Leadership – We all want it but what exactly makes a good leader? Luckily, you are not the only person who has asked this question. Social psychologists have studied what makes great leaders and have found interesting results.
Is there a leadership personality?
Through many studies, psychologists such as Linda Albright and Michael Chemers, have found there to be a weak relationship between personality and leadership abilities. Compared to non-leaders, leaders are slightly more extroverted, charismatic, intelligent, socially skilled, open minded, ambitious, less neurotic and confident in their leadership abilities.
However, there are few personality traits that correlate strongly with leadership effectiveness. University of California’s Dean Simonton collected information about 100 personal attributes of all of the United States presidents, such as educational experiences, occupations, personalities, and family backgrounds. Only three variables correlated with how effective of a president he was while in office: height, number of books published and family size. The taller, smaller sized family and greater number of published books, the more effective of a leader they will likely be. All other traits were uncorrelated.
What is the best leadership style?
A theory developed by University of Washington’s Fred Fiedler called contingency theory of leadership states that there are two types of leadership styles – task-oriented and relationship-oriented.
Task-oriented leadership is more concerned with getting the job done than with the groups’ relationships and feelings. Relationship-oriented leadership is the opposite, more concerned with relationships. But which is more effective? The answer lies in the amount of power given to the leader.
Task-oriented leaders perform well under high-control or low-control situations.
Relationship-oriented leaders perform well under moderate-control situations.
When the leader has either high or low control of the situation, the subordinates need a well structured and well defined goal plan which is provided by the task-oriented leader. In a moderate control situation, the group needs to maintain the good relations in order to keep the group working smoothly and therefor relationship-oriented style works better. So adjust your leadership technique accordingly.
In a rather recent two part study by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, our own happiness is affected by the people we are friends with, their friends, and their friends’ friends. Our level of happiness is affected by people we might not even know.
