Introduction: Leadership Depends on Context
Is leadership the same everywhere? No, of course not.
The Power of Personality as a Predictor
The context of leadership (what is necessary to do in a given situation) naturally determines how to lead. And at the same time, we know from research for about 20 years that personality is the best predictor of leadership.
Evidence: Meta-Analysis by Judge et al.
The solid meta-analysis on the relationship between personality and leadership by Judge, Bono, Ilies and Gerhardt (2002) showed this clearly.
They looked into 78 studies on the relationship between personality and leadership, using meta-analysis.
In particular, they looked at personality traits from the FFM (Five Factor Model), represented in the Hogan Assessments as the HPI.
What the researchers found was:
Results: Which Traits Predict Leadership?
All 5 personality dimensions of the FFM predict leadership (emerging leadership and effective leadership combined) with a correlation of .24 or stronger, except for ‘agreeableness’ (the extent to which someone looks for agreement with others), which gave .08.
Subsequently, regression analysis (where we look for connections between variables) showed a correlation of .54 on emerging leadership and .39 on effective leadership on all 5 personality dimensions.
Conclusion: What Personality Assessments Deliver
The moral of the story:
With a personality assessment we can quite precisely predict how a leader will lead.
And with this knowledge, we can then see whether a leader will be effective in a specific context.
Personality Predicts Performance: Personality predicts how a leader will lead.
Source:
Judge, T.A., Bono, J.E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M.W. (2002). Personality and Leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780. Doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765