Traits and Skills

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Leadership Traits & Skills Approaches

"Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.“

  • Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf

(Commander of Operations of Desert Shield and Desert Storm)

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Overview

  • Traits Approach
  • Traits Research
  • Leadership Characteristics
  • Negative Traits
  • Skills Approach
  • Three-Skill Approach
  • Conclusions

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Trait Approach Described

  • “Trait” refers to people’s general characteristics, including capacities, motives, or patterns of behaviors
  • Leaders’ characteristics are different from nonleaders’ characteristics
  • Focuses exclusively on leader
  • Personality is central to leadership process
  • Personality traits are relatively fixed and stable over time.

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Evolution of Trait Approach

  • Great Man Theory (late 19th – early 20th century)
  • Trait Theory (1930s – 1940s)
  • Assumed that leaders have special traits in common
  • Early research compared leaders and nonleaders to see what traits best differentiated them
  • Early studies failed to support the premise that a person must possess a particular set of traits to become a successful leader
  • Trait Theory Revival (1980s – 1990s)

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Leadership Traits
Research

Stogdill, 1948

Intelligence

Alertness

Insight

Responsibility

Initiative

Persistence

Self-confidence

Sociability

Stogdill, 1974

Achievement

Persistence

Insight

Initiative

Self-confidence

Responsibility

Cooperativeness

Tolerance

Influence

Sociability

Mann, 1959

Intelligence

Masculinity

Adjustment

Dominance

Extroversion

Conservatism

Kirkpatrick &

Locke, 1991

Drive

Motivation

Integrity /Honesty

Confidence

Cognitive Ability

Task Knowledge

Zaccaro, Kemp, Bader, 2004

Cognitive Ability

Extroversion

Conscientiousness

Emotional Stability

Openness

Agreeableness

Motivation

Social Intelligence

Self-monitoring

Emotional Intelligence

Problem Solving

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Emotional Intelligence
(Goleman, 1995)

  • Encompasses social and personal competencies.

  • Self-awareness
  • Confidence
  • Self-regulation
  • Conscientiousness
  • Motivation

  • Being aware of one’s ability to perceive and express emotions, having the ability to control our own emotions while behaving with integrity and honesty, being empathetic towards others and sensing organizational concerns, effectively managing our own emotions and those involved in our relationship with other people.

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Becoming a Leader
(Bennis, 1999)

  • Self-knowledge
  • Open to feedback
  • Eager to learn and improve
  • Curious, risk takers
  • Concentrate at work
  • Learn from adversity
  • Balance tradition and change
  • Open style
  • Work well with systems
  • Serve as models and mentors

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Major Leadership Traits Summary

  • Intelligence
  • Self-confidence
  • Determination
  • Integrity
  • Sociability

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Negative Personality Traits
(Hughes, Ginnet, & Curphy, 2002)

  • Argumentative
  • Interpersonal Insensitivity
  • Narcissism
  • Fear of Failure
  • Perfectionism

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Research Conclusions

  • Intelligence is the trait most consistently correlated with leadership.
  • However, no single trait STRONGLY correlates with leadership effectiveness.
  • Leadership is a relation that exists between persons in a social situation and that leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations.
  • The leader does not emerge simply by possessing key traits – the situation and followers are important.
  • Possessing certain traits only makes it more likely that actions will be taken and be successful.

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Strengths & Criticisms

Strengths

  • Intuitively appealing and straightforward
  • Credible due to a lot of research support
  • Benchmarks what we need to look for in a leader

Criticisms

  • Endless list of traits
  • Fails to take situations into account and consider outcomes
  • Much of the research, as well as traits themselves, are subjective
  • Not useful for training and development
  • Any single trait has only a weak relationship to effectiveness

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Skills Approach Described

  • The ability to use one’s knowledge and competencies to accomplish objectives
  • Many individuals have potential for leadership
  • Can be acquired through training

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Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)

  • Technical
  • Knowledge about or proficiency in a specific type of work or activity
  • Competency in specialized area
  • Human
  • Knowledge about and being able to work well with people
  • Skills that help in getting along with subordinates, supervisor, peers
  • Conceptual
  • Ability to work with ideas and concepts
  • Works well with abstractions and hypotheticals

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Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)

Level of Skill Needed

Technical Skills (things)

Manager

Director

VP

Exec VP

CEO

Human Skills (people)

Conceptual Skills (ideas)

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Three-Skill Approach

  • Technical skills are more important at the lower levels of management.

  • Conceptual skills are more important at the higher levels of management.

  • Human skills are important at all levels of management.

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Skills Approach

Strengths

  • Stresses importance of developing skills
  • Can identify strengths and weaknesses
  • Competencies that can be developed

Criticisms

  • Breadth of skills
  • Not predictive
  • Not entirely separate from trait approach
  • Much of the research based on hierarchical organizations

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