Leadership Traits Essay example

Over the past couple of months, we discussed several traits, skills, and behaviors that have contributed to the success of both past and present leaders. Intelligence, integrity, charisma, and confidence are some of the traits that characterize many of these leaders. Interpersonal skills, oratory skills, and conceptual skills are some of the more important skills that helped to shape their leadership style. Some of these skills go hand in hand with the traits that are essential for strong leadership. Meanwhile, the behaviors that drive these leaders include inspiring and motivating others, collaboration, having a strategic perspective and trust. Combined, these traits, skills and behaviors make for effective leadership.

In Lesson 6, Dr. Fischer explores the ideas of whether leaders are born or made. In some cases certain traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, and emotional intelligence can suggest that leaders can in

Winston Churchill, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. – all possessed such leadership traits as ambition, self-confidence, and intelligence. These cannot be learned; they are innate. Two well-respected research studies that support the notion that personality traits can predict leadership were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and in the Leadership Quarterly.

The world has seen a number of leaders that show themselves throughout the course of history Martin Luther king with The civil rights movement, and George Washington and the fight for the independence of America, these are ample reminder that with every endeavor that humans take on, leaders will emerge. Each one of those leaders had a vision of equality, and they were willing to do everything possible to reach that goal. One of these leaders was Nelson Mandela with his peaceful fight for civil rights in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was a man who was true to his word and dedicated to equality and peace. The fact that he was president isn’t what makes him stand out, but the fact that he effectively executed many leadership qualities, this

Measurement of effectiveness of leaders has been aided by a wide range of theories. These approaches include trait approach, behavioral approach, situational approach, the Big-Five model and cognitive approach. In this case, the trait approach must be assessed in respect to its idea of concentrating on a leader's personality, abilities and more dispositions, which can be applied in characterizing the individual's personality. Further, the trait claims that most individuals who posses leadership capabilities were born with innate characteristics thus enabling them to exert influence over their subordinates (Deaux & Snyder, 2012).

In the early 20th century, leadership traits were studied to determine what made certain people great leaders. Researchers were looking to see if distinct leaders were born with special traits. The theories that were developed are called “great man” theories because they focused on identifying the innate qualities and characteristics possessed by great political, social, and military leaders. During this time, research concentrated on determining the specific traits that clearly differentiated leaders from followers (Bass, 1990; Jago, 1982).

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

The trait approach to studying leadership uses the assumption that some people are natural leaders with certain attributes that pertains to their personality, motives, values, and skills (Yuki, p. 13, 2010). The studies sort to identify what are the specific traits of leadership. Examples of some of the leadership traits the study found are high intelligence and action-oriented judgment, task competence, achievement-oriented, the ability to motivate people, courage, and resolution driven. This approach was one of the earliest processes used to identify what makes a great leader great. The studies conducted

Chrysler is among the biggest American automobile companies. However, before the current success the company enjoys, it underwent enormous losses and was declared bankrupt during the 2008-2009 automotive industry crisis. With the appointment of Sergio Marchionne as its chairperson and CEO, the company became successful again. Marchionne 's unique leadership skills, type, and behavior that are not always popular are credited with the success of the enterprise. The paper discusses Marchionne 's leadership traits, behavior and styles and how they have contributed to the firm 's success.

The concept of leadership has undergone a huge change in terms of an effective leader. It has changed from a born leader to a situational leader and finally to an effective leader. Theories of leadership, views and assumptions has also undergone a huge change over the period. Industries and business have set their managers as leaders to achieve the vision, mission and challenges of the company. Some leaders are born and need a little training and development. Some managers are not born but can acquire good leadership qualities with their experience and training and development. Barack Obama is a born leader. He is the 44th President of the United States. He was elected on 4th November, 2008 and sworn in on 20 January, 2009. He was re elected in 2012. He is serving his second and final term which will end in January 2017.

There is the famous question: can leadership be learned or are some people simply born to be leaders? The answer to this question has been debated over and over. The preliminary question that must be considered however is what qualities make a good leader. Certain skills and behaviors are logical must haves, still there are many that are not as obvious; even as intellect is a definite requisite, for example, being trained and well educated are just some ways intelligence and know-how can be acquired. The general consensus seems to be that leadership can be learned, studying and perfecting the precise skills that foster success will require knowing and understanding these skills and recognizing what about them promotes good performance.

Charismatic leadership is one of four subdivisions of the larger concept of transformational leadership (Bass, 1990). Charismatic leaders are self-confident, dominant, purposeful, articulate, influential, idealistic, and expressive. They have high energy levels, strong convictions, the ability to display empathy, and are risk takers (Bass, 1990). By stimulating "ailing corporations, revitalizing aging bureaucracies or launching new enterprises" (Howell and Avolio, 1995), charismatic leaders demonstrate how truly effective they can be. These leaders are often described as visionaries, with a strong sense of the future and a passion for their vision. They are able to achieve the vision by developing strategies to

In the other words, leaders are born. Their personality makes them become leaders naturally. These theories also figure out the differences between leaders and non – leaders as well as effective leaders and ineffective ones in order to measure the leadership within organizations. As a result, leaders are considered as more intelligent, physically filter, more extroverted, more self – confident than non – leaders. Furthermore, effective leadership studies show that effective leadership usually depends on how well the leader’s traits fit context’s requirements. Although the trait theories have limitations, they still suggest scholars to consider the personality traits as core component of a leadership. Evidently, while people can learn from leadership theory to improve their leadership skills, the world still faces a shortage of outstanding leaders. Tim Cook are well trained and inherits the Apple’s achievements under Steave Jobs’ leadership, he is still not guaranteed to lead Apple to success in the next stages

Leaders have been present throughout all history, and many have played a large role in how society operates today. Leaders usually show many similar characteristics to each other, and for this reason, many believe that a leader must have these same qualities or traits to be a successful leader. Of interest however, is

In order to determine the causes of what made certain individuals great leaders, several leadership traits were studied. They focused on the innate abilities and qualities possessed by leader. These theories were named like ‘great man’ – because they consider that leaders are simply born to be leaders.