Psychology Notes

CHAPTER 12

Personal Characteristics Associated with Leadership

In the last 100 years, many attempts have been made to identify the personal characteristics associated with leader emergence and leader performance.

Leader Emergence

1. Leader emergence is idea that ppl who become leaders possess traits or characteristics different from people who don't become leaders. Research indicates to some extent, people are born with desire to lead or not to lead. Somewhere btw 17 and 30% of leader emergence has genetic basis.

2. We inherit certain traits and abilities that might influence our decision to seek leadership. People high in openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and low in neuroticism, high self monitors (ppl who adapt their behaviour to social situation), more intelligent people more likely to emerge as leaders than their counterparts.

3. Looking at patterns of abilities and personality traits more useful than individual abilities and traits (specific traits seldom related to leader emergence). Leadership behaviour has some stability, some people consistently emerge as leaders in variety of situations, whereas others never emerge as leaders.

4. Motivation to lead complex, Chan and Drasgow found motivation to lead has 3 aspects: affective identity, noncalculative and social-normative.

a. People with affective identity motivation become leaders b/c they enjoy being in charge and leading others. People high on this have most leadership experience and high leadership potential.

b. Those with noncalculative motivation seek leadership positions when they perceive such positions willresult in personal gain/

c. Those with social-normative motivation become leaders out of sense of duty.

5. People with high leadership motivation tend to obtain leadership experience and have confidence in their leadership skills.

6. After researching extent to which leadership is consistent across life, Bruce concluded that best way to select CEO is to look...