Personality and leadership outcomes
To what degree can personality predict leadership?
The question whether you are born a leader or become a leader has soared the HR word for decades. But there are facts out there and even if most has a found misconception on what is predictable with us humans (because they are HR not psychologists) the research goes on and the studies are getting deeper and deeper.
In a recent meta study (we wouldn´t do it any other way would we) accepted in April 2020 Do and Minbashian reconsiders the relationship between personality and leadership. They do it by simplifying (one can say) it by testing the relationship between GFP and the “Big two” and leadership outcomes.
GFP is an abbreviation for General Factor of Personality and sums up the Five Factor model into one (!) number. And the Big two are the factors of stability and plasticity. (How it is weighted between the traits and sub traits is all in the paper) They went out to see if it “could be that simple”.
Conceptualisation of effective leadership
Transformational leadership is where a leader interacts with a follower in such a way that enhances the relationship, end elevates morality and motivation both within the leader as well as the follower (Burns 1978).
It consists of four sub-factors. (Bass & Avolio 2000)
Idealised influence
Inspirational motivation
Intellectual stimulation
Individualised consideration
The findings showed that the GFP was positively and more strongly related to leadership than the Big Two and Big Five Factors, and that the Bif Two factors more strongly related to leadership, over their corresponding Big Five factors.
Moreover, most lower-order factors did not uniquely predict leadership, over and the effects of the GFP. These findings challenge the current knowledge about the nature of the relationship between personality and leadership.
How inconvenient it might seem for some critics of personality testing it proves that it is even simpler than we first predicted as it comes to leadership.
At Ngr we always add the GFP to the reports and even if it is way more complicated than a number (we never said it wasn’t) it seems like the very best way to start.
So in looking for your next leader on any level you should look for the GFP of the testing and discuss it with a professional. There is substantial effectivity to be found with the right leader in your organization. And it all starts here.
