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Psychology In Leadership > Trait Approach > Flashcards

Trait Approach Flashcards

1
Q

Trait Approach

A
  • “Great Person” theory – focused on identifying the inherent characteristics and qualities of leaders who were considered to be great
    Inherent characteristics
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2
Q

Historical shifts in Trait perspectives

A

Early 1900s

“Great person” theory

Research focused on the inherent characteristics and qualities of leaders considered to be great that universally differentiated them from non-leaders
How habits leade to succession

1930-50s

Traits interact with situational demands

Stogdill (1948) –
* Leadership reconceptualised as relationships among individuals in social situations
* Some traits more important than others in certain situations

Mann (1959) –
* Less emphasis on situations
* Suggested personality traits could differentiate leaders from non-leaders

1970s – early 90s
Revival of critical role of traits in leader effectiveness

Stogdill (1974) –
* 10 traits associated with leadership in a positive way

Lord, DeVader & Alliger (1986) –
* Personality traits can be used to distinguish leaders

Kirkpatrick & Locke (1991) –
* 6 traits that leaders and non-leaders differ on

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3
Q

Today Five major leadership traits

A
  1. Intelligence
  2. Self-confidence
  3. Determination
  4. Integrity
  5. Sociability
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4
Q

Intelligence

A
  • Intellectual ability including verbal, perceptual, and reasoning ability.
  • Leaders have higher levels of intelligence than non-leaders.
  • Allows leaders to more effectively develop social judgment and complex problem-solving.
  • May be counterproductive if leader’s intelligence is much higher than followers’ intelligence.
    • Too advanced in their thinking to effectively communicate and be understood or accepted by followers.

Ability to solve problems
Converse on how we convey that problem
Ability to talk and offer the information

Highly intelligent and convey as such, ditstant followers
–> being more intelligent doesn’t not mean we can connect at our followers level
Crystallised intelligence: knowledge we acquire
Fluid: ability to solve UNIQUE problems , I haven’t seen

Could you do what I am doing ?

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5
Q

Self-confidence

A
  • Positive perspective on their ability to make judgments, make decisions and to develop ideas.
  • Be assured of your skills, knowledge, abilities and competencies.
  • Important to be able to express that confidence to followers.
    • E.g. being calm, cool, and collected in a crisis situation

Ability to look confident.
Trust to follow that leader
Confident vs arrogance
Narcissism and confidence
Deep understanding on who you are to have self-confidence
Genuine self-confidence

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6
Q

Determination

A
  • Task orientation – A desire to get the job done.
  • Be willing to be assertive, proactive and to persevere when the going gets tough.

Just keep going for those who want to succeed

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7
Q

Integrity

A
  • Being trustworthy and honest, and take responsibility for one’s actions and holding fast to strong principles.
  • Consistency between what you believe, think, say and do.

Drucker: Management theory
○ Consistent in their approach
○ Ability for others to say this is what this person said and do

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8
Q

Sociability

A
  • Inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships.
  • Empathetic to the concerns and needs of others.
  • Exhibit friendliness, courtesy, tactfulness, diplomacy and an outgoing personality.
  • Above average interpersonal skills, and they develop a higher level of cooperation with and among their followers.

Converse with others
Not singular traits
Behaviour also comes in handy

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9
Q

Emotional Intelligence Ability

A

EI as having the ability:
* To perceive and express emotions
* To control our own emotions while behaving with integrity and honesty
* To be empathetic towards others
* To effectively manage our own and others’ emotions

Goleman (1995,1998) EI encompasses:

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10
Q
A
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11
Q

Origins of the 5-Factor Model

A

• Analyses of dictionary derived adjectives by Thurstone (1934, Allport & Odbert (1936), and to the re-analyses of Catell’s (1947) by Fiske (1949) and Tupes and Christal (1958).

• Based on idea that the factors underlying personality can be uncovered through the study of language, i.e. the lexical hypothesis

• ‘of the myriad of ways that humans differ from one another…the most important have eventually become encoded in our language as trait descriptive terms’ (Peabody & Goldberg, 1989 p1)

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12
Q

Criticisms of the 5-Factor Model

A

• There is much beyond the 5-Factor Model, e.g. it doesn’t seem to account for honesty particularly well.

• Some feel another number between 3 and 7 better summarizes personality.

• Be aware of Hogan Personality Inventory and HEXACO models.

• It is really a taxonomy, it is purely descriptive, and is not a ‘theory’ of personality.

• However, as Occupational psychologists you need to be able to relate what you do with personality to 5-Factor Model as much of what we know about personality in the world of work is expressed in 5-Factor Model terms.

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13
Q

5-Factor Model and leadership

A

Big 5 and leadership

• Meta-analysis by Judge et. al. (2002)

• Strong relationship between personality traits and leadership.

• Extraversion: Most strongly positively associated with effective leadership
Extraversion relates to leadership…don’t blow out of proportion 
o It might only be accountable by 1 or 2 % 
 
 • Conscientiousness: 2nd most related factor 
         Its not always the big stuff but the operational stuff that matters
 
• Openness: Next most related 
 
• Neuroticism: Ranked 3rd with openness but negatively associated with leadership 
 
• Agreeableness: only weakly positively associated with leadership
	○ One trait that doesn’t really matter 
	○ It is very situational.

All these relationships are really small
Correlation is really small
Uncorrected are really small

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14
Q

Motivation to Lead (Chan & Drasgow, 2001)

A

• A theoretical framework for understanding the role of individual differences in leadership behaviours, namely the leader development process and leader performance process.

• Differentiates leadership performance vs emergence.

• MTL defined as an individual differences construct that affects a leader’s or leader-to-be’s decision to assume leadership training, roles, and responsibilities, and that affect his or her intensity of effort at leading and persistence as a leader.

• Individual differences in MTL may interact with the person’s vocational or life-domain interests and abilities to predict leadership behaviours within a specific domain of work or life activity.

• The study
• Conducted on a sample of 1594 male enlisted military recruits in Singapore
There was behaviour outcome being measured.

• Aimed to develop a self-report measure of MTL and to build and test a model of antecedents of MTL 
 
• 3-month longitudinal within-culture study to establish the predictive and convergent validity of the self-report measure with two behavioural measures of leadership potential 
 
• Study published in Journal of Applied Psychology
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15
Q

Motivation To Lead

A

• Affective MTL: like to lead others

• Social-normative MTL: lead for reasons such as sense of duty or responsibility 
 
• Noncalculative MTL: lead if not calculative of the costs of leading relative to the benefits  Focus on the benefits
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16
Q

• Antecedents of MTL (and its measures)

A

• Personality (the Big Five)

• Sociocultural values (Individualism-Collectivism measure) 
 
• Leadership self-efficacy (leadership self-efficacy measure) 
 
• Past leadership experience (biographical and self-report)

Interaction of traits and personal value = leadership

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17
Q

Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995)

A

Vertical collectivism
• Perceiving the self as part of a collective, and accepting inequalities within the collective
○ Part of a clique, Confucious, Singapore, seeks inequality

Vertical collectivism
• Perceiving the self as part of a collective, and accepting inequalities within the collective
○ Part of a clique, Confucious, Singapore, seeks inequality

• Horizontal collectivism
• Perceiving the self as part of the collective, but seeing all members of the collective as the same; Equality is stressed

	○ Communist

• Vertical individualism
• Conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance of inequality
○ Seek inequality
○ Hongkong

• Horizontal individualism
• Conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis on equality
○ New Zealand , Denmark, Scandinavian

Past experiences give us a benchmark of what leadership is
Get to be the decision maker

18
Q

Affective-identity MTL

A

• Directly related to extraversion, vertical individualism, past leadership experience, and leadership self-efficacy.

• Openness to experience indirectly related through past leadership experience.

• People who like to lead and who see themselves as having leadership qualities tend to be outgoing and sociable in nature, value competition and achievement, generally have more past leadership experience than their peers, and are confident in their own leadership abilities

19
Q

Noncalculative MTL

A

Positively related to agreeableness, emotional stability, and collectivist values (both vertical and horizontal).
• Individualistic values (both vertical and horizontal) were negatively related.
• People high in noncalculative MTL do not expect rewards or privileges for leading but agree to lead because of their agreeable nature and because they tend to value harmony and are nonconfrontational in their relationships with others, irrespective of their own leadership experience or self-efficacy.

	○ Agreeableness can lead to leadership 
	○ Have decisional power
20
Q

Social-normative MTL

A

• Positively related to agreeableness, conscientiousness and both vertical individualism and vertical collectivism.

• Negatively related to horizontal individualism. 
 
• People high in social-normative MTL are motivated by a sense of duty and obligation and are also accepting of social hierarchies but rejecting of social equality. 
 
• Also tend to have more past leadership experience and are confident in their leadership abilities

Duty to lead

21
Q

How does the trait approach work

A

• Focuses exclusively on the leader with no focus on followers or situations.

• What traits leaders exhibit, who has these traits. 
 
• Organisations use personality assessments to find “right” people 
 
• Personality assessment measures for fit. 
 
• Assumption that organisations will have better performance if they put people with specific traits into particular positions.
 
What are those traits
22
Q

Strengths of the Trait approach

A

• Intuitively appealing

• Perception that leaders are different in that they possess special traits. 
 
• People “need” to view leaders as gifted.

• Credibility due to a century of research support.

• Highlights leadership component in the leadership process.

• Deeper level understanding of how leader/personality is related to the leadership process.

• Provides benchmarks for what to look for in a leader.

23
Q

Criticisms of the Trait approach

A

• Fails to delimit a definitive list of leadership traits

• Endless lists have emerged

• Doesn’t take into account situational effects

• Leaders in one situation may not be leaders in another situation.

• List of most important leadership traits is highly subjective.

• Much subjective experience and observations serve a basis for identified leadership traits.

• Research fails to look at traits in relationship to leadership outcomes.

• Not useful for training and development

How personality itself..it’s dynamic
Not as static
Outcome measures
2 questionnaires and people make correlation about leadership
Don’t know much about peronsality, Know from biography on the personality

Behavioural preferences

24
Q

Application

A

• Provides direction as to which traits are good to have if one aspires to a leadership position.

• Individuals can determine if they have the select leadership traits and can pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses through various tests and questionnaires.

• Can be used by managers to assess where they stand within their organisation and what is needed to strengthen their position.

25
Q

Competencies, Commitment, Character

A

• In assessing leaders at any level in an organization, we must always ask three questions:

• Do they have the competencies to be a leader?

• Do they have the knowledge, the understanding of key concepts, facts, and relationships that they need to do the job effectively?

• Do they have the commitment to be a leader?

• Yes, they aspire to be a leader, but are they prepared to do the hard work of leadership, engage with others in fulfilling the organizational mission, achieve the vision and deliver on the goals?

• Do they have the character to be a good leader and strive to be an even better one?
• Do they have the values, traits and virtues that others – shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, regulators and the broader society within which they operate – will use to determine if they are good leaders?

26
Q

Competencies

A

• The knowledge, skills, understanding and judgment that leaders need
• Four competencies: Strategic, business, organisational, people
How do we do it?

27
Q

Commitment

A

Forged from individual aspirations and the preparedness to be fully engaged and make personal sacrifices in return for opportunities and rewards

28
Q

Characters of Leadership

A

Why character matters

• Competencies determine what a person can do

• Commitment determines what they want to do

• Character determines what they will do

Shapes decisions we make

• Character:

• Determines how leaders perceive and analyse the contexts in which they operate 
 
• Determines how leaders use the competencies they have 
 
• Shapes the decisions they make, and how these decisions are implemented and evaluated

• No consensus on definition of character, but a focus on traits, values, virtues

• Traits. Habitual patterns of though, behaviour, and emotion that are considered to be relatively stable in individuals across situations and over time

• Values. Beliefs that people have about what is important or worthwhile to them. Can be seen as guideposts for behaviour

• Virtues. Clusters of traits, values, and behaviours that are defined as “good”

29
Q

Character Dimensions and Elements

A
30
Q

Great leader as the indispensable man

A

• Person with inexhaustible energy, imposing physique, superior intelligence, magnetic personality, extraordinary technical skills…

• Popularised under the label of the charismatic leader. 
 
• Regulations are an intrinsic part of all organisations, but the leader transcended all rules in that he made the rules.

People are often presented as an Individual

31
Q

Great leaders are self-made

A

• A misinterpretation of reality to assume that the job of top management rotates around the orbit of a single person.

• Different types of management teams, not single individuals, are now required to meet the demands of knowledge work.

• Everybody is needed, but nobody is needed too much.

• Issues of management succession, concept of followship, and integrity and trust.

There is a whole team of achievers

32
Q

Succession

A

• The ultimate defect of charismatic leadership is its attitude towards succession.

• The charismatic leader likely to be blind to the succession problem.

• Likely to pick a number two man who has never assumed responsibility for a substantive decision and ill prepared for changing external circumstances.

• In too many business corporations, the selection process was left to the judgment of one person, i.e. the CEO to pick his/her own successor.

• “Top management could not create leadership, at best it could only create the conditions that prepared for it.”

What is often projected from trait perspective but GOOD LEADERS SHOULD LOOK AT THE ONE BELOWS and bringing them up. Good leaders understand that they have a rein, which many times it has been forgotten.

Its should have good management principles

33
Q

Followship

A

• “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers… Both roles are important and badly needed. But without followers, there can be no leaders.”

• Performance, and not personality, is the key to leadership.

• Effective leaders train themselves to think as part of a team, the needs of the participants and goals of the institution no longer dependent exclusively on one person.

• The durability of an institution is not so much to creating great man as to allowing ordinary men to do outstanding things.

Followers ability to lead, how willing are they to lead. How to engage generational couples
The why and explanation becomes more important

34
Q

Integrity and Trust

A

Drucker insisted Integrity be the one absolute trait of leadership (non-negotiable). Its absence should disqualify a person from a management position.

• Three areas in which integrity is especially crucial:

• Crises - In times of peril it is imperative that there be someone around whom everyone trusts to make a decision.

• Legitimacy - Trust in the leader is not only the cement for followship but also the basis of institutional legitimacy, the foundation of authority.

• Ethics - People follow most enthusiastically when they are convinced of the ethical correctness of what they are doing.

35
Q

The Job of the Executive

• Four components:

A
  1. Purpose
    1. Performance
    2. Motivation
  2. Practice
36
Q

Purpose

A

• Management needs a meaningful mental model of the firm’s purpose in order to communicate vision and energise work.

• Success based on applying talent and intelligence to the right things.
37
Q

Performance

A

• Focus of contribution should be on measuring the job results of the assigned task and not the personal attributes of an individual.

Managing performance, keeping people on track
Managers don’t really like looking into performance, having a tough talk , think that things manage themselves
38
Q

Performance

A

• Focus of contribution should be on measuring the job results of the assigned task and not the personal attributes of an individual.

Managing performance, keeping people on track
Managers don’t really like looking into performance, having a tough talk , think that things manage themselves
39
Q

Motivation

A

• The job as the avenue to self-development

• Improving traditional executive skills and increasing receptivity for change and accepting new challenges
40
Q

Practice

A

• The key to effectiveness is practice, acquired through constant learning
Is the person not learning?
○ Is it a capacity for willing issue?

Many time we focus on the big idea
 
• Inculcation of good habits rather than inheritance of natural gifts
41
Q

Realities

A

• While the job is the key for improving effectiveness, it also has pervasive conditions that interfere with productivity

• Distrustful corporate culture, misallocation of resources, and normal organisational activities programmed executives for inefficiency and fruitless operations

• Operational pathologies – working hard on the wrong things

• Overcoming the operating trap

• Activist factor: are we just doing activities for the sake of doing it and not contributing to the bottomline of the organization?
 
• Time element: how do you use time? Are we using it well, being productive? Make it explicit and aware how important time is? 
 
• Nonsoloist dimension: understanding we cannot do work in solo

• Information and communication systems: passing information from one to other

Psychology In Leadership (16 decks)

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