ABOUT THIS CHAPTER

This chapter of the book discusses the trait approach to studying about leadership
focusing on identifying traits and skills that predict a person’s success in leadership
roles. Rather than predicting informal group leadership, it emphasizes traits and skills
related to managerial effectiveness. It also outlines research methods and major
findings related to leadership traits and skills, as well as how various situation influence
the relevance of these skills.

INDIVIDUAL ATTRIBUTES RELEVANT FOR LEADERSHIP

The second paragraph discusses about individual attributes relevant to leadership

including traits, needs, motives, values, self-concepts, self identities, social identities,
skills and competencies and also provides an overview of the diverse attributes
associated with leadership. Personality traits, needs, and values are described as
important elements that influence behavior and decision making. Skills are discussed as
the ability to perform tasks effectively, influenced by both learning and heredity.
Competencies can involve both traits and skills, are often used to describe qualities for
managers but are more practical for consultant than researcher.

TYPES OF RESEARCH ON LEADER TRAITS AND SKILLS

- The first type seeks traits and skills predicting whether a person will become a
leader or emerge as an informal leader in group
- The second type explore how the traits and skills of managers relate to their
leadership effectiveness in their current roles
- The third type use longitudinal studies to find traits and skills predicting
advancement to higher management levels.
- The fourth type compares successful manager with someone who derailed in
their careers analyzing their traits, skills, and experiences to identify differences.

OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS IN THE TRAIT RESEARCH

Numerous studies conducted over several decades examined the connection between
traits and skills and leadership emergence, effectiveness and career advancement. The
effectiveness can vary depends on situation, and leaders with different trait patterns
can succeed in the same circumstances. In addition, traits and skills that best predict
various criteria may differ across different criteria.

FINDINGS IN RESEARCH ON DERAILED MANAGERS

Research conducted at the center for Creative Leadership provides insights into the
traits and skills that determine the success or failure of managers in their careers.
Successful managers shared traits such as strong technical skills, history of prior
success, and being recognized as fast riser in the organization. Derailed managers
exhibit both strength and weakness, with failure sometimes resulting from factor
beyond their control.
Interpersonal skills played a significant role in failure. Usually, unsuccessful managers
being less able to handle pressure and more prone to moodiness, anger and inconsistent
behavior. Meanwhile, successful managers remained calm, confident and predicateble
during crises.

The ability to learn and adapt to change was increasingly important in recent studies.
Successful managers focused on immediate tasks and the needs of subordinates rather
than competing or impressing superiors. In contrast, derailed managers are often over
ambitious and betraying trust or beaking promises.

Weakness in interpersonal skills is also a common reason for failure. Successful

managers are good in interpersonal relationship. They are sensitive, tactful and
considerate. They are direct but diplomatic in their disagreement, meanwhile derailed
managers tend to be outspoken and offensive.

PERSONALITY TRAITS AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Energy Level and Stress Tolerance

High energy and stress tolerance are valuable traits for managers. Helping them in
managing the demanding and fast paced nature of their roles. Their traits enable
managers to handle stress like difficult superiors, troubled subordinates, uncooperative
peers or challenging clients. They facilitate effective problem solving by maintaining
composure and focus rather than panicking or shifting blame.

Because managerial positions often deals with crucial decisions with limited
information and resolving conflicts, stress tolerance becomes vital. This trait is critical
for excecutive dealing with high stakes situation where a leader’s reputation, career or
well being of subordinates is at risk. Energy, stamina and stress tolerance are key
attributes that contribute to managerial success in such challenging environments.

Self Confidence

Self confidence is a critical trait in leadership because it is correlated with effectiveness

and career advancement. Self confidence is essential for charismatic leadership.
Confident leaders are more likely to make influence attempts, set challenging objectives,
take initiative, maintain high expectations, persist in pursuing different goals and
demonstrate optimism in crises. This demeanor increases commitment and support
from subordinates, peers and superiors. Morover, self confidence promotes proactive
approach to problem solving.

However, excessive self confidence can lead to dysfunctional behavior, including over-
optimism, rash decision, arrogance and intolerance in views. Moderately high self
confidence rather than the extremes is often more effective. Acting arrogantly can
alienate those with more knowledge, potentially hindering a manager’s career.
Internal Locus of Control

Individual with strong internal locus of control believe that they can shape their destiny
through actions, taking more responsibility for themselves and their organization. They
exhibit future oriented thinking, proactive planning, problem solving initiative and
confidence in their ability to influence others.

While research on this trait’s relationship with managerial effectiveness is limited,

existing results suggest that a strong internal locus of control is associated with
effectiveness. For example, in a study of CEO, internals outperformed externals in
therms of objective criteria like profitability and sales growth, with a stronger
relationship in dynamic environments requiring major innovations.

Emotional Stability and Maturity

Emotionally mature people shows self awareness regarding their strength and
weaknesses, with focus on self improvement rather that denying shortcomings. They
are less self centered, posess self control and maintain stable emotions. They are also
open to criticism and willing to learn from mistakes. High emotional maturity is
associated with advanced cognitive moral development, resulting in leaders who
maintain cooperative relationship with subordiantes, peers and superiors.

Managers with good self awareness and desire for self improvement experience higher
career advancement. Other research highlights that effective excecutives understand
their strengths and weaknesses and have a proactive approach to self improvement
rather than being defensive.

Power Motivation

Research consistently shows a strong connection between the need for power and
career advancement in large organizations. Those with strong need of power are more
likely to understand and engage in the power dynamics within organizations, making
this trait relevant to managerial roles that require the use of power and influence.

While a strong need for power is desirable, the expression of this need matters.
Research shows that a socialized power orientation use power to enhance their own
status and esteem, often impulsively. They may dominate subordinates, restrict
information and use rewards and punishment manipulativelt. In contrast, leaders with a
socialized power orientation are more emotionally mature, using power for the benefit
of the organizations. They are less selfish, more open to advice and focus on building
organizational commitment. Such leaders tend to employ participative, coaching styles
and create a sense of pride and responsibility among their subordinates.

Personal Integrity

Integrity is a foundational trait characterized by consistent behavior aligned with stated

values, honesty, ethics and trustworthiness. It serves as a rock for establishing
interpersonal trust, a critical element for securing follower’s loyalty and garnering
cooperation and support from peers and superiors. Trustworthiness significantly
influence a leader’s expert and referent power. Integrity related values encompass
attributes like honesty, loyalty, fairness, justice and altruism.

Integrity manifests through various behaviors. One of them is keeping promises. As

individuals are hesitant to engage who do not honor their commitments. Maintaining
confidentiality and respecting sensitive information is equally crucial for earning trust.
Finally, taking responsibility for actions and decisions is vital, as leaders appear
dependable and strong when they admit responsibility for unpopular decision.

Integrity holds great significance in leadership organizations. Research shows that it

was a top priority for British chief excecutives, and studies by CCL revealed that
successful managers were characterized by their integrity.

Narcisissm

It is a personality syndrome characterized by traits like strong need for self esteem,
personalized power, low emotional maturity and low integrity. It is often stems from
childhood experiences of emotional unresponsiveness and rejection, leading individuals
to seek power, status, and control.

Narcissistic leaders surround themselves with loyal subordinates, make uninformed

decisions, undertake risky projects and often rejects negative information. They are
reluctant to admit responsibility for failures and resist succession planning, believing
themselves indispensable.

But narcissism sometimes can have positive aspect in certain situations. Some
successful leaders exhibit a narcissistic traits. Their self confidence and optimism can
drive bold initiatives although it lacks genuine motives. However, it doesn’t mean
narcissistic leaders are more effective.

Achievement Orientation

Managers with strong achievement orientation tends to focus on task objectively,

willingly assume responsibility, take initiative and prefer moderate risk solutions. In
contrast, those with weak achievement orientation might avoid challenging tasks and
deny responsibility.

The expression of achievement orientation in manager’s behavior depends on their

overall motive pattern. It can enhance leadership effectiveness when coupled with a
socialized need for power but become detrimental when combined with personalized
need for power and excessive competitiveness, leading to potential derailement.

Need for Affiliation

Individuals with a strong need for affiliation derive satisfaction from being liked and
accepted by others and prefer working with friendly cooperative people. However,
studies generally show a negative correlation between a high need for affiliation and
managerial effectiveness. It is because there is a tendency to prioritize interpersonal
relationship over tasks, avoid conflicts and make decision based on gaining approval
rather than performance.

Managers with very low need for affiliation on the other hand, are typically loners who
avoid socializing. They may lack the motivation for essential interpersonal activities
required for effective management. The optimal level of affiliation motivation appears
to be moderately low, striking a balance between social engagement and task
orientation.

The Big Five Personality Traits

The Big Five model of personality is a promising framework consisting of surgency

(extroversion, dependability (conscientiousness), adjustment (neuroticism),
intellectance (opennesss to experience), and agreeableness.

Effective leaders tend to score higher in extroversion, conscientiousness and openness

to experience, and lower in neuroticism. However, results vary due to different
measurement methods and other variables.

Not all scholars agree that this model is superior to more specific traits. Research is
needed to determine whether the Big Five traits outperform specific component traits
in predicting and explaining leadership effectiveness.

SKILLS AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Technical Skills

Technical skills encompass the understanding of methods, process, and equipment

specific to manager’s organizational unit. It also extends to organization’s rules,
structure, management systems, and its products and services.

Research shows that technical skills are critical for the effectiveness of managers at
lower levels of management. However, their significance tends to decrease as one
ascend the managerial hierarchy. Even entrepreneurial managers benefit from technical
knowledge as it forms the foundation for innovative ideas and the development of new
products and service.

Conceptual Skills

Conceptual skills encompass encompassing qualities such as sound judgment, foresight,

creativity, and the ability to derive meaning from ambiguous situations. These skills are
crucial for planning, organizing, and problem-solving in management, particularly when
coordinating specialized components within an organization.

Managers with high cognitive complexity can construct more accurate mental models of
the organization, offering a comprehensive view of critical factors and their
interrelationships. These models act as roadmaps, outlining the organizational terrain
and aiding decision-making. Conversely, managers with weak conceptual skills tend to
create simplistic mental models that cannot adequately describe the intricate processes,
causal relationships, and environmental interactions.

Interpersonal Skills

Encompass the understanding of human behavior, group dynamics and the ability to
empathize, communicate persuasively and maintain positice interactions. It is a very
important art of influencing people. Empathy enables the comprehension of others
motives, values and emotions, while social insights helps gauge socially acceptable
behavior in different context.

A manager with strong interpersonal skills can attentively and empathically listen to
indiciduals with personal problems or grievances, provide support and resolves
conflicts. Even task oriented managerial activities like giving instructions and making
assignments benefit from interpersonal skills when exceuted in a manner that reflects
care for people as well as task objective.

MANAGERIAL COMPETENCIES

Emotional Intelligence

Emotions can persist as positive or negative moods, further influencing leadership

behavior. Emotional intelligence comprises several interconnected skills, including
empathy, self regulation, emotional self awaereness and the ability to express feelings
accurately.

Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in leadership. Leader with high emotional
intelligence excel in problem solving, time management, adaptability, crisis
management and self awaereness. They can better understand and influence the
emotions of others, which is crucial when inspiring enthusiasm and optimism for new
initiatives or changes.

Social Intelligence

It is the capacity to assess the demands of a particular leadership situation and select an
appropriate reason. It consist of two primary components : social perceptiveness and
behavioral flexibility. Social perceptiveness deals with the ability to comprehend
functional needs, challenges and opportunities relevant to a group or organizations.
Behavioral flexibility is the willingness and ability to adapt one’s behavior to meet
situational requirements.

There is some overlap between social intelligence and emotional intelligent, with the
latter being a more narrowly defined construct. Further research is needed to clarify the
relationship between social intelligence, emotional intelligence and political skill.

Learning Ability

Leaders must possess the flexibility to learn fro their mistakes, challenge their
assumtions and refine their mental models. One of the critical comoetencies for
successful leader is the ability to learn from experience and adapt to change. Study have
shown the significance of this competency in predicting career achievements.

The ability to learn from experience and adapt likely involves a combination of traits
and skills. Managers with these traits are driven to excel, possess an inquisitive and
open minded nature, also curiosity in experimenting with new approaches, and actively
seeking feedback about their performance.

SITUATIONAL RELEVANCE OF SKILLS

Level of Management

In general, as one ascend the managerial hierarchy, the more complex it will become.
Higher level managers have abroader array of activities to coordinate, more intricate
relationship to manage and more unique defined problems to solve.

Middle level managers typically play a role in enhancing the existing structure and
finding ways to implement policies and goals established by higher level management.
This role necessitates a relatively even mix of technical, interpersonal and conceptual
skills.

In contrast, low level managers are primarily responsible for policy implementation and
maintaining workflow within current organizational structure. For these managers,
technical skills are relatively more important.

Type of Organization

According to Katz, he suggested that top level managers equipped with strong human
relations and conceptual skills can easily shift from one industry to another swiftly. But
it is arguable because various industries possess unique economic, market, and
technological characteristic.

So simply, it appears to be more challenging for an excecutive to successfully transition

to a different industry or type of organization, particularly when the new position
demands extensive technical expertise and broad network of external contacts.

External Environment

As the pace of globalization, technological advancement and social shifts continue to

accelerate, the value of competencies like cognitive complexity, empathy, self
awareness, cultural sensitivity, behavioral flexibility, system thinking and the ability to
learn from experience and adapt to change is likely to rise. These competencies will be
increasingly vital in navigating the challenges posed by our rapidly changing world.
 GUIDELINE FOR MANAGERS

- Learn about your strength and weaknesses

- Maintain a high level of self awareness
- Identify and develop relevant skills for a future leadership position
- Remember that strength can become a weakness
- Compensate for weakness