Traits and Skills of Leadership

The early trait studies attempted to identify physical characteristics, personality traits, and abilities of people who were believed to be “natural leaders.” Hundreds of trait studies were conducted, but individual traits failed to correlate in a strong and consistent manner with leadership effectiveness.  More progress was made after researchers included additional traits and skills and used better measures of traits and outcomes.  Nevertheless, much of the trait research continues to have weaknesses such as lack of adequate attention to situational variables, mediating processes, curvilinear relationships, and trait interactions. As in the case of leadership behaviour, some scholars have emphasized broadly defined categories of traits and skills that can make it more difficult to identify and understand important relationships.

Some personality trait found to be relevant for leadership advancement or effectiveness include energy level and stress tolerance, self-confidence, internal control orientation, emotional stability, extroversion, conscientiousness, and integrity.  The motive pattern characteristic of many effective managers includes a socialized power orientation and a moderately strong need for achievement with an emphasis on collective performance rather than individual performance.

To be successful, a leader also needs interpersonal, cognitive, and technical skills.  The relative priority of the three types of skill and the optimal mix of specific skills probably depends on the type of organization, the level of management, and the nature of the challenges confronting a leader.  Some skills such as persuasiveness, analytical ability, speaking ability, and memory for details will help a leader be successful in any situation, whereas some other skills are not easily transferred to a different type of position.  Competencies involve a combination of traits and some competencies examined in recent leadership research emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and the ability to learn and adapt to change.  The uniqueness and relevance of these competencies continues to be a controversial subject in the leadership literature.

The trait approach has important implications for improving managerial effectiveness. Information about traits and skills relevant for different types of managerial positions is useful for people who are planning a managerial career. The information is also useful for selecting people to fill managerial positions, for identifying training needs in the current job, and for planning management development activities to prepare the person for promotion to higher-level jobs.

Contingency Theories of Effective Leadership

The managerial job is too complex and unpredictable to rely on the same set of standardized responses for all situations. Effective leaders are continuously reading the situation determining how to adapt their behaviour to it. They seek to understand the task requirements, situational constraints, and interpersonal processes that determine which course of action is most likely to be successful. This chapter examined several contingency theories that prescribe different pattern of leader behaviour (or trait) for different situations.

The path-goal theory of leadership examines how aspects of the situation determine the optimal level of each type of leadership behaviour for improving subordinate satisfaction and effort. In the situational leadership theory, the appropriate mix of task and relations behaviour for the leader depends on the confidence and skill of a subordinate in relation to the task. Leadership substitutes theory identifies aspects of the situation that make leadership behavior redundant or irrelevant. The LPC Contingency theory described how situational favorability moderates the relationship between a leader trait (LPC) and group performance. Cognitive resources theory examines the conditions under which cognitive resources such as intelligence and experience are related to group performance. The multiple-linkage model describes how leader behaviour and aspects of the situation jointly influence individual or group performance. A leader can improve group performance by taking direct action to correct any deficiencies in the mediating variables, and over time the leader can improve group performance by taking action to make the situation more favorable.

The early contingency theories reviewed in this chapter are complex and difficult to test. Most of the theories have conceptual weaknesses such as over-emphasis on broadly-defined behaviors, exclusion of relevant situational variables, and unclear explanation of casual relationships and mediating processes.  Most studies conducted to test the contingency theories used weak research methods, and the results are difficult to interpret. None of the theories has been adequately tested, but the research provides support for some propositions in some of the theories. Additional knowledge about situational variables has been gained in research on more recent theories of effective leadership, and the findings are described in other chapters of the book.

The lack of strong, consistent results in research on contingency theories does not justify the conclusion that situation variables are irrelevant for understanding effective leadership. In an increasingly turbulent and uncertain world, flexible adaptive leadership seems even more relevant today than it was decades ago when the contingency theories were first proposed. Better contingency theories are needed to help managers understand and overcome the challenges confronting them. In future theories it is desirable to include both universal element (e.g., general principles) and situational elements (e.g., guidelines to help identify desirable behaviours for a particular type of situation).