured the organization in April 2018 and took over as the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division. In a 2018 Twitter post, Musk said that to meet production goals, it was time to “divide & conquer, so I’m back to sleeping at factory.” By the end of June 2018, Tesla had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week, while churning out another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs (Sage & Rodriguez, 2018).

Musk has been described as an unconventional leader, even by Silicon Valley standards. He is a prolific tweeter in which he comments on everything from building cyborg dragons, to jokes about bankruptcy, to mixing Ambien with red wine (Davies, 2018). He has graced magazine covers and goes on talk shows and appeared on animated television shows The Simpsons and South Park. His peculiar sense of humor was on dramatic display when he launched his own red Tesla Roadster sports car into space atop the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. At the same time, some of his behavioral quirks have also become liabilities.

In a public earnings call with investors and financial analysts, Musk attacked two analysts for asking what he called “bonehead” and “dry” questions that he refused to answer, resulting in Tesla’s stock value plunging 10% (Davies, 2018). When his efforts to assist in the rescue of 12 young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand were criticized as self-aggrandizing rather than serious, Musk responded with a tweet calling one of the divers involved in the rescue “pedo guy,” insinuating he was a child molester (Levin, 2018).

In August 2018, Musk wrote on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private and that he had the necessary funding “secured” to do so. As a result, Tesla’s stock price immediately shot up, gaining the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which investigated and ultimately fined Musk $20 million. Less than two weeks after that episode, Musk gave an emotional interview with the New York Times, in which he alternately laughed and cried in a display that left many questioning his mental state and sent Tesla investors into sell mode with their stock (Crum, 2018).

Not long after that interview, Musk changed his mind and said Tesla would remain a public company. He followed that decision with an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast during which he smoked what was said to be a marijuana-laced cigarette (Davies, 2018).

“The reason Elon seems to attract drama is that he is so transparent, so open, in a way that can come back to bite him,” his brother and Tesla board member Kimbal Musk told the New York Times. “He doesn’t know how to do it differently. It’s just who he is” (Gelles, 2018).

After all of the drama in 2018, there were many concerns about where Tesla would go in 2019. The answer? Tesla ended 2019 on a high note, with a record stock price topping out at more than $400 per share.

“It’s been quite the turnaround for Musk since his ‘funding secured’ tweet debacle of last year,” one analyst noted. “Tesla’s stock has been one of the top performers of the second-half of the year and Musk is proof that you can take on the SEC, smoke weed on podcasts, call people pedo guy and still run a $70 billion company” (Crum, 2018).

Questions

1. How does Musk exhibit each of the major leadership traits (Table 2.2)? Which of these traits do you believe he is the strongest in? Is there one where he is weak?

2. Describe how Musk has exhibited each of the Big Five personality factors. Which of these factors do you think has the most correlation with Musk’s success as a leader?

3. Shankman and Allen (2015) suggest that an emotionally intelligent leader is conscious of context, self, and others. How would you characterize Musk’s emotional intelligence using these three facets?

4. If you were asked to design a leadership training program based on the trait approach, how could you incorporate the story of Elon Musk and his leadership? Around which of his traits would you structure

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your training? Are some of his leadership traits more teachable than others? Discuss.

Leadership Instrument

Organizations use a wide variety of questionnaires to measure individuals’ traits. In many organizations, it is common practice to use standard trait measures such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. These measures provide valuable information to the individual and the organization about the individual’s unique attributes for leadership and where the individual could best serve the organization.

In this section, the Leadership Trait Questionnaire (LTQ) is provided as an example of a measure that can be used to assess your personal leadership characteristics. The LTQ quantifies the perceptions of the individual leader and selected observers, such as followers or peers. It measures an individual’s traits and points respondents to the areas in which they may have special strengths or weaknesses.

By taking the LTQ, you can gain an understanding of how trait measures are used for leadership assessment. You can also assess your own leadership traits.

Leadership Trait Questionnaire (LTQ)

Purpose: The purpose of this questionnaire is to measure personal characteristics of leadership and to gain an understanding of how traits are used in leadership assessment.

Instructions: Using the following scale, indicate the degree to which you agree or disagree with each of the 14 statements when viewing yourself as a leader. After you complete this questionnaire, it should be completed by five people you know (e.g., roommates, coworkers, relatives, friends) to show how they view you as a leader.

Key: 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Neutral 4 = Agree 5 = Strongly agree

1. Articulate: Communicates effectively with others 1 2 3 4 5

2. Perceptive: Is discerning and insightful 1 2 3 4 5

3. Self-confident: Believes in oneself and one’s ability 1 2 3 4 5

4. Self-assured: Is secure with oneself, free of doubts 1 2 3 4 5

5. Persistent: Stays fixed on the goals, despite interference 1 2 3 4 5

6. Determined: Takes a firm stand, acts with certainty 1 2 3 4 5

7. Trustworthy: Is authentic and inspires confidence 1 2 3 4 5

8. Dependable: Is consistent and reliable 1 2 3 4 5

9. Friendly: Shows kindness and warmth 1 2 3 4 5

10. Outgoing: Talks freely, gets along well with others 1 2 3 4 5

11. Conscientious: Is thorough, organized, and controlled 1 2 3 4 5

12. Diligent: Is persistent, hardworking 1 2 3 4 5

13. Sensitive: Shows tolerance, is tactful and sympathetic 1 2 3 4 5

14. Empathic: Understands others, identifies with others 1 2 3 4 5

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Scoring

1. Enter the responses for Raters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the appropriate columns as shown in Example 2.1. The example provides hypothetical ratings to help explain how the questionnaire can be used.

2. For each of the 14 items, compute the average for the five raters and place that number in the “average rating” column.

3. Place your own scores in the “self-rating” column.

  Rater 1 Rater 2 Rater 3 Rater 4 Rater 5 Average rating Self-rating

1. Articulate 4 4 3 2 4 3.4 4

2. Perceptive 2 5 3 4 4 3.6 5

3. Self-confident 4 4 5 5 4 4.4 4

4. Self-assured 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

5. Persistent 4 4 3 3 3 3.4 3

6. Determined 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

7. Trustworthy 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

8. Dependable 4 5 4 5 4 4.4 4

9. Friendly 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

10. Outgoing 5 4 5 4 5 4.6 4

11. Conscientious 2 3 2 3 3 2.6 4

12. Diligent 3 3 3 3 3 3 4

13. Sensitive 4 4 5 5 5 4.6 3

14. Empathic 5 5 4 5 4 4.6 3

Scoring Interpretation

The scores you received on the LTQ provide information about how you see yourself as a leader and how others see you as a leader. There are no “perfect” scores for this questionnaire. The purpose of the instrument is to provide a way to assess your strengths and weaknesses. This assessment can help you understand your assets as well as areas in which you may seek to improve. The chart allows you to see where your perceptions are the same as those of others and where they differ.

The example ratings show how the leader self-rated higher than the observers did on the characteristic articulate. On the second characteristic, perceptive, the leader self-rated substantially higher than others. On the self-confident characteristic, the leader self-rated quite close to others’ ratings but lower.

A low or moderate self-rating (3 or below) on a trait may indicate that you have had little opportunity to develop this part of your personality or that your current work or school setting does not require you to exercise this trait. A high score (4 or above) suggests you are aware of this trait and use it often. How similar or dissimilar your self-ratings are from others’ ratings may be affected by whom you chose to evaluate you, how long these people have known you, and the contexts in which they have observed your behavior.

Summary

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The trait approach has its roots in leadership theory that suggested that certain people were born with special traits that made them great leaders. Because it was believed that leaders and nonleaders could be differentiated by a universal set of traits, throughout the 20th century researchers were challenged to identify the definitive traits of leaders.

Around the mid-20th century, several major studies questioned the basic premise that a unique set of traits defined leadership. As a result, attention shifted to incorporating the impact of situations and of followers on leadership. Researchers began to study the interactions between leaders and their context instead of focusing only on leaders’ traits. More recently, there have been signs that trait research has come full circle, with a renewed interest in focusing directly on the critical traits of leaders.

From the multitude of studies conducted through the years on personal characteristics, it is clear that many traits contribute to leadership. Some of the important traits that are consistently identified in many of these studies are intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. In addition, researchers have found a strong relationship between leadership and the traits described by the five-factor personality model. Extraversion was the trait most strongly associated with leadership, followed by conscientiousness, openness, low neuroticism, and agreeableness. Conscientiousness was found to have the highest correlation with overall job performance, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior (negative correlation) and to be the most frequently assessed trait in job interviews for a variety of occupations.

Another recent line of research has focused on emotional intelligence and its relationship to leadership. This research suggests that leaders who are sensitive to their emotions and to the impact of their emotions on others may be leaders who are more effective.

On a practical level, the trait approach is concerned with which traits leaders exhibit and who has these traits. Organizations use personality assessment instruments to identify how individuals will fit within their organizations. The trait approach is also used for personal awareness and development because it allows managers to analyze their strengths and weaknesses to gain a clearer understanding of how they should try to change to enhance their leadership.

There are several advantages to viewing leadership from the trait approach. First, it is intuitively appealing because it fits clearly into the popular idea that leaders are special people who are out front, leading the way in society. Second, a great deal of research validates the basis of this perspective. Third, by focusing exclusively on the leader, the trait approach provides an in-depth understanding of the leader component in the leadership process. Last, it has provided some benchmarks against which individuals can evaluate their own personal leadership attributes.

On the negative side, the trait approach has failed to provide a definitive list of leadership traits. In analyzing the traits of leaders, the approach has failed to take into account the impact of situations. In addition, the approach has resulted in subjective lists of the most important leadership traits, which are not necessarily grounded in strong, reliable research.

Furthermore, the trait approach has not adequately linked the traits of leaders with other outcomes such as group and team performance, which makes this approach not particularly useful for training and development for leadership because individuals’ personal attributes are largely stable and fixed, and their traits are not amenable to change. While there is some evidence that the trait of emotional intelligence may be improved with training, follow-up studies have not been conducted to determine the long-term effects of such training.

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3 SKILLS APPROACH

The skills approach is a leader-centered perspective that emphasizes the competencies of leaders.

DESCRIPTION Like the trait approach discussed in Chapter 2, the skills approach takes a leader-centered perspective on leadership. However, in the skills approach we shift our thinking from focusing exclusively on traits to an emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and developed. Although personality and behavior certainly play a role in leadership, the skills approach emphasizes the capabilities, knowledge, and skills that are needed for effective leadership.

Researchers have studied leadership skills directly or indirectly for a number of years (see Bass, 2008, pp. 97– 109). However, the impetus for research on skills was a classic article published by Katz in the Harvard Business Review in 1955, titled “Skills of an Effective Administrator.” Katz’s article appeared at a time when researchers were trying to identify a definitive set of leadership traits. Katz’s approach was an attempt to transcend the trait problem by addressing leadership as a set of developable skills. More recently, a revitalized interest in the skills approach has emerged. Beginning in the early 1990s, a multitude of studies have been published that contend that a leader’s effectiveness depends on the leader’s ability to solve complex organizational problems. This research has resulted in a comprehensive skill-based model of leadership that was advanced by M. Mumford and his colleagues (M. Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000; Yammarino, 2000).

In this chapter, our discussion of the skills approach is divided into two parts. First, we discuss the general ideas set forth by Katz regarding three basic administrative skills: technical, human, and conceptual. Second, we discuss the recent work of Mumford and colleagues that has resulted in a skills-based model of organizational leadership.

Three-Skill Approach

Based on field research in administration and his own firsthand observations of executives in the workplace, Katz (1955, p. 34) suggested that effective