TITLE:
What Makes a Leader? An Investigation into the Relationship between Leader Emergence and Effectiveness
AUTHORS:
Luke Treglown, Stephen Cuppello, Jayson Darby, Sonya Bendriem, Scott Mackintosh, Merle Ballaigues, Ian MacRae, Adrian Furnham
KEYWORDS:
Leadership Personality, Leaders Performance, Leadership Competencies, Organizational Performance
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.11 No.9,
September
29,
2020
ABSTRACT: Are the traits that predict leadership emergence the same that
predict leadership effectiveness? How
do leader attributes play either a direct or dynamic role in predicting
organisational outcomes? This paper presents an investigation into the
personality-performance relationship to address these questions. 936 general
population and 198 senior leadership participants took the High Potential Trait
Indicator (HPTI). The first part examined how levels of personality traits
differentiated leaders from a general population. The second examined the
relationship between leader personality, competencies and organizational
success to assess whether the traits of leader emergence are the same as
effectiveness. Additionally, this section simultaneously examined the role of
leader traits and attributes play in predicting organizational performance. The results indicated that all six HPTI traits
were associated with leader emergence. However, only three—Adjustment, Risk Approach, and Ambiguity Acceptance—were also
positively predictive of leadership effectiveness. Curiosity showed mixed benefits for leaders, whilst Conscientiousness and Competitiveness did not
differentiative leader effectiveness. Additionally, leader attributes were
found not to predict performance. This paper offers novel insight into the
important role of personality in distinguishing leader emergence as well as
leader effectiveness. Implications are discussed in relation to models of
leadership and potential, as well as for practice include identifying high
potential talent and diversity in psychometric testing.