Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

Profiling Political Leaders

As the historical overview of qualitative case studies in govern-
ment in chapter 3 demonstrates, psychobiographic and descriptive
studies of leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Nikita Khrushchev, set
the stage for the development of the comprehensive approach illus-
trated by the Camp David profiles of Menachem Begin and Anwar
Sadat, in which the analysis of the leader's personality was the basis
for a diagnosis of likely behavior under different contingencies. The
goal was to identify how the leader's political personality affected
such dimensions of leadership behavior as negotiating behavior and
crisis and strategic decision making. These studies are informed by
psychodynamic theory, so that they characteristically develop a psy-
chobiographic portrait to serve as the foundation for the assessment
of political personality. There is an emphasis on providing an
account of the cultural/historical/political context in which the
leader's personality was formed and the political context in which he
or she operates. A goal is to identify recurrent patterns of behavior,
so that predictions of future behavior are often based on observations
of the individual's past responses under similar circumstances.
Broadly speaking, three types of psychological evaluations of
political leaders are described in this volume—cognitive, personality
traits, and comprehensive qualitative case studies integrating psy-
chobiographic analysis with a psychodynamic analysis of character
and personality structure. The methods for developing these kinds of
assessments are the subjects of the chapters in part 2 of this volume.
The contributors present detailed descriptions of the methodologies
they have developed and employed.
Comprehensive evaluations drawn from the clinical case study
approach integrate psychogenetic, psychodynamic, and phenomeno-
logical perspectives. In the psychobiographic analysis, they delineate
important events in shaping the leader's psychology and then assess
the dimensions of political personality, attempting to identify the
basic personality/character structure. They attempt to discern which
public actions are driven by private motives and to detect recurrent
patterns of political behavior. In chapter 4, Jerrold M. Post describes
the applied method he developed in the government setting that
drew upon his training as a clinical psychiatrist. The method empha-
sized the integration of psychobiography with the political personal-
ity study, drawing implications for negotiations, leadership style,