Abstract
Chapter 8 has demonstrated that the relationship between intelligence and leadership is not as strong as we might expect. Because leaders have to gather, interpret and integrate vast amounts of information in their work, and develop strategies and solve problems, it would seem reasonable to expect intelligence to play a major role in leadership effectiveness. Yet, the effect, as we have seen, is moderately small and accounts for no more than 7.5% of the variance in leadership effectiveness, and only when leaders are ‘directive’ (Judge et al. 2004). This is partly due to the fact that to get to a position of leadership you have to be (or at least, seem) pretty bright and therefore there is not as much variance in the abilities of people near the top as there is in the population at large.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research and Managerial Applications. New York: The Free Press.
Carmeli, A., Jones, C., & Binyamin, G. (2016). The Power of Caring and Generativity in Building Strategic Adaptability. Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 89, 46–72.
Daft, R. L. (1999). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Orlando, FL: Dryden Press.
Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and Behavioural Theories of Leadership: An Integration and Meta-analytic Test of Their Relative Validity. Personnel Psychology, 64, 7–52.
Furnham, A. (2017a). Does It Matter Who We Are? Personality at Work. In N. Chmiel, F. Fraccaroli, & M. Sverke (Eds.), An Introduction to Work and Organisational Psychology (3rd ed., pp. 317–334). Chichester: Wiley.
Furnham, A. (2017c). Agreeableness. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Personality and Individual Differences (pp. 1–11). Springer International.
Furnham, A. (2018). Personality and Occupational Success. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences (pp. 537–551). New York: Sage.
Grant, A. M. (2013). Rethinking the Extraverted Sales Ideal: The Ambivert Advantage. Psychological Science, 24(6), 1024–1030.
Grant, A. M., Gino, F., & Hoffmann, D. A. (2010). Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 528–550.
Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. (2005). What We Know about Leadership. Review of General Psychology, 9, 169–180.
Hogan, R., Curphy, G., & Hogan, J. (1994). What We Know about Leadership. American Psychologist, 49(6), 493–504.
House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The Social Scientific Study of Leadership: Quo Vadis? Journal of Management, 23, 409–473.
Hunter, E., Neubert, M., Perry, S., Witt, L., Penny, L., & Weinberger, E. (2013). Servant Leaders Inspire Servant Followers: Antecedents and Outcomes for Employees and the Organisation. The Leadership Quarterly, 24, 316–331.
Judge, T. A., & Zapata, C. P. (2015). The Person-Situation Debate Revisited: Effect of Situation Strength and Trait Activation on the Validity of the Big Five Personality Traits in Predicting Job Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), 1149–1170.
Judge, T., Bono, J., Ilies, R., & Gerhert, M. (2002). Personality and Leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765–780.
Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1991). Leadership: Do Traits Matter? Academy of Management Executive, 5, 48–60.
Mann, R. (1959). A Review of the Relationships between Personality and Performance in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 241–270.
Northouse, P. G. (1997). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Ones, D., Viswesvaran, C., & Dilchert, S. (2005). Personality at Work: Raising Awareness and Correcting Misconceptions. Human Performance, 18, 389–404.
Stogdill, R. M. (1948). Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A Survey of Literature. Journal of Personality, 25, 35–71.
Vukasović, T., & Bratko, D. (2015). Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies. Psychological Bulletin, 141(4), 769–785.
Yukl, G. (1998). Leadership in Organisations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Yukl, G., & Van Fleet, D. D. (1992). Theory and Research on Leadership in Organisations. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of Industrial and Organisational psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 147–197). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pendleton, D., Furnham, A.F., Cowell, J. (2021). The Impact of Personality on Leadership. In: Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60437-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60437-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60436-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60437-0
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)