do great leaders share the same traits
Summary
TLDRThis lecture delves into the age-old question of whether great leaders possess common personality traits. It explores the evaluation of leaders through surveys and biographies, focusing on George Washington's dignified demeanor and its impact on leadership. The discussion challenges the notion of universal leadership traits, citing studies that show no consistent predictive power in personality types for success. It also touches on the 'Big Five' personality traits and the shift towards behavioral and competency models in leadership development, emphasizing the importance of situational dependency in effective leadership.
Takeaways
- đ§ The quest for common personality traits among great leaders has been a long-standing question, with various surveys and assessments conducted to evaluate leaders, including U.S. presidents.
- đ Historical figures like George Washington are closely examined for their leadership qualities, with traits such as dignified demeanor and aloofness being highlighted as significant.
- đ€ The exploration of a leader's background, including family life and early experiences, is crucial for understanding their personality development and leadership style.
- đ Studies have attempted to classify presidential personalities into types, but these classifications have been met with controversy and have not definitively linked specific traits to successful leadership.
- 𧏠The 'Big Five' personality traits (extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, adjustment, and openness) have been identified through factor analysis, yet they do not consistently predict leadership success.
- đ Early leadership studies focused on traits and skills, but these have been found to be limited in predicting leadership effectiveness across different contexts.
- đ« The concept of universal leadership traits has been largely debunked, as different traits can be successful in different situations, emphasizing the importance of context.
- đĄ Modern leadership development has shifted towards competency models that focus on behaviors and skills, which are more adaptable and trainable than innate traits.
- đ The role of situational factors in leadership cannot be overlooked; the effectiveness of a leader is highly dependent on the context in which they operate.
- đ Future lectures will delve into situational leadership models that aim to clarify how leadership approaches should be tailored to specific situations and organizational contexts.
Q & A
What is the core question explored in the lecture about leadership?
-The core question explored is whether great leaders have a certain common set of personality traits or characteristics.
Why do people evaluate the personalities of American presidents?
-People evaluate the personalities of American presidents to understand their leadership and to rank them based on their performance and traits.
What are some examples of personality traits that George Washington is known for?
-George Washington is known for his dignified, forbidding demeanor, aloofness, and the distance he maintained between himself and others.
How did biographers like Ron Chernow contribute to understanding George Washington's personality?
-Ron Chernow contributed by highlighting Washington's unerring judgment, sterling character, rectitude, steadfast patriotism, sense of duty, and civic-mindedness, which were achieved by subduing his underlying volatility.
What is the significance of the 'Big Five' personality traits in leadership studies?
-The 'Big Five' personality traits (surgeon, conscientiousness, agreeableness, adjustment, and in electives) are significant as they represent an attempt to categorize and predict leadership effectiveness through a smaller set of traits.
What are the criticisms of using personality type inventories to assess presidential performance?
-Criticisms include the difficulty in drawing conclusions about performance from personality types, as different types may include both highly rated and poorly rated presidents, suggesting that personality type alone is not indicative of leadership success.
What is the main conclusion of Stodgill's meta-analysis on leadership traits?
-Stodgill's meta-analysis concluded that there is no strong evidence of a set of universal leadership traits, and that traits may be effective in one context but not in another.
How do emotional intelligence and social intelligence differ from traditional personality traits?
-Emotional and social intelligence differ from traditional personality traits as they represent a blend of traits, skills, and capabilities, focusing on a person's attunement to their own and others' feelings, and their ability to approach and handle interpersonal situations effectively.
What is the role of context or situation in leadership effectiveness according to the lecture?
-The role of context or situation in leadership effectiveness is critical, as the right leadership approach depends on the specific situation or environment in which the leader operates.
Why have organizations shifted from personality traits to competency models in leadership development?
-Organizations have shifted from personality traits to competency models because they offer clearer expectations for behavior and performance, and are more adaptable to the specific context and culture of the organization.
Outlines
đ§ Exploring Leadership Through Personality Traits
This paragraph delves into the age-old question of whether great leaders possess common personality traits. It discusses how individuals assess personalities through tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and how this extends to evaluating leaders, including presidents. The paragraph highlights the historical fascination with ranking presidents based on their personalities and the attempt to link personality traits to leadership success. It uses George Washington as an example, exploring his dignified and aloof leadership style, which was shaped by his upbringing and experiences. The discussion also touches on how biographers like WW Abbott and Rahn Chairno analyze Washington's personality development and the challenges of attributing leadership success to specific traits.
đ”ïžââïž The Elusive Nature of Personality in Leadership
Paragraph 2 continues the exploration of leadership through the lens of personality, focusing on the challenges biographers face in understanding their subjects. It uses Edmund Morris's struggle to comprehend Ronald Reagan as a case study, illustrating the difficulty of attributing leadership qualities to early life experiences. The paragraph also critiques the approach of using personality types to categorize presidents, pointing out the limitations and controversies of such typologies. It discusses a 2004 psychological study by Rubens er and fashion Bower that attempted to classify presidential types but found no clear correlation between personality type and leadership success. The paragraph emphasizes the complexity of linking personality traits to effective leadership.
đ The Search for Universal Leadership Traits
Paragraph 3 scrutinizes the concept of universal leadership traits, discussing how traits are influenced by both heredity and learning. It reviews decades of research, including a meta-analysis by Dodge Still, which found no strong evidence for a set of universal leadership traits. The paragraph also introduces the 'Big Five' personality traits modelâextraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, adjustment, and opennessâemerging from factor analysis. Despite the Big Five's descriptive value, the paragraph concludes that these traits do not consistently predict leadership success, indicating the limitations of trait-based approaches to understanding leadership.
đ Shifting Focus from Traits to Behaviors in Leadership
This paragraph marks a shift in leadership studies from personality traits to behaviors, acknowledging the limitations of trait-based approaches. It discusses the rise of interest in emotional and social intelligence as critical skills for leadership, blending traits with behaviors. The paragraph reflects on the challenges of defining universal leadership qualities and the importance of context in determining effective leadership. It suggests that leadership is situation-dependent and that the next phase of research will focus on how leadership approaches vary with context.
đą Organizational Culture and Leadership Behaviors
Paragraph 5 examines the applicability of early leadership studies to contemporary organizations, questioning whether the behaviors of leaders in the 1970s are relevant today. It contrasts traditional bureaucratic structures with modern, less hierarchical companies like Google and Facebook. The paragraph discusses the evolution from focusing on traits to developing competency models that define desired behaviors and processes for high performance. It highlights the importance of context in shaping these competency models and the challenges of transferring leadership approaches across different organizational cultures and structures.
đ± Developing Leaders Through Competency Models
The final paragraph emphasizes the move away from innate traits towards competency models that focus on behaviors and processes for leadership development. It discusses how organizations use these models to set expectations and evaluate employees, adapting them to their specific strategies, cultures, and competitive landscapes. The paragraph concludes by posing critical questions about the clarity of communicated behaviors, the feedback provided to employees, and the opportunities for development, reflecting on the importance of situational dependency in leadership and setting the stage for future discussions on the impact of context on leadership approaches.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄPersonality Traits
đĄLeadership
đĄMyers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator
đĄBiography
đĄEmotional Intelligence
đĄBig Five Personality Traits
đĄSituational Leadership
đĄDerailment
đĄCompetency Models
đĄContextual Dependency
Highlights
The exploration of whether great leaders share common personality traits or characteristics.
The historical interest in evaluating the personalities of American presidents.
The use of surveys by historians and the public to rank U.S. presidents based on their performance.
The debate on where certain presidents like Jefferson and Reagan rank in terms of performance.
The detailed study of George Washington's leadership style and personality.
The importance of Washington's dignified and aloof demeanor in his leadership.
Biographer insights into Washington's ability to subdue his volatile nature for leadership.
The examination of Washington's relationships and formative experiences to understand his personality development.
The limitations of using early childhood experiences to explain the development of leadership personality.
The psychological study by Rubenzer and Faschingbower categorizing U.S. presidents into eight personality types.
The controversy and methodological limitations of personality type analysis for predicting presidential performance.
The shift in leadership studies from traits to behaviors and the focus on situational dependency.
The rise of competency models in organizations for developing and evaluating leaders.
The importance of context in leadership and the challenges of defining universal traits or behaviors.
The need for organizations to define the behaviors and processes they want to see in their leaders based on their strategy and culture.
The three key questions organizations should ask about their competency models for effective leadership development.
The conclusion that leadership is not about universals but rather situational dependency.
Transcripts
[Music]
many of you have taken surveys over the
years to assess your own personalities
and your personality traits you might
have completed an instrument such as the
myers-briggs personality type indicator
this leads to a core question at the
heart of any study of leadership do
great leaders have a certain common set
of personality traits or characteristics
it's an age-old question that we will
explore in today's lecture now we don't
only like to evaluate ourselves it turns
out we love to evaluate and assess
others whether it be our supervisor at
work or a leader that we know of in
corporate America or an American
president in fact we love to evaluate
the personalities of our presidents
throughout history we have examined them
in great detail and over time we find
that we love to complete these surveys
by which we rate and rank all of our
presidents historians and political
scientists complete these surveys and
the American public does as well and
each year we see stories in the
newspapers about such survey results
George Washington Abraham Lincoln and
the Roosevelts all seemed to rate very
highly in most surveys Jimmy Carter
Richard Nixon and Warren Harding all
rate near the bottom they tend to come
out very poorly in these surveys and
then of course there are the great
debates where does Jefferson sit in the
ranking where does Ronald Reagan reside
in these rankings well when we look at
these evaluations we always try to
understand why did some perform well and
why did others struggle as presidents
inevitably we look to their
personalities and even to how they were
raised as children and to their family
environment to understand the
development of their personality how did
they become who they were as adults when
they were leading organizations or the
country now George Washington is one
leader that we have studied in great
great detail over the years there have
been many incredible biographies that
have
on into his life into his translated to
understand the development of the
character of America's founding father
ww Abbott is the historian who is
written about Washington at length he
wrote that an important element in
Washington's leadership both as a
military commander and as president was
his dignified even forbidding demeanor
his aloofness the distance he
consciously set and maintained between
himself and milli all the rest of the
world many people have talked about
Washington in this regard he was not
someone who was particularly close to
his subordinates to the commanders who
worked for him during the Revolution or
to his cabinet secretaries during his
presidency Rahn chair no is a biographer
who is more recently written about
George Washington he said about him his
unerring judgment sterling character
rectitude steadfast patriotism
unflagging sense of duty and civic
mindedness these exemplary virtues were
achieved only by his ability to subdue
the underlying volatility of his nature
and direct his entire psychological
makeup to the single-minded achievement
of a noble cause channel writes at
length that Washington wanted to create
the impression of a steady hand he never
wanted to show any of his own concerns
or any of his own worries to the Troops
or to the people he wanted to be able to
subdue in many ways those outbursts that
might have in fact hurt his ability to
lead others and Channel writes about how
he developed that aloof personality over
time now how do you study Washington how
do you understand that aloofness that
desire to be the steady hand who doesn't
show the emotional rollercoaster that
may be going on inside
well chair noh and others have studied
Washington's relationship with his
mother she was a stern mom who in many
ways even as an adult was continuing to
reprimand him and try to change his
behavior they examined his marriage and
his relationship with his adopted
children and grandchildren biographers
try to understand the formative
experiences that shaped the man
whether it be his childhood or the way
he was educated or his time as a
surveyor or as a commander in the French
and Indian War where he began to
struggle with how to lead a group of men
in battle over time as we examine these
presidents we're trying to define the
virtues and the traits of the great man
in case of Washington we're looking to
understand what are these virtues and
traits and might we look for them in
future leaders as we examine the
presidents who led the United States
over time the role of the biographer
then in many ways is to mine the various
experiences of a person's life
particularly their early life to find
the reasons why they are who they are
and biographers can become frustrated at
times when people remain a mystery to
them despite much research one great
example of that is Edmund Morris's
struggles to understand Ronald Reagan
Morris the famous biographer who's
written so much about Teddy Roosevelt
over time also wrote the authorized
biography of Ronald Reagan he spent many
years with the man and studied him
through the history books through his
Diaries through interviews with scores
of people in his administration as well
as people who had grown up with Ronald
Reagan but over time he struggled to
understand this man who in many ways was
aloof maybe even more aloof than
Washington with regard to his family his
peers and his subordinates and Morris
admits that sometimes you can try to
read too much into early childhood
experiences in trying to explain the
development of that personality of that
person who then is leading the nation in
his 70s he wrote at one point it's
tempting to read more into a
long-forgotten novel then Ronald Reagan
probably did as a boy he's referring to
a novel that Reagan had read as a
teenager and that in many ways did
influence his thinking over time but the
question is are we reading too much into
that
are we over explaining his later
behavior and his personality traits by
virtue of just one experience in his
childhood now some people have tried to
conduct more systematic studies across
all of the presidents rather than simply
writing biographies of one or two men
who
the office Rubens er and fashion Bower
published a psychological study in 2004
about US presidents they criticized
biographers for subjective non
professional and idiosyncratic
assessments of presidential
personalities they used techniques from
the personality trait literature on
leadership to develop a survey to be
completed by a large group of experts
their idea was to use people who
understood psychology and psychiatry to
really look at the minds and
personalities of all the presidents and
their desire was to develop a typology
and that's what they did in fact after
all of their surveys were completed
their analysis led them to a typology of
eight presidential types the dominators
the first category Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon Andrew Jackson and James
Polk the second category was the
introverts John Adams his son John
Quincy Adams and later Herbert Hoover
Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson all
presidents in the early twentieth
century
the good guys Rutherford Hayes Zachary
Taylor Dwight Eisenhower the innocence
Warren Harding ulysses s grant the
actors Ronald Reagan and Warren Harding
the maintainer 's McKinley the first
George Bush Gerald Ford and Truman the
Philosopher's Garfield Lincoln Jefferson
Madison and Carter and the extroverts
both Roosevelt's John Kennedy and Bill
Clinton well what do we make of that
personality type inventory that these
men were able to derive from their study
of all the US presidents well it's a
very controversial approach as you might
imagine and there were many
methodological limitations and issues
that were raised with this study
but beyond criticizing their methodology
we have to take a look at the groupings
but I just recited what is clear is that
you would have a very hard time drawing
conclusions about performance from this
personality type analysis for instance
Andrew Jackson is considered a great by
many historians but he's lumped in the
same category with Lee
Johnson and Richard Nixon who often rate
very poorly in surveys of political
scientists similarly they put Ronald
Reagan and Warren Harding together and
Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter
together again presidents with far
different performance results and yet
they're in the same personality category
so while we might even if we were able
to sort of accept that this typology is
valid we'd have to ask ourselves what do
we get from it are we able to predict
performance by understanding personality
type and the answer is clearly not now
this leads us to a broader discussion
which is the traits perspective on
leadership many of the early studies of
leadership particularly after World War
two by academic scholars looked at
traits that is to a variety of
individual attributes such as
personality needs motives and values to
try to understand leadership they also
looked at skills my skills I mean the
abilities to perform some tasks in an
effective manner those skills might be
of a technical interpersonal or
conceptual nature traits and skills as
it turns out or function both of
heredity and learning that's to say
you're born with certain traits but you
also develop and modify them over time
as you adapt to the environment in which
you are raised and in which you work so
many studies looked at traits try to
identify categories of them and then try
to relate them to success
however they define success in various
fields and endeavors now what was the
result of decades of research on
personality traits well in 1974 dodge
still created an interesting study he
did a meta-analysis of a hundred and
sixty-three major personality trait
studies from 1949 through 1970 reviewing
several decades of research on
leadership traits he tried to understand
what progress had been made in the field
we found was startling he saw no strong
evidence of a set of universal
leadership traits some traits seemed to
maybe raise odds of success but they
were no guarantee at all he
so found that a leader with particular
traits might be effective in one context
but not in another and lastly he saw
that two people with a very different
set of personality traits could succeed
in the same situation the end of the day
he was left to conclude that not much
real progress had been made in terms of
predictive power of these studies of
personality traits that is to say we
weren't able to look at someone
categorize their personality and then
predict whether they would succeed as a
leader in a particular context now more
recently the Center for Creative
leadership has conducted new research
looking at leaders and what they've done
is try to compare those who became
derailed in their careers after a
promotion versus those who had succeeded
when promoted in other words they looked
at people who were climbing the
corporate ladder and after a promotion
they tried to understand how many people
then went on to new promotions and
continue to climb versus those who had
become derailed and again despite all of
the research they found no formula for
success there were no common set of
traits that seemed to distinguish those
who continue to climb versus those who
had become derailed they did find some
important important insights that they
could share though they found some
skills and competencies that seemed to
define those who had avoided derailment
they seem to indicate that these people
were a little more emotionally stable
they had high integrity and they had a
nice blend of interpersonal skills as
well as technical skills but at the end
of the day these are not core
personality traits that they could
identify and correlate with success now
one other trend over the recent years in
the literature on leadership has been to
relook at how we define and categorize
personality traits
maybe if we come up with a different
type ology we might have more predictive
power that at least was the argument
that was the attempt and so scholars
have attempted to synthesize and
integrate all the various traits that
have been identified and studied over
the years and grouped them in a way into
a smaller set
traits that might have more predictive
power and these five traits have been
identified as surgeon C
conscientiousness agreeableness
adjustment and in electives how did they
get to these five traits before I say
another word about them I'd like to just
define the approach or describe the
approach and here what they did is use a
statistical technique called factor
analysis they used a wide variations in
order to assess people and then they
looked for clusters of similar traits so
they could come up with this Big Five
typology and by clustering various
traits they then were able to publish
their results
what is surgeon sees the first of the
big five well it largely revolves around
extraversion energy and the need for
power are you an outgoing person who
lights up a room are you the kind of
person who easily engages in
conversation at a meeting a dinner or a
reception the second trait was
conscientiousness are you dependable do
you have a need for achievement do you
get things done on time and under budget
agreeableness are you cheerful and
helpful do you like to belong do you
feel a need to be affiliated with groups
and teams and organizations adjustment
are you emotionally stable or do you
ride the roller coaster do you exercise
self-control and do you have
self-confidence and lastly in electus
are you curious open-minded do you
strive to constantly learn new things
develop new skills try out new behaviors
that was the last of these big five
personality type traits now at the end
of the day as I say there's been some
controversy even around whether this
typology is correct and many people have
criticized the statistical approach
taken by these scholars but again even
if we grant that this is the right five
traits that these clusters make sense at
the end of the day it may have
predictive power in some study here or
there but not overall no consistent
predictive power that we can see over
the course of many years of research
so even if we grant that there's
descriptive power in this big five we
aren't able to predict who will be a
better leader than others
finally in the most recent studies we've
begun to shift away from looking at
personality traits towards more
behavioral work and so Goldman has
talked about emotional intelligence and
others have talked about social
intelligence this is sort of a blend of
traits and behaviors emotional
intelligence for example is the extent
to which a person is attuned to their
own feelings and those of others and has
the ability to apply reason and emotion
in an integrated and balanced way this
idea of emotional intelligence caught
fire over the last decade or so and many
corporations began to train their people
and try to develop their emotional
intelligence similarly we have a lot of
work that's been done in the social
intelligence realm by social
intelligence I mean the ability to
determine how to approach a situation
and what strategies to employ in an
interpersonal conflict both of these are
powerful and they certainly have been
used in helping to develop people as
they progress in their careers but
they're really not strictly personality
traits they're really this blend of
trait and skill and capability so where
do we stand after all this work well you
have to ask yourself have we made good
progress or not and I think at the end
of the day you've realized there been
many challenges with the work on traits
and skills first we have to ask how are
these traits interrelated it's very hard
to look at them in isolation as many
scholars have tried to do to what extent
is balance important you know is it
really good to be super high or super
low on any trait or really is the best
thing to be somewhere in the middle is
moderation actually optimal in many
regards on personality traits I also
have to ask ourselves if we believe that
leadership is a shared activity then all
of this focus on the mind on the
personality of particular senior leaders
may very much be falling into that myth
that trap around the lone genius and
that really to understand the
performance of an organization even if
we believe in the trait approach we've
got to look at the traits
of the entire top team not just a leader
and finally and most importantly there's
the issue of situation or context and
this is one will look at in future
lectures that is to say does it depend
does the type of leader and the approach
of that leader depend on the context in
which they operate and is it simply
impossible to define some Universal set
of traits that apply across all contexts
now there's been a shift over the years
away from traits to looking at what acts
managers actually do that is to say to
their behaviors and these studies were
descriptive in nature trying to
understand the nature of managerial work
they were not normative they weren't
trying to predict who was better than
others or why some people had achieved
high performance instead they were
looking for patterns of activity that
all leaders engaged in they did this
through things such as diary studies and
observational studies they were going
deep into the calendar of that
individual and trying to understand
exactly how they spent their day who did
they talk to what types of activities
did they engage in what was their role
in the organization Henry Mintzberg
published perhaps one of the most famous
studies in this regard in the early
1970s he published the nature of
managerial work and in that he defined a
number of roles which he clustered into
three categories
he said as a leader there are certain
interpersonal roles that you play such
as a liaison to outside organizations or
the different units in the organization
you also play the role of figurehead at
times representing a symbolic way your
organization to the world there are a
set of information processing roles that
you play as well your monitoring
performance your disseminating knowledge
and information throughout the
organization and lastly you play
decision-making roles you have to
allocate resources you have to negotiate
between various units of the
organization when there are conflicts
and you have to make tough choices the
hard call
while Mintzberg did a very nice job of
categorizing these roles at the end of
the day the problem is that we can't
predict performance based on this
taxonomy moreover many of the
observational and diary studies that
were done on the nature of man material
work we're done in the 1970s you have to
ask are these very dated after all
there's been a great deal of change in
the nature of organizations and there
been radical changes technology overtime
let's take for example the fact that we
now see organizations that look
incredibly different than the large
bureaucratic complex structures of the
1970s we see companies like Google and
Facebook with cultures that are much
less hierarchical with people operating
without formal Authority necessarily
shifting between roles with even much
more ambiguity in roles and yet high
performance and so many changes and we
have to wonder whether these early
studies on the behaviors of leaders are
applicable today think about the culture
and the structure of your own
organization you have to ask you know
what do we conclude I mean if we look at
Google and Facebook or the industrial
giants of years past do they require
different kinds of leadership to what
extent should all organizations emulate
the leaders in some of these new
organizations that are successful such
as Google can we actually transfer the
leadership approaches and the ways of
working that exists in a place like
Google to a large organization such as
IBM or General Electric so there are
challenges with the behavioral
perspective again if the ask does
leadership depend on the situation can
we really come up with these universals
whether they be around traits or
behaviors that apply in all settings one
other approach that has garnered a great
deal of attention in the early studies
of leadership focuses not on traits but
on power and influence power is defined
in these studies as the capacity of one
party to influence another and to change
behavior sometimes it's defined as the
ability to get others to do what they
otherwise would not do and studies have
focused on the amount and type of power
possessed by a leader and surveys have
tried to relate leader power to various
measures of effectiveness and there's
lots of focus in these studies on the
influence tactus tactics that leaders
use
some try to influence others in certain
ways and others use very different
approaches now we'll look at power in
more detail in later lectures but we
certainly will note that there again
have been no Universal that come out of
that power literature in terms of trying
to identify who will make a great leader
and who won't
based on their approach to exercising
power more recently what companies have
done in terms of developing their
leaders is move away from traits
understanding the limitations of those
and they focus on what they've called
competency models these are models used
by human resource professionals
throughout many organizations to not
only help develop people during their
careers but also they've been used to
try to evaluate people in things like
merit reviews that happen on a regular
basis a competency model is a list of
capabilities or skills often organized
into multiple clusters and these
competencies have moved away from
focusing on innate traits towards
defining the kinds of behaviors and the
kinds of processes they want employees
engaged in in order to achieve high
performance the end of the day there's
been some progress with these studies
with these competency models because
they have been helpful in giving people
expectations clear expectations of how
they should perform how they should
behave in an organization but as you'll
see if you actually review competency
models they're very different across
organizations and probably that's the
right approach organizations need to
define the kinds of behaviors and
processes they want to see based on
their strategy based on their culture
based on the industry in which they
compete so competency models are
effective both for setting expectations
and evaluating employees but they're
very dependent on the context in which
those employees operate well back to
stodg till he did that wonderful
meta-analysis where we reviewed the
literature on personalities traits and
skills and here's what he concluded a
person does not become a leader he said
by virtue of the possession of some
combination of traits the pattern of
personal characteristics of the leader
must bear some relevant relationships
the characteristics activities and goals
of the followers what do we take away
from this work from this lecture where
we've started with the early studies and
try to understand all their limitations
well clearly when evaluating leaders we
don't want to focus on a few personality
traits that's been an overarching theme
and remember that many different kinds
of personalities can succeed as leaders
after all if we look back to those
American presidents that we talked about
earlier we see starkly different
personalities we talk about a Bill
Clinton of Ronald Reagan a George
Washington or an Abraham Lincoln yet
many of them succeeded in very different
contexts and very different environments
with very different traits we said we
want a shift from thinking about
personality traits to behaviors and we
want to think about how those behaviors
have to fit the culture in the
environment in which employees and
leaders are operating and we said much
progress has been made by human resource
professionals and organizations in
trying to think about that and they've
clustered their work into these
competencies that make up a model of the
kinds of expectations of behavior they
have for their people but there are
three key questions I think we need to
ask about these competency models that
organizations have adopted and ask you
now to consider these questions as you
reflect on your own organization and the
way you evaluate your own employees or
the way you are evaluated by others how
clear are you in communicating the
behaviors you expect from your employees
from your followers how much feedback do
they receive in other words if they're
not performing well if they're not doing
what the competency model expects of
them are they being told where they are
deficient and where they are proficient
are they being helped is their
development that's the last final
critical question are we offering them
away to react to the feedback and seek
out mentorship coaching and training so
they can improve those competencies over
time note where we've come we start out
talking about personality traits things
that are stable things you're born with
and that develop early in childhood and
now we're talking about comp
seized a set of behaviors and processes
that people can modify and adapt that
they can get feedback on react to in
which they can learn new things and
develop skills and improve their
performance in companies particularly
but also nonprofit institutions are
investing a great deal in trying to
understand exactly how to assess people
on various competencies and what are the
most high leverage powerful ways to
develop those skills in their high
potentials the people who are going to
potentially become the leaders of the
future for the organization
now we've noted in this lecture several
times that leadership is probably not
about universals but about situation
dependency that the right approach is
critically dependent on the situation or
context in which a leader operates and
on our next lecture we're going to take
a look at that notion in great detail we
will examine a number of models that
have tried to be more precise about
exactly how is the leadership approach
dependent on situation and what aspects
of a situation are critical for
determining how a leader should proceed
that's where we're going in our next
lecture
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