do great leaders share the same traits

Summary

This 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

• 🧐 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.
• 📊 Historical figures like George Washington are closely examined for their leadership qualities, with traits such as dignified demeanor and aloofness being highlighted as significant.
• 🤔 The exploration of a leader's background, including family life and early experiences, is crucial for understanding their personality development and leadership style.
• 🔍 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.
• 🧬 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.
• 🌟 Early leadership studies focused on traits and skills, but these have been found to be limited in predicting leadership effectiveness across different contexts.
• 🚫 The concept of universal leadership traits has been largely debunked, as different traits can be successful in different situations, emphasizing the importance of context.
• 💡 Modern leadership development has shifted towards competency models that focus on behaviors and skills, which are more adaptable and trainable than innate traits.
• 🌐 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.
• 📚 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

00:00

🧐 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.

05:01

🕵️‍♂️ 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.

10:04

🔍 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 model—extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, adjustment, and openness—emerging 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.

15:05

🌟 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.

20:07

🏢 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.

25:08

🌱 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.

Keywords

💡Personality Traits

Personality traits refer to the distinctive characteristics that define an individual's behavior, thoughts, and emotions. In the context of the video, personality traits are explored as potential indicators of leadership effectiveness. The script discusses how certain traits like aloofness in George Washington's case were seen as critical to his leadership style. The video questions whether there is a common set of personality traits that all great leaders share.

💡Leadership

Leadership is the act of guiding a group of individuals or an organization towards achieving a common goal. The video script delves into the age-old question of whether great leaders possess certain common personality traits or characteristics. It examines various leadership styles and the impact of personality on leadership effectiveness, using historical figures and modern-day leaders as examples.

💡Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator

The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire designed to identify an individual's personality type based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological types. The script mentions this instrument as an example of how people often assess their own personalities, which can be related to leadership styles. It implies that understanding one's personality type might provide insights into one's leadership potential.

💡Biography

A biography is a detailed written account of a person's life. The video script uses biographies as a method to understand the formative experiences and personality development of leaders like George Washington. It suggests that biographers analyze early life experiences to explain the emergence of leadership traits, such as Washington's dignified demeanor and aloofness.

💡Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage both one's own emotions and those of others. The video mentions emotional intelligence as a concept that has gained attention in leadership studies, suggesting that it might be as important as, or even more so than, traditional personality traits in determining leadership effectiveness.

💡Big Five Personality Traits

The Big Five, also known as the Five-Factor Model, includes five broad dimensions of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The video discusses how scholars have attempted to categorize personality traits into these five dimensions to better understand and predict leadership success. However, it also points out the limitations and controversies surrounding this typology.

💡Situational Leadership

Situational leadership is a theory that suggests that the effectiveness of a leader's approach depends on the specific situation or context. The video implies that leadership is not about universal traits but rather about adapting one's leadership style to fit the situation. It sets the stage for further discussion on how different contexts might require different leadership approaches.

💡Derailment

Derailment, in the context of the video, refers to leaders who have failed to meet expectations or have been unable to progress in their leadership roles after a promotion. The Center for Creative Leadership's research on derailed leaders versus successful ones is mentioned to highlight that there is no consistent set of traits that predict leadership success or failure.

💡Competency Models

Competency models are frameworks used by organizations to identify and evaluate the capabilities or skills required for effective performance. The video discusses how organizations have shifted focus from innate traits to competencies that can be developed and modified. These models provide clear expectations for behavior and performance within an organizational context.

💡Contextual Dependency

Contextual dependency in leadership suggests that the effectiveness of a leader's approach is contingent upon the specific circumstances or environment in which they operate. The video emphasizes that leadership is not about universal traits or behaviors but is heavily influenced by the situational context, which will be explored in more detail in subsequent lectures.

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