Video Transcript: Trait Theory of Leadership

We are going to talk about the traits theory of leadership. This is a valuable approach, but it's not without its critics, so let's get into it. Hello there, friends. I'm Alex Lyon, and we have almost 200 videos on communication and leadership on this channel. Virtually everything I'm going to share on this video comes from two excellent books, Johnson and Hackman's book on leadership, a communication perspective, and Peter Northouse's book on leadership. I highly recommend both of these books, and I will put those references and links in the description below this video, the study of leadership traits goes back to the early 1900s it's the first systematic study of leadership, and it continues to this day. The social scientific approach is a reflection of what was happening in the field of psychology at the time that was looking at individuals various personality traits. A trait is a defining characteristic, quality or enduring tendency of a person. According to this research, traits are part of how we're born. They're woven into our DNA. Just like eye color, height and other physical traits, we also have various personality traits. The traits theory of leadership says that leaders share a collection of distinguishing traits that the average person does not those traits make them natural born leaders. This is what we call the great man quote, or great person theory, Northouse lists well known political and military leaders such as Catherine the Great, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte as examples of born leaders. There are certain traits that contribute to superior leadership performance, and the thinking goes everybody around these individuals recognizes or perceives certain traits as leadership qualities. There have been scores of these studies, and it's important to mention that each study comes up with a different list of traits that leaders possess. So this can get a little confusing, so one way to overcome that is to do a meta analysis that looks across these different leadership studies to determine the most common traits that come up over and over again. So we are going to look at this distilled list of the five major leadership traits that Peter Northouse presents in his book. The first trait is intelligence. Leaders have a higher intelligence than the average person. It's accurate to say, for example, that the founding fathers of the US, for all their personal flaws, were extremely intelligent leaders. They were well educated and prolific writers, CEOs like Steve Jobs from Apple, Bill Gates from Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all have reputations as extraordinarily intelligent people. Some people believe that extremely high levels of intelligence like this make it a challenge for some individuals to communicate effectively with the average person, still high levels of intelligence consistently shows up as a trait among most leaders. The second trait is self confidence. As Northouse explains, self confidence includes a certainty about our competencies and skills, high levels of self esteem and self assurance in our capacity to make a difference. Barack Obama is a great current day example of self confidence. It's clear from everything I've seen and heard that he carries himself with a great deal of this self confidence. When he walks in a room, he communicates a sense of unwavering self assurance. Third is determination. This is a strong drive to move forward its initiative, persistence, perseverance to follow through despite the many obstacles. One of the most determined leaders I know of is Oprah Winfrey. She was born into poverty, started working in radio while in high school, she overcame both racial and gender barriers as she moved from local TV to the world of talk shows, and she built, ultimately, a media empire, and she's now believed to be the richest person in Hollywood. Her journey demonstrates incredible determination and the ability to overcome obstacles no matter what the fourth trait is, integrity. This means being honest, trustworthy, living by a clear set of principles and taking responsibility for our actions. We like these leaders because they are dependable and we know they are going to do and follow through on what they say, two well known leaders come to mind. First is Martin Luther King, Jr. He is seen by many as a great example of a leader with integrity. He lived by a set of principles, and he held himself to a high standard. Another example is Abraham Lincoln. He is known as Honest Abe because people at the time saw him and thought he had a higher level of integrity than many of the other politicians at the time. Fifth is sociability. This is the tendency to engage in friendly, courteous and pleasant social relationships. Leaders like this are tactful, diplomatic and sensitive to others' needs and well being. In other words, they have good interpersonal skills. These leaders both recognize the importance of supportive communication, and they are good at it. One great example is the late Princess Diana. She's compared to the other Royals. She had the people's touch. They say she communicated comfortably with people from all backgrounds. Another example is Warren Buffett. He is the fourth richest person in the world, but he has a very comfortable, welcoming communication style, and he frequently talks about the importance of communication. So those are the five key leadership traits. However, as mentioned, there are some important criticisms of the traits approach to leadership. These three criticisms represent a combination of what I have read and what I personally think first, almost every study that looks at leadership traits comes up with a different list. So sure we talked about a list of five distilled traits, but that doesn't explain why there's not more consistency between and among these studies. So how can we be sure we got it right? Second? I'm not convinced that these researchers are all really studying traits in the traditional sense. We see within these studies, traits like the ability to influence others or engage in problem solving, some of these sound more like learnable behaviors than traits in our DNA in the classic sense. And third, some people say they can act as if they have the trait, but they're really just behaving that way. They don't necessarily possess that trait. I know many people who admit privately that they're very nervous and have high anxiety, but publicly they act like they're very self confident. That's one of the five key traits. Despite these criticisms, I'm sure that studies on leadership traits will continue. Many people would agree that top leaders do often seem to stand apart, even from an early age. Some people really do come across as born leaders. So Question of the day, how do you line up with these five key traits? As mentioned, it seems at least some of these skills are learnable, and there have been many historic and current day leaders who did not seem like born leaders, but worked their way up and achieved great things. So maybe it's a little more like Shakespeare said. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Before we go, I just recorded a related video on the top five qualities of transformational leaders, and once that's posted, I'll put a link to that in the description below this video. Until then, thanks, God bless and I will see you soon.