Chapter 2

Traits, Motives, and

Characteristics of Leaders
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

 Observations by managers and human resource

specialists, as well as dozen of research studies,
indicated that leaders have certain personality traits.
 Leaders’ personality traits can be divided into two
groups:

1. General Personality Traits

2. Task-related Traits
General Personality Traits
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits

 General personality trait is defined as a trait that is
observable both within and outside the context of work.

 That is, the same general traits are related to success

and satisfaction in both work and professional life.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

 Such traits are listed below:

 Self Confidence
 Trustworthiness
 Dominance
 Extroversion
 Assertiveness
 Emotional Stability
 Enthusiasm
 Sense of Humor
 Warmth
 High tolerance for Frustration
 Self-awareness and Self-objectivity
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Self-confidence
 A leader who is self-assured without being bombastic or
overbearing instills confidence in team members.

 It is akin to being cool under pressure.

 The leader must project his/her self-confidence to the group

he/she leads.

 He/She can do so by using unequivocal wording, maintaining

good posture and maintaining appropriate gestures such as
pointing an index finger outward.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Trustworthiness
 Group members consistently believe that leaders must display
honesty, integrity, and credibility thus engendering trust.

 The importance of honesty also emerged in a study by the Center

for Creative Leadership.

 Research showed that managers who become executive leaders

are like to espouse the following formula:

“I will do exactly what I say I will do what I say I will do it. If I

changed my mind, I will tell you in advance so you will not be
harmed by my action.”
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
General Personality Traits (Continued)

Dominance
 A dominant person imposes his or her will on others.

 As a consequence a dominant leader is often seen as domineering or

bossy.

Extroversion
 Extroversion is helpful for leaders to be gregarious and outgoing in most
situations.

 Also, extroverts are more likely to want to assume a leadership role and
participate in group activities.

 Even though it is logical think that extroversion is related to leadership,

many effective leaders are laid-back and even introverted.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Assertiveness
 Assertiveness refers to being forthright in expressing demands,
opinions, feelings, and attitudes.

 Assertiveness helps leaders perform many tasks and achieve goals.

 Among them are confronting group members about their mistakes,

demanding higher performance, setting high expectations, and
making legitimate demands on higher management.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Assertiveness (Continued)

 To be assertive differs significantly from being aggressive or

passive.

 Aggressive people express their demands in an overly pushy,

obnoxious, and abrasive manner.

 Passive people suppress their own ideas, attitudes, feelings, and

thoughts as if they were likely to be perceived as controversial.

 As a result of being passive, a person might not be recommended

for large salary increases, good assignments, and promotion.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Emotional Stability
 Emotional stability refers to the ability to control emotions to the
point that ones emotional responses are appropriate to the
occasion.

 One study found that executive leaders who are emotionally

unstable and lack composure are more likely to handle pressure
poorly and give in to moodiness, outbursts of anger and inconsistent
behavior.

 In contrast, effective leaders are generally calm, confident, and

predictable during a crisis.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Enthusiasm
 For an effective leaders, it is desirable to be enthusiastic in almost
all the leadership situations.

 Enthusiasm builds good relationship between a leaders and his

subordinates.

 Group members tend to respond positively to enthusiasm, partly

because enthusiasm may be perceived as a reward to constructive
behavior.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Sense of Humor
 Effective use of humor is considered an important part pf a leader’s
role.

 It serves such functions in the workplace as relieving tension and

boredom and defusing hostility and helps him/her exert power over
the group.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Warmth
 Being a warm person and projecting that warmth contributes to
leadership effectiveness in several ways:

 First, warmth facilitates the establishment of rapport with group

members.
 Second, the projection of warmth is a key component of charisma.

 Third, warmth is trait that facilitates providing emotional support to

group members.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

High Tolerance for Frustration

 This trait is important because a leaders encounters great
frustrations.

 For example, a manager might invest a year in developing a

strategic plan and then be informed that top management does not
want the plan implemented.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders

General Personality Traits (Continued)

Self-awareness and Self-objectivity

 Effective leaders are aware of their strengths and limitations.

 This awareness enables them to capitalize on their strengths and

develop their weaknesses.
Task-Related Personality Traits
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits
 Certain personality traits of effective leaders are closely
associated with accomplishment even though they still
seem to fall more accurately in trait category rather than
the behavior category.
 Following are the task-related personality traits:
 Initiative
 Sensitivity to Others and Empathy
 Flexibility and Adaptability
 Internal Locus of Control
 Courage
 Resiliency
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Initiative
 Exercising initiative, or being a self-starter, refers to take
action without support and stimulation from others.
 Initiative refers to the proactive side of leadership.

 Rather than reacting to events, effective leaders make

choices and take actions that leads to change.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Sensitivity to Others and Empathy

 Achieving sensitivity to others requires empathy, the ability
to place oneself in other person’s shoes.
 This type of sensitivity to others means understanding who
the group members are, what their position on issues is,
and how to best communicate with and influence them.
 The lack of sensitivity to others is to risk becoming a failed
leader.
 Sensitive leaders can “read” the other side more
accurately thus doing a better job in the negotiator role.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Flexibility and Adaptability

 A leader is someone who facilitates change.

 It therefore follows that a leader must be flexible enough

to cope with such changes as technological advances,
downsizings, a shifting customer base and a changing
workforce.
 Leaders who are flexible are able to adjust the demands
of different situations.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Internal Locus of Control

 People with internal locus of control believe that they are
prime mover behind events.
 Thus, an internal locus of control helps a leader in the role
of a take-charge person because the leader believes
fundamentally in his or her innate capacity to take charge.
 An internal locus of control is closely related to self-
confidence because the person perceives that he or she
can control circumstances enough to perform well.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Courage
 Leaders need courage to face challenges of taking
prudent risks and taking initiative in general.
 It takes courage for a leader to suggest a new undertaking
because if the undertaking fails, the leader is often seen
as having failed.
 Personality Traits of Effective Leaders
Task-Related Personality Traits (Continued)

Resiliency
 An important observation about effective leaders is that they are resilient
—they bounce back quickly from setbacks such as budget cuts,
demotions, and being fired.
 A study of effective leaders revealed that they don’t even think about
failure; in fact they don’t even use the word.
 Instead, they rely on synonyms such as mistake, glitch, bungle, and
setback.
 In practice, this means that the leaders sets an example for team
members by not crumbling when something when something goes
wrong.

 Instead, leader tries to conduct business as usual.

Leadership
Motives
 Leadership Motives
 Effective leaders have frequently been distinguished by
their motives and needs.
 In general leaders have an intense desire to occupy a
position of responsibility for others and to control them.
 There are four motives that motivate them to lead. All
four of them can be considered task-related:
1. The Power Motive
2. Socialized Power Motive
3. Drive and Achievement Motivation
4. Strong Work Ethic
 Leadership Motives
The Power Motive
 Effective leaders have strong need to control resources.
 Leaders with high power motives have three dominant
characteristics:
1. They act with vigor and determination to exert their power.

2. They invest much time in thinking about ways to alter behavior

and thinking of others; and

3. They care about their personal standing with those around them.
 Leadership Motives
Personalized Power Motive
 Leaders with a personalized power motive seek power
mostly to further their own interest.
 They crave the trappings of power, such as status
symbols, luxury, and money.
 Their need for dominance can lead submissive
subordinates who are frequently sycophants and yes
persons.
 Leadership Motives
Socialized Power Motive
 Leaders with a socialized power motive use power primarily to
achieve organizational goal or vision.

 In this context the term socialized means that the leader uses
power primarily to help others.

 As a result he or she is likely to provide more effective leadership.

 Leaders with socialized power motives, in contrast to leaders with

personalized power motives, tend to be more emotionally mature.

 Leaders with socialized power motive are less defensive, and are
more willing to accept expert advice. They have longer-range
perspective.
 Leadership Motives
Drive and Achievement Motivation
 Leaders are known for the strong effect they invest in
achieving work goals.
 Drive refers to a propensity to put forth high energy into
achieving goals and to have a persistence in applying the
energy.
 Drive also includes achievement motivation, finding joy in
accomplishment for its own sake.
 Entrepreneurs and high-level corporate managers usually
have strong achievement motivation.
 Leadership Motives
Strong Work Ethic
 Effective leaders typically have a strong work ethic, a firm
believe in the dignity of work.
 People with strong work ethic are well motivated because
they value hard work; not to work hard clashes with their
values.
 Strong work ethic helps organizational leader believe that
the group task is worthwhile.
Cognitive Factors
and
Leadership
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
 Mental ability as well as personality is important for
leadership success.
 To inspire people, bring about constructive change, and
solve problems creatively, leaders need to mentally sharp.
 Another mental requirement for leader is the ability to sort
out essential information from the less essential and then
store the most important in memory.
 Problem solving and intellectual skills referred to collectively
as cognitive factors.
 The term cognition refers to the mental process or faculty
by which knowledge is gathered
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Mental Ability and the Cognitive Resource Theory
 A current theory of leadership supports what has been known for many
years: Effective leaders have good problem solving ability.

 Cognitive resource theory is based on two key assumption:

1. Intelligent and competent leaders make more effective plans,

decisions, and strategies than do leaders with less intelligence or
competence.

2. Leaders of task groups communicate their plans, decisions, and

actions strategies primarily in the form of directive behavior.

 Strong problem-solving ability is an asset to leaders, who must collect,

integrate, and interpret enormous amounts of data.
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Knowledge of the Business
 Intellectual ability is closely related to having knowledge of the
business.

 An effective leaders has to be technically or professionally

competent in some discipline, particularly when leading a group
of specialists.

 It is difficult for the leader to establish rapport with group

members when he or she does not know what they are doing and
when the group does not respect the leader’s technical skills.

 The importance of knowledge of the business is increasingly

being organized as an attribute of executive leadership .
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Creativity
 Many effective leaders are creative in the sense that they arrive at
imaginative and original solutions to complex problems.

 Creative ability lies on a continuum, with some leaders being more

creative than others.

 At one end of the creative continuum are business leaders who think
of innovative products and services.

 At the middle of the creative continuum are leaders who explore

imaginative—but not breakthrough—solutions to business problems.

 At the low end of the creative continuum are leaders who inspires
group members to push forward with standard solutions to
organizational problems.
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Insight into People and Situations
 Another important cognitive trait of effective leaders is insight, a depth
of understanding that requires considerable intuition and common
sense.

 A manager with keen insight is able to make wise choices in selecting

people for key assignments.

 Another major advantage of being insightful is that the leader cab size
up the situation and adapt his or her leadership approach accordingly.

 Insight is also closely linked to perceiving trends in the environment.

Leader must be able to process many different types of information, and
use their perceptions to predict the direction of environmental forces.
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Farsightedness
 To develop vision and corporate strategy, a leader needs
farsightedness, the ability to understand the long-range
implications of actions and policies.

 Ray J. Friant, Jr., recommends that to develop as future

business leaders, junior executives should be given long-term
assignment in long-range planning and implementation.

 At the same time they should go through their usual

developmental rotations such as intermediate-term assignments
in marketing and manufacturing.
 Cognitive Factors and Leadership
Openness to Experience
 Yet another important cognitive characteristic of leaders is their
openness to experience, or their positive orientation toward
learning.

 People who have great deal of openness to experience have

well-developed intellects.

 Traits commonly associated with the dimension of the intellect

include being imaginative, cultured, curious, original, broad-
minded, intelligent and artistically sensitive.
END OF CHAPTER