Leadership Do Traits Matter
) Academy of Management Executive, 1991 Vol. 5 No. 2
Leadership: do traits matter?
Shelley A. Kirkpatrick and Edwin A. Locke, University of Maryland Executive Overview
The study ot leader traits has a long and controversial history. While research shows that the possession of certain traits alone does not guarantee leadership success, fhere is evidence that effective leaders are different from other people in certain key respects. Key leader traits include: drive (a broad term which includes achievement, motivation, ambition, energy, tenacity, and initiative): leadership motivation (the desire fo lead but not to seek power as an end in itself): honesty and integrity: self-confidence (which is associated with emotional stability): cognitive ability: and knowledge of the business. There is less clear evidence for traits such as charisma, creativity and flexibility. We believe that the key leader traits help the leader acquire necessary skills: formulate an organizational vision and an effective plan for pursuing it: and take the necessary steps to implement the vision in reality.
Article
Few issues have a more controversial history than leadership traits and characteristics. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "great man" leadership theories were highly popular. These theories asserted that leadership qualities were inherited, especially by people from the upper class. Great men were, born, not made (in those days, virtually all business leaders were men). Today, great man theories are a popular foil for so-called superior models. To make the new models plausible, the "great men" are endowed with negative as well as positive traits. In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, for example. Slater and Bennis write, "The passing years have . . . given the coup de grace to another force that has retarded democratization—the 'great man' who with brilliance and farsightedness could preside wth dictatorial powers as the head of a growing
Leadership: do traits matter?
Shelley A. Kirkpatrick and Edwin A. Locke, University of Maryland Executive Overview
The study ot leader traits has a long and controversial history. While research shows that the possession of certain traits alone does not guarantee leadership success, fhere is evidence that effective leaders are different from other people in certain key respects. Key leader traits include: drive (a broad term which includes achievement, motivation, ambition, energy, tenacity, and initiative): leadership motivation (the desire fo lead but not to seek power as an end in itself): honesty and integrity: self-confidence (which is associated with emotional stability): cognitive ability: and knowledge of the business. There is less clear evidence for traits such as charisma, creativity and flexibility. We believe that the key leader traits help the leader acquire necessary skills: formulate an organizational vision and an effective plan for pursuing it: and take the necessary steps to implement the vision in reality.
Article
Few issues have a more controversial history than leadership traits and characteristics. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "great man" leadership theories were highly popular. These theories asserted that leadership qualities were inherited, especially by people from the upper class. Great men were, born, not made (in those days, virtually all business leaders were men). Today, great man theories are a popular foil for so-called superior models. To make the new models plausible, the "great men" are endowed with negative as well as positive traits. In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, for example. Slater and Bennis write, "The passing years have . . . given the coup de grace to another force that has retarded democratization—the 'great man' who with brilliance and farsightedness could preside wth dictatorial powers as the head of a growing