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THE LEADER AS AN
INDIVIDUAL
Damon Burton
University of Idaho
PERSONALITY AND
LEADERSHIP
Personality – set of unseen
characteristics and processes that
underlie a relatively stable pattern
of behavior in response to ideas,
objects or people in the
environment.
 Understanding differences in
personality can enhance leadership.
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What are the
Big 5?
BIG 5 PERSONALITY
DIMENSIONS
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extraversion,
agreeableness,
conscientiousness,
emotional stability, and
openness to experience.
EXTRAVERSION
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Extraversion refers to traits that
influence behavior in group settings.
Extraversion – the degree to which a
person is outgoing, sociable, talkative
and comfortable meeting and talking
to new people.
Dominance is also a characteristic of
this personality trait because they like
to be in control and have influence
over others.
EXTRAVERSION
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Extraverts are confident, seek out
positions of authority and are
competitive and assertive.
They like being in charge of others
and have responsibility for others.
Not all leaders need to be
extraverts and dominant but it’s
often helpful.
AGREEABLENESS
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Agreeableness – the degree to which a
person is able to get along with others
by being good-natured, cooperative,
forgiving, compassionate,
understanding and trusting.
Agreeable leaders are warm and
approachable rather than cold, distant
and insensitive.
They make friends easily and have a
lot of friends.
AGREEABLENESS
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In today’s collaborative organizations,
agreeableness is valuable.
Agreeableness can be developed by
being friendly and cooperative,
understanding other people in a
genuine way, and striving to make
people feel good about themselves.
They make friends easily and have a
lot of friends.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
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Conscientiousness – the degree to
which a person is responsible,
dependable, persistent, and
achievement-oriented.
Conscientious leaders focus on a few
goals that are pursued in a purposeful
way.
This trait focuses on the task not
relationships.
EMOTIONAL STABILITY
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Emotional stability – is the degree to
which a person is well-adjusted, calm
and secure.
Leaders who are emotionally stable
handle stress and criticism well and
don’t take mistakes or failures
personally.
They normally are high in emotional
intelligence.
OPENNESS TO
EXPERIENCE
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Openness to experience – is the degree
to which a person has a broad range of
interests and is imaginative, creative and
willing to embrace new ideas.
Open leaders are intellectually curious
and seek new experiences thru travel,
movies, books, the arts and movement.
New experience truly broaden the mind
and enhance receptivity.
PROBLEMS WITH
THE BIG 5
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Each dimension is made up of numerous
traits which makes it hard to measure.
Limited research have linked the Big 5 with
leadership success. For example, a review
could not conclude that 4 of the 5
dimensions related to successful leadership.
A study of U.S. presidents found openness to
experience was most highly related to
greatness (e.g., Lincoln & Jefferson).
PROBLEMS WITH
THE BIG 5 -2
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Extraversion, conscientiousness and
emotional stability also were correlated
with greatness.
Few leaders have consistently high
scores across all Big 5 dimensions.
Leaders must understand their
personality traits and emphasize the
positive and mitigate the negative.
Intelligence, knowledge, values and
problem-solving skills are also important.
What is locus of
control?
LOCUS OF CONTROL
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Locus of control – reflects whether
people place primary responsibility
for things within themselves or on
outside forces.
Internal control – is the belief that
their own actions determine what
happens to them.
External control – is the belief that
outside forces determine one’s fate.
LOCUS OF CONTROL - 2
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Internals versus externals behavior
differently across a wide range of
settings.
Internals are self-motivated, in control of
their behavior, active in social and
political causes, and actively seek
information.
Internals are also better at handling
complex information and problem-solving
and are more achievement oriented.
LOCUS OF CONTROL - 3
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Internals are more interested in
influencing others, so they are more likely
to assume leadership roles.
Externals prefer structured, directed work
situations.
Externals are better at handling work that
requires compliance and conformity, but
are worse at initiative, creativity and
independent action.
Externals are better followers than
leaders.
AUTHORITARIANISM
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Authoritarianism – is the belief that
power and status differences should exist
in organizations.
Authoritarians adhere to conventional
rules and values, obey established
authority, respect power and toughness,
judge others critically and disapprove of
displaying one’s feelings.
Highly authoritarian leaders rely heavily
on formal authority and are unlikely to
share power with subordinates.
AUTHORITARIANISM - 2
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The new leadership paradigm is less
authoritarian.
How followers respond to authoritarian
leaders depends on how authoritarian
they are themselves.
Dogmatism refers to how receptive
people are to others’ ideas and opinions
and is closely related to authoritarianism.
Dogmatic leaders are close-minded and
unreceptive to other ideas and make
decisions with limited information.
VALUES
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Values – are fundamental beliefs that an
individual considers to be important, are
stable over time and impact attitudes,
perceptions and behavior.
Values prompt people to prefer things be
done in a particular way.
Strong values drive behavior.
Two types of values are (a) instrumental
and (b) end values.
What type of values
were we measuring
with the Life Values
Inventory (LVI)?
VALUES - 2
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End Values – beliefs about the kind of
goals that are worth pursuing (e.g.,
security, health, & social recognition).
Instrumental Values – beliefs about the
types of behavior that are appropriate for
reaching goals (e.g., helping others,
honesty & courage).
Values are learned, not inherited, often
early in life.
Teachers and coaches have a huge impact
on values.
ATTITUDES
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Attitude – a positive or negative
evaluation of people, events and things.
Three components of Attitudes include:
(a) cognitions (i.e., thoughts), (b) affect
(i.e., feelings), and (c) behavior.
Cognitive component focuses on ideas
and knowledge you have about a topic.
Affect component concerns how we feel
about things.
Attitudes change more easily than values.
ATTITUDES - 2
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Self-Concept – is the collection of
attitudes we have about ourselvesand
includes self-esteem (i.e., general
feelings about oneself).
Leaders with positive self-concepts are
more effective in all situations.
How leaders relate to others depends on
their attitude towards others.
Theory X and Theory Y represent 2
different sets of attitudes about how to
interact and influence followers.
THEORY X VERSUS
THEORY Y
BAD ATTITUDES
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According to Marshall Goldsmith,
leaders sabotage their
effectiveness with 3 bad attitudes,
including:
• winning at all costs in all situations,
• clinging to the past, and
• never being able to say you’re sorry.
SOCIAL PERCEPTION
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Perception – the process people use to make
sense out of their surroundings and
experiences by selecting, organizing and
interpreting information.
People often see the same event differently.
In a survey of 2000 workers, 92% of
managers rated their performance good to
excellent whereas only 67% of workers gave
them similar ratings.
40% of women but only 10% of men
perceive that women face a “glass ceiling.”
PERCEPTUAL
DISTORTIONS
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Perception Distortions – are errors in
perceptual judgment that arise from
inaccuracies in the perceptual process.
Stereotyping, halo effect, projection and
perceptual defense are common perceptual
errors.
Stereotyping – the tendency to assign an
individual to a group or category (e.g.,
female, black, elderly, or disabled) and then
to attribute widely held generalizations
about the group to that individual.
PERCEPTUAL
DISTORTIONS - 2
• “Halo Effect” – occurs when the a person
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develops an overall impression of the person or
situation based on one characteristic.
A “halo” characteristic blinds the person to
other factor that should be part of a more
complete assessment (i.e., punctuality).
Projection – the tendency to see your own
personal traits in others so you project your own
needs, feelings, values and attitudes into the
judgment of others.
If you are highly motivated, you assume
followers are as well.
PERCEPTUAL
DISTORTIONS - 3
• Perceptual Defense – tendency to protect
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themselves against ideas, objects or people
that are threatening by disregarding
negative experiences.
We develop perceptual “blind spots” so
negative information doesn’t hurt them.
For example, growing up in a home where
parents argue all the time might prompt a
person to try to avoid conflict at all costs.
What are
attributions?
WHAT IS AN
ATTRIBUTION?
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Attributions – are reasons given to
explain successes and failures.
Weiner (1985) suggests that we each
act as naïve psychologists trying to
understand the reasons for why a
particular outcome occurs.
For example, a girl may try to figure
out why she lost a tennis match or did
poorly on an exam.
UNDERLYING
ASSUMPTIONS
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Understanding human behavior
requires first understanding how we
perceive the social environment.
People seek a stable and predictable
environment in order to control their
surroundings and predict others’
behavior.
To understand behavior, people look
for dispositional qualities in others.
ATTRIBUTIONAL
PROPOSITIONS
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Outcomes generate positive or negative
emotions and a search for the reasons for
the outcome.
Attributions are organized into key
dimensions that influence psychological
consequences such as expectancy change or
emotional feelings.
Attributional consequences impact
behaviors such as achievement motivation.
WEINER’S (1972)
ORIGINAL MODEL
Internal
Stable
Ability
Effort
Unstable
Strategy
Preparation
Performance
External
Task
Difficulty
Coaching
Luck
Officiating
ATTRIBUTION THEORY
• Attributions – are reasons used to explain
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the causes of events or behaviors.
Attributions can be categorized into 2
dimensions: (a) locus of causality (i.e.,
internal or external), and (b) stability (i.e.,
stable or unstable).
Internal – the cause of the behavior or
outcome is due to the person.
External – the cause of the behavior or
outcome is due to situational factors.
INTERNAL VERSUS
EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTIONS
What is attributional
bias?
ATTRIBUTIONAL
BIASES
 Fundamental Attribution Error – when
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judging others we underestimate the
influence of external factors and
overestimate the impact of internal
factors.
Self-Serving Bias – people give
themselves too much credit for what
the do well and give external factors
too much blame when they fail.
What are cognitive
styles?
COGNITIVE STYLE
 Cognitive Style – how a person
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perceives, processes, interprets and
uses information.
Cognitive styles are preferences.
Brain dominance often factors into
these styles.
Whole Brain Concept – considers
person’s preference for (a) left versus
right brain thinking and (b) conceptual
versus experiential thinking.
WHOLE BRAIN MODEL
Provide an example of
one leader who might
be a good example of
each cognitive style.
PROBLEM-SOLVING
STYLES
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – measures
how people prefer to gather and evaluate
information to solve problems and make
decisions.
 The MBTI uses 4 different pairs of attributes
to classify people into 16 personality types.
• introversion versus extraversion,
• sensing versus intuition,
• thinking versus feeling,
• judging versus perceiving.
The End