Leadership and Personality
Chris Moran and Maurice Joseph

Article I
Personality and Transformational and
Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis
Joyce E. Bono and Timothy A. Judge

Background Information
 PsycInfo search - 12% of all articles
published since 1990 on the topic of
leadership contain the keywords personality
and leadership
 Strong scholarly interest in the bases of
leadership behavior
 Two meta-analyses by Lord (1986) and
Judge (2002) reported associations between
leadership and personality traits

Objective
 Recent research attention has been focused
on three types of leadership:
transformational, transactional, and
charismatic
 Previous research has shown that these
leadership dimensions have been valid
predictors of follower job performance and
satisfaction
 The objective of this study is to extend what is
known about the association between
personality and leadership by focusing
directly on transactional and transformational
leadership

Importance
• Understanding the relationship between
personality traits and leadership
behaviors has important implications for
the selection, training, and development
of new leaders
• Determine what types of leadership
training will be effective and which
individuals will gain the most from them

Transformational Leadership
 Idealized Influence: high standards of moral
and ethical conduct, are held in high personal
regard, and engender loyalty from followers
 Inspirational Motivation: a strong vision for
the future based on values and ideals
 Intellectual Stimulation: challenge
organizational norms, encourage divergent
thinking, and push followers to develop
innovative strategies
 Individual Consideration: aim at recognizing
the unique growth and developmental needs
of follower

Transactional Leadership
 Contingent Reward: monitoring and
controlling employees through rational or
economic means
 Management by Exception-Active: monitoring
performance and taking action if necessary
 Management by Exception-Passive:
intervene only when problems become
serious
 Laissez-faire: non-leadership or avoidance of
leadership responsibilities

Big Five Personality Traits
 Extraversion: assertive, active, upbeat,
talkative, energetic and optimistic
(Costa & McCrae, 1992)
 Experience and express positive emotion
(Watson & Clark, 1997)
 Prediction
 Positively related to charisma, intellectual
stimulation, and transformational leadership
overall

Big Five Personality Traits
 Neuroticism: tendency to experience
negative affects, such as fear, sadness,
guilt, and anger (Costa & McCrae, 1992)
 Less likely to lead or involve themselves in
their employees’ efforts (Bass, 1985)
 Prediction
 Negatively related to charisma, intellectual
stimulation, and transformational leadership
overall
 Positively related to passive leadership

Big Five Personality Traits
 Openness to experience: tendencies to
be creative, introspective, imaginative,
resourceful, and insightful (John, 1999)
 Tend to have flexible attitudes and engage
in divergent thinking (McCrae, 1994)
 Prediction
 Postively related to charisma, intellectual
stimulation, and transformational leadership
overall

Big Five Personality Traits
 Agreeableness: tendency to be
cooperative, trusting, gentle, and kind
(Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997)
 Likely to be concerned with employees’
growth and development needs, and to
reward them appropriately
 Prediction
 Positively related to charisma, individualized
consideration and contingent reward
 Negatively related to passive leadership

Big Five Personality Traits
 Conscientiousness: cautious, deliberate, self-
disciplined, and tend to be well organized
(Costa & McCrae, 1992)
 Tend to be goal and detail oriented, and honor
integrity (Hogan & Ones, 1997)
 Prediction
 Positively related to contingent reward, and management
by exception-active
 Negatively related to passive leadership

Methods: Literature Search and Meta-Analysis
 Researchers obtained 26 articles containing
384 correlations between personality traits
and transformational and transactional
leadership, and performed a meta-analysis of
the correlations
 Personality traits were generally self-reported
 Leadership measures used were mainly the
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
 Other measures used included the Leadership
Practices Inventory, and ad-hoc measurements

Results
 Extraversion
 Strong relationship with all three transformational
leadership behaviors
 Strongest correlation of study was extraversion
and charisma
 Negative association with passive leadership
 Neuroticism
 Negative relationship with all three
transformational leadership behaviors
 Positive association with passive leadership

Results (continued)
 Agreeableness and Conscientiousness had
negative associations with passive leadership
 All traits except neuroticism were negatively
associated with exception-passive leadership
 All other associations were deemed by the
researchers as weak, or showing a great deal
of variability, causing them to be of little
practical use

Positive Points
 The study indicates that extraversion
may be an important trait in predicting
and understanding leadership
 Extraversion had the strongest correlation
with transformational leadership of the big
five personality traits
 It may be worthwhile to focus future
research on leadership towards
extraversion

Positive Points
 The participants included in the studies
used were actual leaders behaving in
authentic leadership situations
 Reduces bias of raters’ leadership theories

Negative Points
 The Big Five may not be the best way to
discover personality antecedents of
ratings of transformational and
transactional leadership.
 More narrow or specific traits may be
relevant in predicting and understanding
transformational and transactional
leadership

Negative Points (continued)
 Focus on ratings of leadership
behaviors, rather than on broader
assessments such as effectiveness or
emergence, reduced the extent to which
implicit theories account for the
personality-leadership link.
 The strongest personality-leader behavior
rating link in the study was found for
charisma

Take Home Messages
 Extraversion was the strongest correlate
of ratings of transformational and
transactional leadership.
 It is critical to gain a deeper
understanding of how leadership
behaviors are developed.

Article II
Putting Personality in Social Context:
Extraversion, Emergent Leadership, and The
Availability of Rewards
Lorne Campbell, Jeffry A. Simpson, Mark Stewart
and John Manning

Objective
 In the first study, on leadership and behavior,
it was found that extraversion had the
strongest association with leadership
behaviors
 Extraverted people are generally more
sociable and sociability forms the core of
extraversion
 Praise, attention, power, and social status
should be strong reinforcers, particularly for
higher extroverted people (Gray, 1972)

Hypothesis
 More extraverted men should behave in a
more outgoing manner and should emerge as
group leaders
 Highly extraverted men should be more
strongly motivated to display group
leadership behaviors when observed by an
evaluator then when not observed
 They should be more strongly motivated to
display group leadership when being
evaluated by a female observer than a male
observer

Methods
 228 male undergraduate students at Texas
A&M University
 Participants filled out questionnaires of
personality trait measures and leader
experience items
 Participants returned one week later in four-
person groups to participate in a Leaderless
Group Discussion (LGD)
 Groups were randomly assigned to be
observed by an attractive female observer, an
attractive male observer, or no observer

Results
 According to self and peer ratings, more
extraverted men were more likely to
emerge as leaders, but only when
observed by an attractive female
 Extraversion did not correlate with a
desire to lead when a male observer
was present or when there was a lack of
an observer

Take Home Messages
 More extraverted men do not emerge as
group leaders in all situations
 A reward was required to motivate
extraverted men, which generated
behavior (leadership) designed to
achieve desired goals

Leadership in Contemporary Organizations
 4-H is a youth organization with the mission
of engaging youth to reach their fullest
potential while advancing the field of youth
development
 Serves over 9 million members in the U.S.
and throughout the world
 Encourages youths to become leaders while
becoming involved and participating with the
members

Article III
“Personality, gender, and transformational
leadership: Investigating differential
prediction for male and female leaders.”
Emily Elizabeth Duehr

Objectives
 This dissertation integrates theory and
empirical findings on personality,
leadership, and gender in an attempt to
gain a better understanding of whether
personality differentially predicts
leadership behavior for men and
women.

Objectives (continued)
 Two-Fold Experiment:
 First, it aimed to refine understanding of
the relationship between personality and
leadership by considering an important
potential moderator.
 Second, this research examined differential
prediction by gender, as any differences
would have implications for the fair
assessment and promotion of male and
female leaders.

Results
 The research identified differential
prediction by gender when using
personality traits to predict
transformational leadership behaviors.
 Instances of differential prediction were
found for each of the personality traits
examined: extraversion, neuroticism,
and agreeableness.

Results (continued)
 The most important finding was for
extraversion, which emerged as a
stronger predictor of transformational
leadership for women relative to men.

Take Home Message
 Transformational leadership behaviors
are viewed as more effective in women
relative to men.
 This research suggests that more
consideration of differential prediction
and gender differences in leadership
behavior is warranted.

Leadership in Contemporary
Organizations
 The Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural
Center
 The center has developed a series of
workshops, facilitated by trained
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 http://www.uky.edu/MLKCC/index.html

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