Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders

speeches, public statements, memorandums, messages, and inter-
views with the press. Since the first four types of material can be
written or crafted for the leader by others, some caution must be
exercised in examining such statements to ascertain what the leader
is like. Care and thought have often gone into what is said and how
it is said. Interviews with the media, however, are generally more
spontaneous. During the give-and-take of a question-and-answer
period, the leader must respond quickly without props or aid; what
he or she is like can influence the nature of the response and how it is
worded. Although there may be some preparation of leaders prior to
an interview with the press, during the interview they are on their
own to respond. For these reasons, the following profile is based only
on Clinton's responses to media questions in an interview setting.

Leadership Profile in General

Table 13.1 reports the average trait scores for Clinton across 105
interview responses. The scores represent the percentage of time
Clinton used words that are indicative of a particular characteristic
where the criteria for coding the trait were present. The percentages
can range from zero to one hundred. Table 13.1 also presents what
would be considered low and high scores on a specific characteristic
based on the scores of 18 North American leaders, as well as those of
122 political leaders from forty-six countries around the globe. Low
and high scores are one standard deviation below and above the aver-
age score for a particular trait for the group of leaders with whom
Clinton is being compared and differentiate him from these others.
Clinton is considered moderate in the characteristic if his score is not
one standard deviation above or below the mean of the particular
group of leaders; in other words, he resembles the comparison set of
leaders on that trait. As the reader will note, when Clinton's scores
are close to being low or high, I have noted that he leans toward
being one or the other.
Bill Clinton is different from the two samples of leaders on four of
the seven traits (57 percent). He differs from the other leaders on
conceptual complexity, self-confidence, in-group bias, and distrust
of others. The similarities and differences between Clinton and these
other leaders have implications for his leadership style. The discus-
sion that follows details these implications. It is based on extensive