Interrelationship of Leadership Traits, Behavior, and Subsequent Performance of the Leader
Traits: Traits refer to recurring regularities or trends in a person’s behavior (Hughes, Ginnette, & Curphy, 2002, p. 168). Exhibiting leadership traits is strongly correlated with people’s desire to follow the leader. Exhibiting these traits will inspire confidence in one’s leadership. Personality traits are useful for explaining why people act fairly consistently in different situations. Knowing differences in personality traits can help predict more accurately how people will tend to act in different situations.
Behavior: Leadership behaviors are a function of intelligence, personality traits, emotional intelligence values, attitudes, interests, knowledge, and experience. Leader behavior reflects an interaction between personality traits and various situational factors. Over time, leaders learn and discern the most appropriate and effective behaviors. Individual difference and situational variables play a pivotal role in a leader’s behavior. Changing behavior, especially long-standing patterns of behavior, can be quite difficult. Learning how to change one’s own behavior and others’ behaviors is a key leadership skill. Knowing how to change and modify followers’ behaviors so that it helps the followers and the organization’s success is very important. Behaviors are thought to be more malleable than traits, thus they can be taught to managers to increase their leadership abilities and effectiveness (Norris, 2000).
Intelligence: Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including related abilities, such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from the experience, planning, and problem solving (Wikipedia, 2010). Intelligence is susceptible to modification through the manipulation of environment. Understanding intelligence is divided into three components:
Intelligence Benefit
Analytic intelligence Helps in problem solving skills and learning from experience
Practical
Behavior: Leadership behaviors are a function of intelligence, personality traits, emotional intelligence values, attitudes, interests, knowledge, and experience. Leader behavior reflects an interaction between personality traits and various situational factors. Over time, leaders learn and discern the most appropriate and effective behaviors. Individual difference and situational variables play a pivotal role in a leader’s behavior. Changing behavior, especially long-standing patterns of behavior, can be quite difficult. Learning how to change one’s own behavior and others’ behaviors is a key leadership skill. Knowing how to change and modify followers’ behaviors so that it helps the followers and the organization’s success is very important. Behaviors are thought to be more malleable than traits, thus they can be taught to managers to increase their leadership abilities and effectiveness (Norris, 2000).
Intelligence: Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including related abilities, such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from the experience, planning, and problem solving (Wikipedia, 2010). Intelligence is susceptible to modification through the manipulation of environment. Understanding intelligence is divided into three components:
Intelligence Benefit
Analytic intelligence Helps in problem solving skills and learning from experience
Practical