Trait-Based Leadership Models - An Overview
What is Trait-Based Leadership?
Trait leadership - the oldest type of thinking about effective leadership - is defined as integrated patterns of personal characteristics that reflect a range of individual differences and foster consistent leader effectiveness across a variety of group and organisational situations (Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004).
- Basically, 'Trait-Based' leadership models focus on identifying the traits of successful leaders.
Trait-based theoretical models of effective leadership draw on the idea that great leaders have certain common character traits. We could otherwise regard this as a sort of personality profile of an effective leader.
What is a Trait?
The word 'trait' is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "... a distinguishing quality or characteristic, typically belonging to a person ..."
- A trait is, therefore, a characteristic or quality of human behaviour. We might also consider traits to be aspects of attitude or personality.
- Human beings possess very many personality traits, in infinite combinations.
Trait theory attempts to analyse effective combinations of human personality traits, thereby suggesting or identifying a set of human traits that enable a person to lead others effectively.
Are Leadership Skills Innate?
Given that personality traits tend to be quite fixed and unchanging in people, trait-based theory has definitely helped to encourage the perception that leadership ability is innate in leaders - that 'good leaders are born, not made'.
The extension of this notion is that effective leaders cannot be developed or taught.
- Trait-based theory, by implication, asserts that the best leaders are born to lead. And from a training and development standpoint, trait-based theory also implies that if a person does not possess the 'right' leadership traits, then he or she will not be able to lead effectively, or certainly, will not lead as well as a natural-born leader.
- Training and development can foster leadership ability to a degree, but what really matters is possessing the appropriate traits, or personality profile.
The ideas and implications of trait-based leadership theory - i.e., that effective leadership and potential leaders are determined by a largely pre-destined and unchanging set of character traits - that 'good leaders are born not made' - dominated leadership thinking until the mid-20th century.
Trait-based theoretical models of effective leadership draw on the idea that great leaders have certain character traits with the dated opinion that all successful leaders are born leaders. According to this idea, leaders depend on their success on a largely pre-destined set of character traits.
Stogdill and Challengers to Trait-Based Theory of Leadership
In 1948, Ralph Stogdill analysed data from over 100 leadership-related studies and was the first to challenge trait-based theory. He found there were too many qualities that make up a successful leader.
- David Buchanan and Andrzej Huczynski summarised this for today’s modern society with " The problem is that research has been unable to identify a common, agreed set of attributes. Successful leaders seem to defy classification and measurement from this perspective ."
- Therefore, a successful leader's characteristics must be relevant to the demands of the leadership situation.
In 1987, Kouzes and Posner published the bestselling book ‘ The Leadership Challenge ’. Surveying 630 managers, they identified the qualities followers looked for in a leader. Below are Kouzes and Posner's suggested ten primary or key leadership traits:
- Honest
- Forward-thinking
- Inspirational
- Competent
- Fair-minded
- Supportive
- Broad-minded
- Intelligent
- Straightforward
- Dependable
Leadership Thinking and Societal Development
Interestingly, trait-based leadership theory from the mid-1800s onwards arguably reflected the patterns and practices of the leadership of the times.
Trait-based theory, and especially the idea that leaders were born not made, was not just a theory - it was also partly reflective of how leaders were actually selected, trained, appointed, and regarded:
- Leaders rarely 'rose through the ranks' as they generally can do now in modern times.
- Organisations and groups which needed leading were extremely slow to change, by today's standards. Tradition and convention were extremely powerful features of all organised work and governing systems.
- The economy, society, industry, work and life itself, were all far less dynamic and fluid than nowadays, or even the mid-1900s. Social mobility and the class system were far more rigid than they were to become a century later.
- Very many leaders were born into privilege and positions of authority - especially in politics, the military, and to a great extent in the industry too. In the 1800s leaders, most leaders were actually born into the role.
- If potentially brilliant leaders existed elsewhere, they had little chance to emerge and lead, compared with opportunities that grew later and which exist today.
- Women, notably, were effectively barred from any sort of leadership, by virtue of their suppression practically everywhere until the early/mid-1900s.
It is no wonder, therefore, quite aside from the academic thinking of the times, that the validity of trait-based theory was not scrutinised until much later.
Summary and Conclusion
The most helpful conclusion from all this is probably that:
- Distinctive traits certainly arise in the profiles of effective leaders, and in the ways that followers believe they should be led.
- However, crucially a reliable and definitive list of leadership 'traits' has yet to be established and agreed upon by researchers and thinkers on leadership, and there are no signs that this will happen.
- Traits can perhaps define effective leadership for a given situation, but traits alone do not adequately explain what effective leadership is, nor how it can be developed.
- A traits-based approach can certainly assist in identifying future leaders, and in the leadership development process, however, traits are just a part of the profile and behaviour of an effective leader. To understand and measure leadership more fully we must broaden leadership criteria to include other factors beyond traits.
Extending this point, James Scouller suggests constructively that:
- "Even though researchers cannot agree on a shortlist of key traits, we nevertheless do see distinctive intangible qualities in the profiles of effective leaders; qualities that make leaders attractive to their followers...
- ...This invites the conclusion that although distinctive character traits are in the 'make-up' of the best leaders, there is no single set of winning traits. Therefore, it seems the best leaders have a definite but unpredictable uniqueness about them - what some people refer to as 'leadership presence'..."
References and Further Reading
- Buchanan, David A, and Andrzej Huczynski. Organizational Behaviour . New York: Prentice Hall, 1991. Print.
- Galton, Francis. (1998). Hereditary Genius . Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 1998. Print.
- Kouzes, James M, and Barry Z Posner. The Leadership Challenge . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987. Print.
- Scouller, J. (2011). The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill. Cirencester: Management Books 2000. ISBN 9781852526818
- Stogdill, Ralph M. Personal Factors Associated With Leadership: A Survey Of The Literature . The Journal of Psychology 25.1 (1948): 35-71. Web.
Trait Theory - Ralph Stogdill
Challenges to Trait Theory - Stogdill
Important research into leadership traits and among the first to challenge traditional trait-based theory was the work conducted by Ralph Stogdill.
Stogdill wrote a paper in 1948 (Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: a Survey of the Literature, Journal of Psychology) that cast doubt on trait theory.
Stogdill analysed data and findings from over a hundred leadership-related studies, across the following 27 groups of factors:
- Age
- Dominance
- Height
- Initiative, persistence, ambition, desire to excel
- Weight
- Physique, energy, health
- Responsibility
- Appearance
- Integrity and conviction
- Fluency of speech
- Self-confidence
- Intelligence
- Happiness, sense of humour
- Academic results
- Emotional stability and control
- Knowledge
- Social and economic status
- Judgement and decision (US-English, judgment)
- Social activity and mobility
- Insight (self, others, wider environment)
- Energy, daring and adventurousness
- Originality
- Social skills (sociability, tact)
- Adaptability
- Popularity, prestige
- Introversion-Extraversion
- Cooperation
Stogdill found there wasn't much agreement on the key traits. Indeed, it was clear that if all the findings were combined, the list became too long to be useful as a guide for selecting future leaders.
- Stogdill's conclusions actually still hold firm today and show no sign of being undermined in the future.
This extract from Organisational Behaviour (1985), by David Buchanan and Andrzej Huczynski, reflects very well modern thinking about this:
"The problem [in attempting to classify/measure leadership capability] is that research has been unable to identify a common, agreed set of [leadership] attributes. Successful leaders seem to defy classification and measurement from this perspective."
Summary
- Stogdill was one of the first to point out that a person doesn't become an effective leader just because he or she has certain traits.
- He argued that a successful leader's characteristics must be relevant to the demands of the leadership situation - that is, the specific challenges faced and the abilities, hopes, values and concerns of the followers.
Trait Theory - Carlyle and Galton
What is Carlyle and Galton's Trait Theory of Leadership?
Notable trait-based theorists are Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) and Francis Galton (1822-1911).
Their ideas, published in the mid-1800s, did much to establish and reinforce popular support for trait-based leadership thinking then and for many years afterwards.
Trait theory can be traced to Francis Galton's (cousin of Charles Darwin) infamous work, Hereditary Genius, published in 1869. In this book - most well known as being the foundations of eugenics - Galton hypothesised two important notions with regard to leadership:
- That it's a unique ability, possessed by certain extraordinary individuals, and their opinions and decisions are capable of bringing about radical changes.
- These unique attributes are part of their genetic makeup; therefore, leadership is hereditary.
Galton and Carlyle both suggested that some people were "natural born leaders", inheriting the talents required to lead groups of individuals.
- The general acceptance of trait-based leadership theory remained virtually unchallenged for around a hundred years when in the mid-20th century more modern ways of researching leadership started uncovered inconsistencies in the trait-based ideas. However, new thinkers during the early 1980s led to a revival and a new form of Trait Theory.
Trait Theory - Kouzes and Posner
What is Kouzes and Posner's Trait Theory of Leadership?
Despite the trait-based approach falling largely out of favour, leadership trait theory featured strongly in the best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, based on their research from 1983-87.
The authors initially surveyed 630 managers about their positive leadership experiences, augmented by 42 in-depth interviews. From this, they identified a number of key leadership traits.
Below are Kouzes and Posner's suggested ten primary or key leadership traits (sought by followers).
Kouzes and Posner's Top Ten Leadership Traits
- Honest
- Forward-looking
- Inspirational
- Competent
- Fair-minded
- Supportive
- Broad-minded
- Intelligent
- Straightforward
- Dependable
It is important to see the difference between classical leadership traits theory and Kouzes and Posner's work. They were not analysing the actual traits of effective leaders - which is the thrust of traditional traits theory.
- Instead, they asked people what they wanted in their leaders. In other words, they were compiling a profile of the ideal leader. Classical leadership traits theory is different - it aims to explain the common traits of real-life leaders.
Implications of Kouzes and Posner's Model
Kouzes and Posner went on to build more data and sophistication to support their ideas, establishing their 'Leadership Challenge Model' and a leadership development program/product, The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®.
In doing so, Kouzes and Posner's ideas shifted away from pure trait theory into the 'functional leadership' category of leadership models.
The popular success of Kouzes and Posner's early trait-based thinking illustrates the appeal of trait theory, in part at least due to its simplicity, and resulting ease of interpretation, application and transferability.
Importantly, despite this, there remains no wide agreement on the validity of trait theory as a means of wholly defining, measuring or predicting effective leadership. Kouzes and Posner's shift towards greater sophistication in modelling leadership is further evidence of this.
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