As such, there have been calls for research to examine and address how additional leadership attributes, beyond leader traits, play a direct or dynamic role in predicting proximal or distal organisational outcomes e. One such approach has been to shift from predictor-centric analysis i.
As such, the role of leadership competencies that categorise specific behaviours, styles, and approaches have been used as both criterion and predictor variables in leadership research e. However, there have been critics of the use of competency metrics as predictor variables, primarily because it is argued that it is hard to distinguish competencies from performance when frameworks are typically characterised in relation to performance outcomes e.
Markus et al. As such, there is a lack of consensus in the role of competencies as predictors of objective performance. Few studies have, however, looked at the combined role of personality and competencies in predictive objective performance; for instance, leadership competencies could play an interactive role in the relationship between personality and performance, uncovering how specific behavioural manifestations of traits contribute to performance.
This paper presents an opportunity to examine several theoretical questions in the leadership literature. Firstly, to what extent does personality predict both leadership emergence and effectiveness?
As previous research has demonstrated that the personality-emergence and personality-performance relationship differs on job context e. This will provide insight into whether there are traits that universally facilitate leader emergence. Secondly, to what extent does personality predict leadership effectiveness? Additionally, are these traits similar to those that predict leader emergence? This study will examine the role of leader personality in relation to organisational outcomes, with reference to how leadership competencies interactive with traits to influence leader effectiveness.
However, due to the lack of literature on the combined effect of personality and leadership competencies on organisational performance, this part of the study will be exploratory in nature. A general population sample was created to understand the localized trait distributions for the six HPTI traits. All volunteered to take part in an organisational research programme on the validation of personality tests.
Data on executive leaders from Canada and the USA was gathered to establish a separate leadership sample. The senior leadership sample comprised of 71 female The leaders that participated in the study completed the HPTI and an additional questionnaire that gathered information on organizational performance and leadership competencies.
The HPTI was designed to provide an accurate, valid and clear measure of personality at work and can be used to investigate which personality traits in the workplace might predict career success and thus predict high potential.
Originally composed of ten factors and characteristics related to success and leadership capability, the traits were recombined into six common factors MacRae, : Conscientiousness , Adjustment , Curiosity , Ambiguity Acceptance , Risk Approach , and Competitiveness. Descriptions of the traits and how they relate to the Big Five taxonomy of personality can be found in Table 1.
HPTI represents a item measure of personality traits directly relevant to workplace behaviours, thoughts and perceptions. Teodorescu et al. Table 1. HPTI trait descriptions. Leadership Competencies —A literature review was conducted on categorisations and taxonomies of leadership competencies, focusing on personality traits, competencies, and behavioural studies.
From this research, an initial list of 79 traits were highlighted as being important for leadership effectiveness.
These were thematically clustered in order to create fifteen distinct leadership competencies shown in Table 2. Leaders were asked to select their top five personal leadership strengths, which were scored from 5 top strength picked to 1 fifth strength picked. Unselected competencies were scored as 0. In the analysis, these ratings gauged both whether the leader considered the competency to be a strength, as well as the extent to which they saw this as a strength.
Organisational Performance Metrics —As the leadership sample for this study wanted to remain anonymous, data on self-report measures of performance were gathered to assess organisational performance metrics. ANOVAs were run to test for any potential differences in Canadian and American personality for the general population and leadership samples. No significant differences were seen between the two countries on two of the six traits Conscientiousness and Competitiveness.
As no medium or large differences were seen between the two groups, the sample was combined. The results can be found in Table 3. Table 2. Descriptions of the 15 leadership competencies derived from literature review. Additional analysis was conducted to check for gender differences in personality.
Whilst the gender ratio is skewed, it is more balanced than what is seen currently in North America: e. For the leadership sample, tests found no significant differences between gender for any of the HPTI traits.
The results can be found in Table 4. Table 3. Table 4. ANOVAs were run to assess whether leader personality differs significantly from the general population. Results can be found in Table 5. The results indicated that leaders had significantly higher means for all six HPTI traits. The results of this can be seen in Figure 1. The direct impact of HPTI on organisational performance were: Curiosity was positively predictive of higher Sales Revenue Growth but negatively predictive of Individual Performance Targets; Ambiguity Acceptance was positively predictive of higher annual Organisational Revenue; Risk Approach was positively predictive of achieving a greater proportion of Performance Targets; and Adjustment was positively predictive of Performance Targets, Net Profit Margin Growth, Innovation, higher rates of Talent Retention, higher rates of Customer Satisfaction, and higher perceived Organisational Performance.
Leaders that had Strategic Vision and Effective Communication as leadership strengths were seen to have higher rates of positions filled by internal applicants indicating a focus on internal development and promotion. Finally, HPTI was also predictive of what leadership competencies leaders viewed as strengths: Competitiveness was negatively predictive of being a Collaborator ; Curiosity was positively predictive of Empowering Others and Innovation but negatively predictive of Leading with Integrity ; and Adjustment was negatively predictive of being a Proactive Conflict Manager.
Table 5. Figure 1. Results from the SEM. This paper examined the role of personality in leadership emergence and effectiveness simultaneously, with the aim to understand how specific traits distinguish those employees who become leaders compared to what drives success in those roles. Additionally, this study aimed to address calls by scholars to extent leader trait research by exploring the interactive role of leader attributes on organisational outcomes.
The first aim of this study was to examine the role of personality in both leadership emergence and effectiveness. Meta-analyses have indicated that certain traits might play an important role for each process Judge et al. However, there is little research looking at the emergence and effectiveness simultaneously to address whether there is uniformity between the traits of emergence and effectiveness.
If there is continuity in the traits associated with both processes, it indicates that there are potentially universal leadership benefits to specific traits.
If there is discord, however, what does this reveal about how we should theorize the personality-leadership relationship for emergence and effectiveness? Looking firstly at emergence, results explored variability in leader personality from the general population. Leaders were found to have higher levels of all six HPTI traits compared to the general population. The largest differentiator between leaders and non-leaders were Adjustment and Conscientiousness as determined by effect size , which supports previous research in this space, finding that lower neuroticism and higher conscientiousness are two of the biggest predictors of leadership Judge et al.
Several meta-analyses have shown that emotional stability is related to leadership, with Judge et al. Additionally, large differences were seen in Ambiguity Acceptance and Risk Approach. Ensari et al. This adds to the literature by broadening our understanding of what characteristics and traits contribute to emergence.
Previous research has found that being assertive i. Risk Approach and comfortable operating under uncertainty i. Ambiguity Acceptance are also important to leadership success e. Pollanen et al. This study continues the trend of leader trait research, demonstrating that personality acts as a foundational dimension in identifying those who go on to leadership positions.
However, as mentioned previously, studies have shown a disconnection between some traits that predict leadership emergence compared to the traits that predict success in this role. The second aim of this study was to examine the role of personality in leader effectiveness. Exploratory analysis through SEM revealed that certain traits—namely Adjustment, Risk Approach, and Ambiguity Acceptance—had positive impacts on leadership effectiveness. The success of organizations like Toyota is more attributed to variables such as the system's design and work methods Liker, In contrast, the success of organizations in the US an individualistic culture , such as General Electric and Chrysler, was attributed more to individual leaders Popper, ; Spector, This proposition is anchored in works conducted on leadership during times of crisis and change Hertzler, ; Conger and Kanungo, ; Pillai, ; Popper, Common to all these studies is the conclusion that crisis situations highlight primary emotions e.
The effectiveness of leaders in such circumstances is essentially affected by the degree of confidence experienced by the followers from the leaders' public appearances. Burns, The main indicator of a leader's effectiveness in these situations is a sense of anxiety reduction Kets de Vries, , which often has nothing to do with the end results of the crisis e.
In conclusion, it is argued that the evaluation of leadership effectiveness is affected by consequential thinking and is largely biased by outcomes, whereas leadership emergence is grounded in cultural biases and primordial feelings and is not necessarily associated with evaluable parameters. In this sense, although, as discussed, antecedents of leadership emergence can influence the evaluation of leadership effectiveness. The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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Hamilton, D. Bar-Tal, and A. Such biases lead to overemphasizing leaders' contributions to successful organizational results. These general heuristics linking leadership to results vary due to the factors discussed above. The following propositions are anchored in a different paradigm according to which the reference toward leadership is largely inherent in cultural attributes or primordial elements that create different categories of evaluating leadership effectiveness.
The common argument suggested in many works e. For example, in collectivistic cultures, there is less inclination to attribute organizational effectiveness to leaders compared to individualistic societies.
The success of organizations like Toyota is more attributed to variables such as the system's design and work methods Liker, In contrast, the success of organizations in the US an individualistic culture , such as General Electric and Chrysler, was attributed more to individual leaders Popper, ; Spector, This proposition is anchored in works conducted on leadership during times of crisis and change Hertzler, ; Conger and Kanungo, ; Pillai, ; Popper, Common to all these studies is the conclusion that crisis situations highlight primary emotions e.
The effectiveness of leaders in such circumstances is essentially affected by the degree of confidence experienced by the followers from the leaders' public appearances. Burns, The main indicator of a leader's effectiveness in these situations is a sense of anxiety reduction Kets de Vries, , which often has nothing to do with the end results of the crisis e.
In conclusion, it is argued that the evaluation of leadership effectiveness is affected by consequential thinking and is largely biased by outcomes, whereas leadership emergence is grounded in cultural biases and primordial feelings and is not necessarily associated with evaluable parameters.
In this sense, although, as discussed, antecedents of leadership emergence can influence the evaluation of leadership effectiveness. The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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Reviewed by: Darren A. This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Received Oct 31; Accepted Jul 8. Keywords: leadership emergence, leadership effectiveness, followership, attribution, projection. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s and the copyright owner s are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. A Why are leaders so important to followers? Why Are Leaders so Important to Followers? The Psychodynamic Explanation According to the psychodynamic explanation, the sources of attraction to a leader are unconsciously formed in early childhood during the period of total impotence.
The Social-Psychological Explanation The reality in which people live is also replete with meanings represented by symbols Charon, The Feasibility and Intensity of Leadership Emergence As can be seen from the above explanations, there is a conceptual hierarchy underpinning the yearning for a leader. Psychological Distance From the followers' perspective, two psychological phenomena, which are unique to humans, serve to intensify the longing for leaders.
Cultural Differences Studies in the context of leadership and culture indicate differences in leadership imagery among different cultures Gestner and Day, ; Dorfman, ; Hofstede, ; Den Hartog et al. Author Contributions The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication. Conflict of Interest The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's Note All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. References Allison S. Charisma: an ill-defined and ill-measured gift. Hierarchy in the Forest. Although many organizations operate this way, the truth is that the best leaders rarely end up in the corner office, which is probably why half of new leaders fail. Failed leaders can cause big problems.
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