Chapter 2 - Trait Approach

All players from the top team were born in the first half of the year, in both examples

• All people in national teams get scouted form the same year = people that are born in the first months of the year are naturally older = stronger, more developed

• In young years a few months have a lot of influence on body development, characteristics,…

• There is a clear path for you career when you are older

• You have certain characteristics that help, but context is important

—> Nature vs. Nurturev

Entrepreneur Study with twins

They took a sample of twins monozygotic and dizygotic that were separated when they were born. They wanted to see the influence of genetics and nature (environment)

—> schauen wie Studie aufgebaut war, was bedeutet was

Nature

Genes can play a role if someone is risk-averse / risk-seeking, creative / not creative,…

—> You can have some traits, but context influences them as well

• Kind of an energy, hard to explain

• Means: gift from god

• Leadership trait; it is not learanble, trait makes you more likely to be a successful leader

• Also has a dark side to it – create a cult (too much of a positive trait can get negative (posion – medicine)

• It is about consistency not intensity (can’t become a good leader in 6 weeks)

• The accumulation of a lot of little things like saying good morning and how are you doing – stay and listen = shows you care

• Being a good leader is about actions we are doing every day (not only nature)

• Consistency changes traits others see

• Example going to the gym 20min a day: on the first day you see nothing after a month you will see first differences

Trait Approach: one of the first systematic attempts to study leadership

“Great Man” Theories (early 1900s)

• Focused on identifying innate qualities and characteristics possessed by great social, political, & military leaders

• It is biased, because you look at good leaders

Traits are stable characteristics of an individual that don’t / will not change over time

—> that was the belief for a long time, now the field shiefts: more flexible / changeable

• We are born with some e.g. extraversion, but it can change, because of certain circumstances (exogenous shocks)

• Narcisism is a bad trait (e.g. Trump – it is all because of him) (Narcissimus)

• Also: hubiris – thinking that you are better than others (Ikurus)

• Napoleon: put a picture of himself in the church, so a lot of people will see it, the proportions of the picture were way of – preceived as powerful

Research Narcisism - Leaders

How to measure narcisism – should be not intrusiv

1. Looking at a picture of the leader: Are their in focus, up front, big face —> prominent picture = narcisism

2. Look at the letter of shareholding: look at the wording, I rather than we, higher frequnecy of I -> probably more narcisistic

3. Salary differences between CEO and Executive Board: the higher the differences the higher the status --> higher gap = more narcisistic

—> correlation between all three (which first seem unrelated) – come togetehr to show narcisism

Narcisistic leaders take bolder projects / actions / strategies -> boost their own ego (Trump)

Narcisitic leaders are likely to choose loyal followers -> they care a lot about their ego = negative feedback kills ego (which a honest person would probably give you at some point) = they have loyal followers to avoid getting negative feedback

Empathetic, extraversion, open-mindedn, resilience, self-confidence, ambitious

Careful: communicator or driven – depend on circumstances, can be a skill that can betrained —> all tap into extraversion

—> those are the two big theories when studying leadership

• Basic psychology (yellow): applied to everything, basic psychology traits

• Leadership specific traits (blue)

5 Traits in basic psychology: OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion (Introversion), Agreeableness, Neuroticism)

• Risk-aversion: in psychology called openness to experience

• Conscientiousness —> being organized, dependable, go all the way through

• Neuroticism —> being anxious and overthinking, reacting strong to environment

  • Opposite = emotional stability (you get it through mindfulness)

  • Mindful meditation: focusing on present, because thinking about past you will regret sth., thinking about the future gets you anxious/fearful – based on buddism

Extraversion is most associated to leadership, but does not necessarily makes a good leader

-> is is preceived; based on perception = leaders who are extroverts are preceived as good leaders, but their effectiveness is not measures – subjective

-> we all weight traits differently

Big Five & Leadership Study Using Meta-Analysis (Judge et al, 2002)

Results – a strong relationship between personality traits and leadership

• Extraversion – factor most strongly associated with   leadership

  • Most important trait of effective leaders

• Conscientiousness – 2nd most related factor

• Openness – next most related

• Low Neuroticism

• Agreeableness – only weakly related to leadership

Traits to possess or cultivate if one seeks to be perceived by others as a leader:

• Intelligence – Verbal, perceptual, and reasoning capabilities. Ex. Steve Jobs

• Self-Confidence – Certainty about one’s competencies and skills. Ex. Steve Jobs

• Determination – Desire to get the job done (i.e., initiative, persistence, drive). Ex. Lance Armstrong

• Integrity – The quality of honesty and trustworthiness. Ex. Character Counts! Program

• Sociability – Leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships. Ex. Michael Hughes, university president

-> in the matrix empathy is referring to the cognitive part of it

self-control = you are mindful

influence bei ihm nennt er aber auch eher relationship management

• Has two dimensions —> understanding own and others feelings and actions

• Successful poker players are people with high emotional intelligence —> they control frustration of bad cards (recognize and control their own emotions, bluffing), they read toher people and control them -> in den Schritten gehen sie von jeweils der linken Box zur Rechten (also oben: recognize own emotions —> handle them, recognize others emotions —> bluff)

• Also high IE: buddistic monks

• Empathy: 2 parts -  emotional and cognitive (links unten in Matrix)

  • Emotional: see somebody suffering and feel also bad = mirror emotions, experience same emotions -> determined by biology: amygdala and higher activation of mirror neurons = why some people feel the emotions of others

  • Cognitive: perpective taking – undertsand emotion, but don’t feel it

-> in the matrix empathy is referring to the cognitive part

MSCEIT: EI as a set of mental abilities

• to perceive, facilitate, understand, and manage emotion

Goleman (1995, 1998): EI as a set of personal and social competencies

• self-awareness, confidence, self-regulation, conscientiousness, and motivation

Leader

• Focuses exclusively on leader

  • What traits leaders exhibit

  • Who has these traits

Personality Assessments

Organizations use personality assessments to find “right” people

• Assumption - will increase organizational effectiveness

• Specify characteristics/traits for specific positions

  • Personality assessment measures  for “fit”

  • Instruments: LTQ, Myers Briggs

• Intuitively appealing

  • Perception that leaders are different in that they possess special traits

  • People “need” to view leaders as gifted

• Credibility due to a century of research support

  • Highlights leadership component in the leadership process

  • Deeper level understanding of how leader/personality related to leadership process

• Provides benchmarks for what to look for in a leader

• Fails to delimit a definitive list of leadership traits

  • Endless lists have emerged

• Doesn’t take into account situational effects

  • Leaders in one situation may not be leaders in another situation

• List of most important leadership traits is highly subjective

  • Much subjective experience & observations serve as basis for identified leadership traits

• Research fails to look at traits in relationship to leadership outcomes

• Not useful for training & development

• Sometimes negative traits can lead to positive outcomes

• Sometimes positive traits can lead to negative outcomes

-> example Churhill, Roosevelt, Hitler

• They developed resilience

• They struggled with challenges all their live, so when a crisis comes they can hanlde it

• They already fought their demons = are usde to crisis

• empathize, recognize threats and respond appropriately during times of crisis

• Those leaders are good in a specific context which is during crisis = changing context

-> Don’t put a stigma on negative traits – always think about traits in respect to the context

Crisis: moment of emergency, change in environment and outcome

Many Traits are psychological and some also physial

• Frequency of CEO voice: how much salary and how big company is -> CEO’s with low vocal frequency earn more (around 200k more) and and led bigger companies

• Lower pitch voice – more succesful, because it gives a feeling of safety, trustworthy, cofidence = suggest trust and self-confidence

• Caution: here no causality only correlation  you would need to check it for example change CEO from high-pitch to low-pitch voice male

  
  

• In president elections the taller candidate often wins