THE ESSENCE OF LEADERSHIP
Lecture 1
1. Definition of Leadership
2. The trait approach
1. What is Leadership?
The ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute toward the
effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members
- Influence change their perceptions, thinking
- Motivate change their behavior, obviously aligned to their own goals, in the organizations
interest
- Enable provide them with the resources to get them started
Leaders vs managers: Learmonth & Morrel (2021; Organization Theory)
Managers bureaucrat/problem solving/keeping the order/administrator
- Plan and budget
- Organize and staff
- Control and solve problems
- Produce consistency and order
Leaders visionary
- Establish direction
- Align people
- Motivate and inspire
- Are concerned with productive or adaptive
Framework for leadership research
- Leaders how to host their goals
- Effective leaders in organizations motivate and enable others to achieve organizationally
relevant goals
- Organizationally relevant goals are
o Productive output of a unit meets the standards of quantity, quality, and timeliness
of its clients
, o High levels of social integration within a unit
o High levels of continuous learning and well-being of unit
o Goals and means to achieve goals are ethical
2. The trait approach: Is a leader born of built?
A trait is a stable characteristic of a person. A certain act/consistency of a person.
Psychological (e.g. extraversion, intelligence)
Physical (e.g. gender, height)
Meta-analysis = type of study which summarize results of different studies. Unitary
coefficient of variables.
Physical features and leadership: height
- Average correlation between height and leader emergence r = .24 (small to medium effect,
not a strong effect but it does matter apparently)
- Leader emergence = likelihood becoming into a leadership position
- Leader effectiveness = once you are in a leadership position how effective are you? How is
your performance?
- Height vs. popularity (e.g. David Cameron, Barack Obama)
Physical features and leadership: weight
- Relationship between weight and both monthly and yearly salary differs depending on
gender
- The relationship is positive for men but negative for women
- Salary proxy for leadership position higher salary more leadership (leader earns more)
o Men bigger more salary (monthly and yearly)
o Women bigger less salary (monthly and yearly)
o Conclusion: there is a gender situation/stereotype
Physical features and leadership: earlobes?
- Positive relationship between facial asymmetry (including subtle differences in earlobe size,
wrist width, or finger length) as well as transformational leadership, follower well-being, and
team performance
- Proposition that people born with asymmetries tend to develop greater empathy, social
intelligence, and motivational skills as a ways of overcoming unfavorable perceptions of
others (e.g. lack of attractiveness or intelligence)
- Compensation for not looking the standard attractiveness
Intelligence and leadership: definition
‘the aggregate of the global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the
environment’
‘ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from
experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought’
Intelligent easy to learn learn new skills in a new work environment
Intelligence and leadership: evidence
- Average correlations
o Intelligence and leader emergence: r = 0.25
o Intelligence and leader effectiveness: r = 0.20
o Observer-rated intelligence and leader emergence: r = 0.60
, If people think your intelligence, their very likely to think you’re a leader or
should be a leader. Act intelligent
- Conclusions
o Intelligence seems important, but less so than commonly assumed (small to medium
sized relations to effectiveness)
o Apparent intelligence may be more important than actual intelligence
Personality and leadership: the big five
- O Openness to experience explorative (e.g. often try new foods)
o Imagination
o Aesthetics; appreciation for art and beauty
o Emotions; susceptibility for own and foreign emotions
o Acts; willingness to try new activities
o Ideas; open-minded; to deal with new things
o Norms and value system
o People that score highly on openness are characterized by diverse interests
- C Conscientiousness working hard, routines (e.g. I work hard to achieve my goals)
o Competence; to take action and act in reasonable, capable and effective ways
o Orderliness; well-organised and tidy
o Sense of duty; sticking to principles, fulfillment of moral obligations
o Need for achievement; high demands, diligence, determination
o Self-discipline; to motivate oneself, not getting distracted
o Prudence; think first, act second
o Conscientious people are aware of their responsibility for their job and they work
ambitiously to reach their goals
- E Extraversion very social, life of group discussions (e.g. I like to have many people
around)
o Warmth; kind and emotional
o Frankness; impartial, open and sincere
o Assertiveness; social superiority, vigorous and dominant
o Activity; need to be and stay busy
o Hunger for experience; to long for stimulation and entertainment
o Cheerfulness; optimistic, happy, smile a lot
o Extroverts are usually gentle, adventurous, talkative, and tend to socialize effortlessly
with others
o Leadership get everybody to express their opinions in discussions, not only the
extroverts, because they lead the discussion into a certain direction
- A agreeableness (e.g. I try to be kind to every person I meet)
o Trust; to be convinced of the honesty and good intention of others
o Conviviality; to enjoy the presence of others
o Altruism; actively worried about the well-being of others, generous
o Concession; drawback, forgiving, gracious and gentle
o Modesty; restrained and modest
o Goodness; being concerned by the need of others, feeling sympathy
o Not persé effective as leader, need to disagree
- N Neuroticism negative emotions (e.g. I worry a lot)
o Anxiety, quick-tempered, depression, social bias, impulsivity, vulnerability
o Highly neurotic people are anxious, nervous, worried and easily lose their temper
under pressure
o But see details in complex tasks, more secure
, o Negative positive
o Secure, detailed, accurately then motivation
Conclusion: personality seems more important for leadership than commonly assumed and more
important than intelligence
(combination of all five traits together high leader emergence (r = .53), leader effectiveness (r = .
39)
- Extraversion & conscientiousness highest leader emergence (r = 0.33)
- Conscientiousness leader emergence (r = 0.16) why?
o Unpredictability
o Less communication
o The best employees may not make the best leaders
o Do not need to be disciplined
- Agreeableness leader emergence (r = 0.24)
o Need to agree in a ruthless working world
What about emotional intelligence?
‘ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions to assist thought, to understand
emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions to promote emotional and
intellectual growth’
Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness
Relationship management
Emotional intelligence: evidence
- Measurement issues = trait approach assumes that individuals are able to accurately
estimate their maximum performance on problems about emotions and are willing to report
it on questionnaires, which is hardly the case (people see themselves in a certain way which
Is not accurate in reality with emotional intelligence)
- Not more than personality and cognitive = this critique is accurate in relation to self-report
approaches, but not to test-based approaches. Self-report measures are more strongly
correlated with personality traits, which also capture self-perceptions, than with test-based
measures of EI
- Generic approach – different jobs, different emotional needs = more fine grained approaches
to the study of EI have already acknowledged that EI is more relevant in certain domains
than other
- In reality, EI is less of a helpful trait than thought!
Summary relevant traits
- Intelligence
- Personality
o Extraversion
o Neuroticism
o Conscientiousness
o Agreeableness
o Openness to experience
- Physical features
o Height, etc
- Emotional intelligence?
o For select jobs
Lecture 1
1. Definition of Leadership
2. The trait approach
1. What is Leadership?
The ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute toward the
effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members
- Influence change their perceptions, thinking
- Motivate change their behavior, obviously aligned to their own goals, in the organizations
interest
- Enable provide them with the resources to get them started
Leaders vs managers: Learmonth & Morrel (2021; Organization Theory)
Managers bureaucrat/problem solving/keeping the order/administrator
- Plan and budget
- Organize and staff
- Control and solve problems
- Produce consistency and order
Leaders visionary
- Establish direction
- Align people
- Motivate and inspire
- Are concerned with productive or adaptive
Framework for leadership research
- Leaders how to host their goals
- Effective leaders in organizations motivate and enable others to achieve organizationally
relevant goals
- Organizationally relevant goals are
o Productive output of a unit meets the standards of quantity, quality, and timeliness
of its clients
, o High levels of social integration within a unit
o High levels of continuous learning and well-being of unit
o Goals and means to achieve goals are ethical
2. The trait approach: Is a leader born of built?
A trait is a stable characteristic of a person. A certain act/consistency of a person.
Psychological (e.g. extraversion, intelligence)
Physical (e.g. gender, height)
Meta-analysis = type of study which summarize results of different studies. Unitary
coefficient of variables.
Physical features and leadership: height
- Average correlation between height and leader emergence r = .24 (small to medium effect,
not a strong effect but it does matter apparently)
- Leader emergence = likelihood becoming into a leadership position
- Leader effectiveness = once you are in a leadership position how effective are you? How is
your performance?
- Height vs. popularity (e.g. David Cameron, Barack Obama)
Physical features and leadership: weight
- Relationship between weight and both monthly and yearly salary differs depending on
gender
- The relationship is positive for men but negative for women
- Salary proxy for leadership position higher salary more leadership (leader earns more)
o Men bigger more salary (monthly and yearly)
o Women bigger less salary (monthly and yearly)
o Conclusion: there is a gender situation/stereotype
Physical features and leadership: earlobes?
- Positive relationship between facial asymmetry (including subtle differences in earlobe size,
wrist width, or finger length) as well as transformational leadership, follower well-being, and
team performance
- Proposition that people born with asymmetries tend to develop greater empathy, social
intelligence, and motivational skills as a ways of overcoming unfavorable perceptions of
others (e.g. lack of attractiveness or intelligence)
- Compensation for not looking the standard attractiveness
Intelligence and leadership: definition
‘the aggregate of the global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the
environment’
‘ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from
experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought’
Intelligent easy to learn learn new skills in a new work environment
Intelligence and leadership: evidence
- Average correlations
o Intelligence and leader emergence: r = 0.25
o Intelligence and leader effectiveness: r = 0.20
o Observer-rated intelligence and leader emergence: r = 0.60
, If people think your intelligence, their very likely to think you’re a leader or
should be a leader. Act intelligent
- Conclusions
o Intelligence seems important, but less so than commonly assumed (small to medium
sized relations to effectiveness)
o Apparent intelligence may be more important than actual intelligence
Personality and leadership: the big five
- O Openness to experience explorative (e.g. often try new foods)
o Imagination
o Aesthetics; appreciation for art and beauty
o Emotions; susceptibility for own and foreign emotions
o Acts; willingness to try new activities
o Ideas; open-minded; to deal with new things
o Norms and value system
o People that score highly on openness are characterized by diverse interests
- C Conscientiousness working hard, routines (e.g. I work hard to achieve my goals)
o Competence; to take action and act in reasonable, capable and effective ways
o Orderliness; well-organised and tidy
o Sense of duty; sticking to principles, fulfillment of moral obligations
o Need for achievement; high demands, diligence, determination
o Self-discipline; to motivate oneself, not getting distracted
o Prudence; think first, act second
o Conscientious people are aware of their responsibility for their job and they work
ambitiously to reach their goals
- E Extraversion very social, life of group discussions (e.g. I like to have many people
around)
o Warmth; kind and emotional
o Frankness; impartial, open and sincere
o Assertiveness; social superiority, vigorous and dominant
o Activity; need to be and stay busy
o Hunger for experience; to long for stimulation and entertainment
o Cheerfulness; optimistic, happy, smile a lot
o Extroverts are usually gentle, adventurous, talkative, and tend to socialize effortlessly
with others
o Leadership get everybody to express their opinions in discussions, not only the
extroverts, because they lead the discussion into a certain direction
- A agreeableness (e.g. I try to be kind to every person I meet)
o Trust; to be convinced of the honesty and good intention of others
o Conviviality; to enjoy the presence of others
o Altruism; actively worried about the well-being of others, generous
o Concession; drawback, forgiving, gracious and gentle
o Modesty; restrained and modest
o Goodness; being concerned by the need of others, feeling sympathy
o Not persé effective as leader, need to disagree
- N Neuroticism negative emotions (e.g. I worry a lot)
o Anxiety, quick-tempered, depression, social bias, impulsivity, vulnerability
o Highly neurotic people are anxious, nervous, worried and easily lose their temper
under pressure
o But see details in complex tasks, more secure
, o Negative positive
o Secure, detailed, accurately then motivation
Conclusion: personality seems more important for leadership than commonly assumed and more
important than intelligence
(combination of all five traits together high leader emergence (r = .53), leader effectiveness (r = .
39)
- Extraversion & conscientiousness highest leader emergence (r = 0.33)
- Conscientiousness leader emergence (r = 0.16) why?
o Unpredictability
o Less communication
o The best employees may not make the best leaders
o Do not need to be disciplined
- Agreeableness leader emergence (r = 0.24)
o Need to agree in a ruthless working world
What about emotional intelligence?
‘ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions to assist thought, to understand
emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions to promote emotional and
intellectual growth’
Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness
Relationship management
Emotional intelligence: evidence
- Measurement issues = trait approach assumes that individuals are able to accurately
estimate their maximum performance on problems about emotions and are willing to report
it on questionnaires, which is hardly the case (people see themselves in a certain way which
Is not accurate in reality with emotional intelligence)
- Not more than personality and cognitive = this critique is accurate in relation to self-report
approaches, but not to test-based approaches. Self-report measures are more strongly
correlated with personality traits, which also capture self-perceptions, than with test-based
measures of EI
- Generic approach – different jobs, different emotional needs = more fine grained approaches
to the study of EI have already acknowledged that EI is more relevant in certain domains
than other
- In reality, EI is less of a helpful trait than thought!
Summary relevant traits
- Intelligence
- Personality
o Extraversion
o Neuroticism
o Conscientiousness
o Agreeableness
o Openness to experience
- Physical features
o Height, etc
- Emotional intelligence?
o For select jobs
