Chapter 2 Traits, Motives, and Characteristics of Leaders

Leadership by Dubrin 6th edition

General Personality Traits of Effective Leaders: Self-confidence

1-) Self-confidence: Improves ones performance in a variety of tasks. The first leadership traits researchers identified and is not only a personality trait. It also refers to a behavior and an interpersonal skill. Leader must project that self-confidence to the group. The interpersonal skill comes in being able to keep others calm during turmoil, when he or she maintains composure when dealing with a crisis.

Humility
2-)Humility: Being humble at the right times. Part of humility is admitting that you do not know everything and cannot do everything. Admitting your mistakes to team members and outsiders. Level 5 Leader. A leader, upon receiving a compliment for an accomplishment, may explain that the group deserves the credit as well.

Trustworthiness
3-) Trustworthiness: An effective leader is supposed to walk the talk, consistency between deeds (walking) and words (talk). Trust is a persons confidence in another individuals intentions and motives and in the sincerity of that individuals word. Make your behavior consistent with your intentions. Move into a problem-solving instead of blame others for what went wrong. Honor confidences. Maintain Integrity. Tell the truth and admit mistakes

Authenticity and Extraversion

4-) Authenticity: being genuine and honest about your personality, values, and beliefs as well as having integrity. To become an authentic leader be yourself rather than attempt to be a replica of someone else. 5-) Extraversion: to be gregarious and outgoing in most situations. People can move toward becoming more extraverted by attempting to be more friendly toward people including smiling and asking questions. An example is, How are things going for you today?

Assertiveness
6-) Assertiveness: Refers to being forthright in expressing demands, opinions, feelings, and attitudes. Being assertive helps leaders perform many tasks and achieve goals. An assertive person is reasonably tactful rather than being aggressive.

Enthusiasm, Optimism, and Warmth

7) Enthusiasm, Optimism, and Warmth Group members tend to respond positively to enthusiasm. Builds good relationships with team members and high achievement. Warmth helps establish rapport with group members. Projection of warmth is a key component helps provide emotional support to group members. Cold fish dont make good leaders because they turn people off.

Sense of Humor
8-) Sense of Humor: Is relieving tension and boredom and defusing hostility. Because humor helps the leader dissolve tension and defuse conflict, it helps him or her exert power over the group. Aggressive humor can be used to victimize, belittle, and cause others some type of disparagementand will lead to negative outcomes such as stress and counter-hostility among group members.

Task Related Personality Traits

1-) Passion for the Work and the People. 2-) Courage: Leaders need courage to face the challenges of taking prudent risks and taking initiative in general. People blame leaders when outcomes are unfavorable. 3-) Internal locus of control: is closely related to self-confidence, helps a leader in the role of a take-charge person, the person perceives that he or she can control circumstances. 4-) Flexibility and adaptability: ability to adjust to different situations.

Task Related Personality Traits(Cont.)

5-) Emotional Intelligence: Refers to the ability to understand ones feelings, have empathy for others, and regulate ones emotions to enhance ones quality of life. a. Self-awareness: ability to understand your own emotions b. Self-management: ability to control ones emotions. c. Social awareness: having empathy for others. d. Relationship management: interpersonal skills of being able to communicate clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds. Also, Empathy and Social Skillsaccording to others..

Leadership Motives
1-) The power motive: means that the leader is interested in influencing others. Without power, it is much more difficult to influence others. Power is not necessarily good or evil; it can be used for: Personalized Power Motive Leaders with a personalized power motive seek power mostly to further their own interests. Socialized Power Motive Leaders with a socialized power motive use power primarily to achieve organizational goals or a vision.

Leadership Motives (Cont.)

2-)The Drive and Achievement motive: finding joy in accomplishment for its own sake. 3-) A Strong Work Ethic Motive. 4-) Tenacity and Resilience: ability to overcome rejection and keep trying.

Cognitive Factors and Leadership

The term cognition refers to the mental process or faculty by which knowledge is gathered. Cognitive (or analytical) Intelligence. Knowledge of the business or group task. Creativity (arrive at imaginative and original solutions to complex problems) Openness to experience. Insight into people and situations (considerable intuition and common sense).

Cognitive Factors and Leadership (Cont.)

Farsightedness and conceptual thinking: to understand the long-range implications of actions and policies. Executive intelligence: the concept refers to superior reasoning and problem-solving skills that enable the executive to cut through conflicting data to create a solution that uniquely fits the situation at hand.

The WICS Model of Leadership in Organizations

WICS is a systems model of leadership that provides an understanding of leadership as a set of decision processes that embodies wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, as well as other higher cognitive processes. Creativity generates the ideas or stories a leader needs to inspire and motivate followers. Analytical or academic intelligence: evaluates whether the ideas are good or bad. Practical intelligence refers to the ability to solve everyday problemssometimes referred to as street smartsby using experience-based knowledge to adapt to and shape the environment.

The Influence of Heredity and Environment on Leadership

Are leaders born or made? Do you have to have the right stuff to be a leader? Most sensible answer is that the traits, motives, and characteristics required for leadership effectiveness are caused by a combination of heredity and environment. Personality traits and mental ability traits are based on certain inherited predispositions and aptitudes that require the right opportunity to develop. Cognitive intelligence is a good example. I think leadership is a combination of nature and nurture.

The Influence of Heredity and Environment on Leadership (Cont.)

Effectiveness are a combination of heredity and environment. We inherit a basic capacity that sets an outer limit to how much mental horsepower we will have. Yet people need the right opportunity to develop their cognitive intelligence so that they can behave brightly enough to be chosen for a leadership position.

The Strength and Limitations of the Trait Approach

Evidence is convincing that leaders possess personal characteristics that differ from those of non leaders. But they do need to have the right stuff and this stuff is not equally present in all people. Another important strength of the trait approach is that it can help people prepare for leadership responsibility and all of the issues that accompany it. Different situations call for different combinations of traits.

The Strength and Limitations of the Trait Approach (Cont.)

The trait approach to leadership is supported by many studies showing that leaders are different from Non leaders and that effective leaders are different from less effective leaders. Nevertheless, the trait approach does not tell us which traits are most important in which situations or how much of a trait is required. Also, different situations call for different combinations of traits