MS(HRM)

2017 Batch
Course: OB&L
21 March 2019
Leadership

Mehran University Institute of Science, Technology and

Development (MUISTD)
 Traits are distinguishing personal characteristics

 Personality is a combination of traits that classifies an

individual’s behavior

 Knowing personalities helps you to explain and predict

other's behavior and job performance

 Personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of

thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person
unique.
 The belief that leaders are born rather than made
dominated much of the late nineteenth century and the
early part of the twentieth century
› Thomas Carlyle's Book Heroes and Hero Worship (1907), William
James’s writings (1880) about the great men of history, and Galton’s
Study (1869) of the role of heredity were part of an era that can be
characterized by a strong belief that innate qualities shape human
personality and behavior.

 It was commonly believed that leaders, by virtue of their

birth, were endowed with special qualities that allow them
to lead others.
 There are four major Individual difference Characteristics
can affect leadership style: Demographic factors, values,
abilities and skills, and personality
 Demographic factors such as age and ethnic background
are individual characteristics that may impact individual
behavior and to some extent leadership style
 Values are stable, long-lasting belief and preferences
about what is worthwhile and desirable
 Values are closely related to personality
 Personality refers to a person’s character and
temperament, whereas values are principles that a person
believes
 Two related individual differences – abilities and skills –
play a role in leadership
 Ability, or aptitude, is a natural talent for doing something
mental or physical (things such as intelligence)
 A Skill is an acquired talent that a person develops related
to a specific task
 Whereas ability is somewhat stable over time, skills change
with training and experience and from one task to another.
 You can not train leaders to develop an ability or aptitude,
but you can train them in new leadership skills
› Organization, therefore, recruit and hire leaders with certain abilities
and aptitudes and then train them to acquire needed skills
 Personality is a stable set of physical and psychological
characteristics that makes each person unique.
 It is made up of a number of personality traits
 Personality consists of a set of characteristics rather than
one or two traits.
 The big five model of personality categories traits
into the dimensions of surgency, agreeableness,
adjustment, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience
 Conscientiousness
› The conscientiousness personality dimension includes
traits related to achievement
› Conscientiousness is the most strongly correlated to job
performance. This connection makes sense: individuals
who are dependable, organized, and hard working
tend to perform better in their job
› Traits of high conscientiousness include credibility,
conformity and organization
› People with this traits are characterized as willing to
work hard and put extra time and effort to accomplish
goals to achieve success.
 Extraversion
› Extraversion is the Big Five dimension with the second-
highest correlation to job related behaviors and is
particularly important in jobs that rely on social
interaction, such as management or sales.
› It is much less essential for employees working on an
assembly line or as computer programmers
› Energy, positive emotions, surgency, assertiveness,
sociability and the tendency to seek stimulation in the
company of others, and talkativeness.
 Open and talkative
 Competitive, enthusiastic and persuasive
 Enjoys a fast pace and variety at work
 Openness to Experience
› The openness to experience personality dimension
includes traits related being willing to change and try
new things.
› People strong in openness to experience seek to
change and trying new things
› While those with a weak openness dimension avoid
change and new things

Ken Chenault, CEO of AmEx, believes that being open to

change and able to adapt to it are the most important
characteristic today's leaders need to have
 Adjustment
› The adjustment personality dimension includes traits
related to emotional stability

› Stable refer to self-control, being calm-good under

pressure, relaxed, secure and positive-praising others.

› Unstable is out of control-poor under pressure, nervous,

insecure and negative-criticizing others
 Agreeableness:
› Agreeableness personality dimension includes traits
related to getting along with people
› Agreeableness personality behavior is strong when a
person is called warm, easygoing, compassionate,
friendly and sociable
› It is weak when a person called cold, difficult,
uncompassionate, unfriendly and unsociable
› Strongly agreeable personality types are sociable, spend
most of their time with people, and have lots of friends.
› agreeableness is positively correlated with good team
work skills
 Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) have proposed a modern
approach to understanding the role of traits in
leadership: several key traits alone are not enough to
make a leader, but they are a precondition for effective
leadership.
 Kirkpatrick and Locke list a number of traits that
facilitate a leader's acquisition of needed leadership
skills.
 Dominance
› Dominance which we called leadership.
› The dominance trait affects all the other traits related to
effective manager.
› For example, if you want to push people into
management positions, there is a high probability that
they will lack self-confidence and not have much energy
for the job
 High Energy
› Leaders have drive and work hard to achieve goals
› They have stamina and tolerate stress well
› Leaders take initiative to bring about improvement rather
than ask permission

 Self-Confidence
› It indicates whether you are self-assured in your
judgment, decision-making, ideas, and capabilities
› Without strong self-confidence, leaders are less likely to
attempt to influence followers, to take difficult task and to
set challenging objectives for themselves and followers
 Locus of Control
› Externalizers believe that they have no control over their
fate and that their behavior has little to do with their
performance.
› They generally have lower levels of performance
› Internalizers (Leaders) believe that they control their fate
and that their behavior directly affects their performance
› Leaders take responsibility for who they are, for their
behavior and performance, and for the performance of
their organizational unit.
› Internalizers tend to be future oriented, setting objectives
and developing plan to accomplish them.
› They are self-confident and learn from their mistake
 Stability
› Stability is associated with managerial effectiveness and
advancement
› Stable leaders are emotionally in control of themselves,
secure and positive
› Effective leaders have a good understanding of their
own strengths and weaknesses and they are oriented
toward self-improvement rather than being defensive
 Integrity
› Integrity refers to behavior that is honest and ethical,
making a person trustworthy
› The ability to influence is based on integrity
› To be viewed as trustworthy, leaders need to be honest,
support their followers and keep confidences
 Intelligence
› Leaders generally have above-average intelligence
› Intelligence refers to cognitive ability to think critically, to
solve problems and to make decisions
 Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
› EQ is ability to work well with people
› Self-awareness relates to being conscious of your
emotions and how they affect your personal and
professional life
› Social awareness relates to the ability to understand
other
› Self-management relates to the ability to control
disruptive emotions
› Relationship management relates to their ability to
work well with others
 In the 19th and early 20th centuries, “great man”
leadership theories were highly popular.
› These theories asserted that leadership qualities were inherited,
especially by people from the upper class.
› Great man were, ‘born’ not made (in those days, virtually all
business leaders were men).
 Early in the 20th century, the great man theories evolved
into trait theories.
› Trait theories did not make assumption about whether leadership
traits were inherited or acquired.
› They simply asserted that leader’s characteristics are different
from non-leaders
 Traits such as height, weight and physique are heavily on heredity,
where as other traits such as knowledge of the industry are
depended on experience and learning
 A person does not become a leader by virtue of possession of
some combination of traits
 Research shows that no traits were universally associated with
effective leadership and that situational factors were also
influential.
› For example, military leaders do not have traits identical to those of business
leaders

 Traits alone, however, are not sufficient for successful business

leadership – they are only a precondition. Leaders who possess
the requisite traits must take certain actions to be successful
(formulating a vision, setting goals)
 Six traits on which leaders differ from non-leader include,
drive, the desire to lead, honesty/integrity, self-confidence,
cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business

Traits
Drive Achievement, ambition, energy, tenacity,
initiative
Leadership Motivation Personalized vs. socialized
Honesty and Integrity
Self-confidence (including emotional stability)
Cognitive ability
Knowledge of the
business
 Achievement:
› Leaders have a relatively high desire for achievement
› Achievement is an important motive among effective leaders
and even more important among successful entrepreneurs
› High achievers obtain satisfaction from successfully completing
challenging tasks, attaining standard of excellence, and
developing better ways of doing things
› To work their way up to the top of organization, leaders must
have a desire to complete challenging assignments and
projects
› This also allow the leader to gain technical expertise, both
through education and work experience and to initiate and
follow through with organizational changes.
 Another way to learn about leaders' individual characteristics
is to evaluate leaders who are not successful and who derail.
 Do they share some common characteristics? Are they any
different from those who succeed?
 Excessive greed and corruption, incompetence, rigidity,
isolation from others, and lack of caring for others are some
of the characteristics of bad leaders.
 The following are the primary reasons for derailment:
› An abrasive, intimidating style
› Coldness and arrogance
› Untrustworthiness
› Self-centeredness and overly political actions
› Poor communication
› Poor performance
› Inability to delegate