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Despite the fact that there appear to be at least some personality traits that relate to leadership ability, the most
important approaches to understanding leadership take into consideration both the personality characteristics of the
leader as well as the situation in which the leader is operating. In some cases the situation itself is important. For
instance, you might remember that President George W. Bush’s ratings as a leader increased dramatically after the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. This is a classic example of how a situation can
influence the perceptions of a leader’s skill.
In still other cases, different types of leaders may perform differently in different situations. Leaders whose
personalities lead them to be more focused on fostering harmonious social relationships among the members of the
group, for instance, are particularly effective in situations in which the group is already functioning well and yet it is
important to keep the group members engaged in the task and committed to the group outcomes. Leaders who are
more task-oriented and directive, on the other hand, are more effective when the group is not functioning well and
needs a firm hand to guide it (Ayman, Chemers, & Fiedler, 1995). [38]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Personality is an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving.
- Personality is driven in large part by underlying individual motivations, where motivation refers to a need or desire
that directs behavior. - Early theories assumed that personality was expressed in people’s physical appearance. One of these approaches,
known as physiognomy, has been validated by current research. - Personalities are characterized in terms of traits—relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior
across many situations. - The most important and well-validated theory about the traits of normal personality is the Five-Factor Model of
Personality. - There is often only a low correlation between the specific traits that a person expresses in one situation and those
that he expresses in other situations. This is in part because people tend to see more traits in other people than they
do in themselves. Personality predicts behavior better when the behaviors are aggregated or averaged across
different situations. - The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most important measure of psychological disorders.
- Projective measures are measures of personality in which unstructured stimuli, such as inkblots, drawings of social
situations, or incomplete sentences are shown to participants, who are asked to freely list what comes to mind as