Trait vs. Skills Approach to Leadership

Assessing the trait theory of leadership using self and observer ratings of personality: The mediating role of contributions to group success☆

Author links open overlay panelAmy E. Colbert a, Timothy A. Judge b 1, Daejeong Choi a 2, Gang Wang c 3

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Abstract

The trait theory of leadership suggests that personality traits influence leader emergence and effectiveness. While initial empirical evidence supports this perspective, the majority of studies have examined the relationship between personality and leadership using self ratings of personality. We believe that this research may underestimate the relationship between personality and leadership. We propose that personality assessed using both self and observer ratings explains more variance in leadership than self ratings of personality alone. Results from 155 participants in leaderless group discussions supported this hypothesis. Further, relative weight analysis revealed that observer ratings of extraversion explained the largest percentage of variance in leadership, followed by self ratings of openness to experience and observer ratings of openness to experience. Results of two-stage least squares regression analysis showed that the relationship between personality and leadership was mediated by contributions to group success. The implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

Introduction

The trait theory of leadership proposes that certain traits differentiate leaders from other individuals. Tests of trait theory, searching for the traits of effective leaders, dominated leadership research during the first half of the twentieth century. However, the results of these studies were often inconsistent. Reviews by Stogdill (1948) and Mann (1959) expressed skepticism regarding the trait theory of leadership and consequently the theory fell out of favor with many leadership researchers. House and Aditya (1997) noted, “There developed among the community of leadership scholars near consensus that the search for universal traits was futile” (p. 410). In part, the inconsistent results that led to this skepticism were due to the numerous traits that had been considered in this research. In a comparison of reviews of the literature, Bass (1990) noted 43 separate characteristics that were examined in these studies. With this large number of leadership traits, the lack of an organizing personality framework made it difficult to compare results across studies. House and Aditya (1997) noted, “One problem with early trait research was that there was little empirically substantiated personality theory to guide the search for leadership traits” (p. 410).

Recently, however, a consensus on the structure of personality has emerged around the five-factor model of personality (Digman, 1990). Factor analysis of both trait adjectives and personality inventories has revealed that personality traits can be categorized into five main factors: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The Big Five personality traits have been shown to be predictors of diverse criteria of interest in the field of industrial and organizational psychology, including job performance (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991). Using the five-factor model of personality as an organizing framework, Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt (2002) meta-analyzed studies examining the relationship between personality and leadership and found that extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness were positively related to leadership. As a group, the Big Five personality traits predicted both leadership emergence ( R = .53) and leadership effectiveness ( R = .39).

Despite the abundance of research testing the trait theory of leadership and the promise offered by the five-factor model, questions still remain regarding the relationship between personality and leadership. The true-score correlations between the Big Five personality traits and leadership range from .08 to .31 and can be considered, at best, moderate in magnitude. Morgeson et al. (2007) suggested that modest relationships between personality and outcomes may be due, in part, to the near exclusive use of self reports of personality. Self reports of personality may be biased due to faking or self-deception (Hooper and Sackett, 2008, Paulhus and Reid, 1984), and the relationship between personality and outcomes may be higher when other means of assessing personality are used. For example, Oh, Wang, and Mount (2011) recently compared the validity of self and observer ratings of personality in predicting job performance and found that the validities of the Big Five are higher when observer ratings of personality are used. Chang, Connelly, and Geeza (2012) recommended using a multirater approach in personality research, noting that “trait ratings from a single rater are not solely an indication of true standing of the target's personality traits, but also bias from the rater's response tendencies” (p. 423). Thus, the first purpose of our research is to extend these findings into the leadership domain by examining the relationship between personality and leadership using both self and observer ratings of personality. Following Lord, De Vader, and Alliger's (1986) meta-analysis, we include both leader emergence, or the degree to which an individual is perceived as leaderlike (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994), and perceived effectiveness, or the degree to which an individual is seen as effective in influencing and guiding the activities of the group (Stogdill, 1950), in the leadership criterion in this study.

In addition to examining the effect of self and observer ratings of personality on leadership, more research is also needed on the mechanisms by which personality traits affect leadership (Judge, Bono et al., 2002). A small body of research has begun to shed light on the mediators of the relationship between personality and overall performance. For example, Barrick, Stewart, and Piotrowski (2002) found that three cognitive motivational work orientations (i.e., communion, achievement, and status striving) mediate the personality–performance relationship. However, very little is known about why personality traits are related to leadership emergence and effectiveness. Given the growing body of research that supports a link between personality and leadership, an important next step is to shed light on the mechanisms by which personality influences leadership. Understanding what leaders do when interacting with others that causes them to emerge as leaders and be more effective as leaders will help to illuminate the “black box” through which personality traits affect leadership. In addition to contributing to an improved theoretical understanding of the personality–leadership relationship, a clearer understanding of mediating mechanisms may be useful in leadership development. If we can isolate the trait-consistent behaviors that influence leadership ratings, these behaviors may be integrated into leadership development programs to increase the use of the behaviors even for those individuals with low levels of the traits that have been linked to leadership. Because we test the relationships between personality and leadership in the context of a leaderless group discussion, we focus on one potential mediator that is especially relevant in this context — contributions to group success.

Section snippets

Self versus observer ratings of personality

As defined by Cervone and Pervin (2008), personality traits refer to “psychological qualities that contribute to an individual's enduring and distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving” (p. 8). Most personality research has relied on self reports to assess personality, and self ratings of personality have been linked to a number of important work-related outcomes, including job performance (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001), job satisfaction (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002), and

Participants and procedure

Data from participants in leaderless group discussions were used to test the hypothesized relationships between the Big Five personality traits, contributions to group success, and leadership. Leaderless group discussions were used in this study because our interest was in understanding the display and emergence of leadership when no single individual has been designated as the leader. In this controlled setting, ratings of contributions to group success and leadership were based on

Results

Descriptive statistics and correlations among the personality, mediator, and leadership variables are provided in Table 1. The correlations between self and observer ratings of the Big Five personality traits ranged from .48 to .60. Both self and observer ratings of extraversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness were significantly correlated with leadership. Observer ratings of neuroticism and conscientiousness were marginally significantly correlated with leadership.

We tested

Discussion

In their review of the leadership literature, House and Aditya (1997) concluded, “There has recently emerged a modest body of trait theory and evidence relevant to leadership” (p. 412). Consistent with this conclusion, Judge, Bono, and colleagues (2002) used meta-analysis to aggregate estimates of the effects of personality on leadership and found that self ratings of four of the Big Five personality traits – neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness – were

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