The Leader as an Individual

Chapter 4: The Leader as an Individual

Personality and Leadership

Personality: the set of unseen characteristics and processes that underlie a relatively stable pattern of behavior in response to ideas, objects, and people in the environment.

There are 5 dimensions that describe personality called The Big 5 Personality Traits:

1. Extraversion: the degree to which a person is outgoing, sociable, talkative, and comfortable meeting and talking to new people.

2. Agreeableness: the degree to which a person is able to get along with others by being good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, understanding and trusting.

3. Conscientiousness: the degree to which a person is responsible, dependable, persistent and achievement-oriented.

4. Emotional stability: the degree to which a person is well adjusted, calm and secure.

5. Openness to experience: the degree to which a person has a broad range of interests and is imaginative, creative and willing to consider new ideas.

Personality Traits:

* Locus of control: defines whether a person places the primary responsibility for what happens to him within himself or on outside forces. People who believe their actions determine what happens to them have a high internal locus of control, whereas those who believe outside forces determine what happens to them have a high external locus of control. There are differences in behavior between internals and externals.

* Internals are more self-motivated, better control their own behavior and participate more in social activities, better able to handle complex information and solve problems.

* Externals prefer to have structured, directed work situations. They are better able to handle work that requires compliance and conformity, but they lack creativity and independent actions, thus, they are less likely to enjoy leadership positions.

* Authoritarianism: the belief that power and status differences should exist in an organization. Individuals...