Trait leadership is defined as integrated patterns of personal characteristics that reflect a range of individual differences and foster consistent leader effectiveness across a variety of group and organizational situations.
The theory is developed from early leadership research which focused primarily on finding a group of heritable attributes that differentiate leaders from nonleaders. Leader effectiveness refers to the amount of influence a leader has on individual or group performance, followers’ satisfaction, and overall effectiveness. Many scholars have argued that leadership is unique to only a select number of individuals, and that these individuals possess certain immutable traits that cannot be developed. Although this perspective has been criticized immensely over the past century, scholars still continue to study the effects of personality traits on leader effectiveness. Research has demonstrated that successful leaders differ from other people and possess certain core personality traits that significantly contribute to their success. Understanding the importance of these core personality traits that predict leader effectiveness can help organizations with their leader selection, training, and development practices.
History of research The emergence of the concept of trait leadership can be traced back to Thomas Carlyle's "great man" theory, which stated that "The History of the World [...] was the Biography of Great Men". Subsequent commentators interpreted this view to conclude that the forces of extraordinary leadership shape history. Influenced by Carlyle, Francis Galton in Hereditary Genius took this idea further. Galton found that leadership was a unique property of extraordinary individuals and suggested that the traits that leaders possessed were immutable and could not be developed. Throughout the early 1900s, the study of leadership focused on traits. Cowley commented that the approach to the research of leadership has usually been and should always be through the study of traits. Many theorists, influenced by Carlyle and Galton, believed that trait leadership depended on the personal qualities of the leader, however, they did not assume that leadership only resides within a select number of people. This trait perspective of leadership was widely accepted until the late 1940s and early 1950s, when researchers began to deem personality traits insufficient in predicting leader effectiveness.
In 1948, Stogdill stated that leadership exists between persons in a social situation, and that persons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations. This statement has been cited ubiquitously as sounding the death knell for trait-leadership theory. Furthermore, scholars commented that any trait's effect on leadership behavior will always depend on the situation. Subsequently, leadership stopped being characterized by individual differences, and instead both behavioral and situational analyses of leadership took over. These analyses began to dominate the field of leadership research. During this period of widespread rejection, several dominant theories took the place of trait leadership theory, including Fiedler's contingency model, Blake and Mouton's managerial grid, Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership model, and transformational and transactional leadership models.
Despite the growing criticisms of trait leadership, the purported basis for the rejection of trait-leadership models began to encounter strong challenges in the 1980s. Zaccaro pointed out that even Stogdill's 1948 review, although cited as evidence against leader traits, contained conclusions supporting that individual differences could still be predictors of leader effectiveness. With an increasing number of empirical studies directly supporting trait leadership, traits have reemerged in the lexicon of the scientific research into leadership. In recent years, the research about leader traits has made some progress in identifying a list of personality traits that are highly predictive of leader effectiveness. Additionally, to account for the arguments for situational leadership, researchers have used the round-robin design methodology to test whether certain individuals emerge as leaders across multiple situations. Scholars have also proposed new ways of studying the relationship of certain traits to leader effectiveness. For instance, many suggest the integration of trait and behavioral theories to understand how traits relate to leader effectiveness. Furthermore, scholars have expanded their focus and have proposed looking at more malleable traits (ones susceptible to development) in addition to the traditional dispositional traits as predictors of leader effectiveness. Context is only now beginning to be examined as a contributor to leaders' success and failure. Productive narcissistic CEOs like Steven Jobs of Apple and Jack Welch of GE have demonstrated a gift for creating innovation, whereas leaders with idealized traits prove more successful in more stable environments requiring less innovation and creativity.
Cultural fit and leadership value can be determined by evaluating an individual's own behavior, perceptions of their employees and peers, and the direct objective results of their organization, and then comparing these findings against the needs of the company.
Leadership traits The investigations of leader traits are always by no means exhaustive. In recent years, several studies have made comprehensive reviews about leader traits that have been historically studied. There are many ways that traits related to leadership can be categorized; however, the two most recent categorizations have organized traits into (1) demographic vs. task competence vs. interpersonal and (2) distal (trait-like) vs. proximal (state-like):
Demographic, task competence and interpersonal leadership Based on a recent review of the trait leadership literature, Derue et al stated that most leader traits can be organized into three categories: demographic, task competence, and interpersonal attributes. For the demographics category, gender has by far received the most attention in terms of leadership; however, most scholars have found that male and female leaders are both equally effective. Task competence relates to how individuals approach the execution and performance of tasks. Hoffman et al grouped intelligence, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability into this category. Lastly, interpersonal attributes are related to how a leader approaches social interactions. According to Hoffman et al, Extraversion and Agreeableness should be grouped into this category.
Distal (trait-like) vs. proximal (state-like) Recent research has shifted from focusing solely on distal (dispositional/trait-like) characteristics of leaders to more proximal (malleable/state-like) individual differences often in the form of knowledge and skills. The hope is that emergence of proximal traits in trait leadership theory will help researchers elucidate the old question whether leaders are born or made. Proximal individual differences suggest that the characteristics that distinguish effective leaders from non-effective leaders are not necessarily stable through the life-span, implying that these traits may be able to be developed. Hoffman et al examined the effects of distal vs. proximal traits on leader effectiveness. They found that distal individual differences of achievement motivation, energy, flexibility, dominance, honesty/integrity, self-confidence, creativity, and charisma were strongly correlated with leader effectiveness. Additionally, they found that the proximal individual differences of interpersonal skills, oral communication, written communication, management skills, problem solving skills, and decision making were also strongly correlated with leader effectiveness. Their results suggested that on average, distal and proximal individual differences have a similar relationship with effective leadership.
Trait-leadership model
Zaccaro et al created a model to understand leader traits and their influence on leader effectiveness/performance. This model, shown in figure 1, is based on other models of leader traits and leader effectiveness/performance. and rests on two basic premises about leader traits. The first premise is that leadership emerges from the combined influence of multiple traits as opposed to emerging from the independent assessment of traits. Zaccaro argued that effective leadership is derived from an integrated set of cognitive abilities, social capabilities, and dispositional tendencies, with each set of traits adding to the influence of the other. The second premise is that leader traits differ in their proximal influence on leadership. This model is a multistage one in which certain distal attributes (i.e. dispositional attributes, cognitive abilities, and motives/values) serve as precursors for the development of proximal personal characteristics (i.e. social skills, problem solving skills and expertise knowledge). Adopting this categorization approach and based on several comprehensive reviews/meta-analysis of trait leadership in recent years, we tried to make an inclusive list of leader traits (Table 1). However, the investigations of leader traits are always by no means exhaustive.