question

Greetings Employee,

I came across an article on facebook that talked about leader traits and leader behavior. How are these different and how are they similar?

Dear Boss,

We know that there are many factors that influence leaders in their role. In any circumstance, we understand the importance of leaders, but often overlook the components that encompass a leader. Two major elements that are often discussed are leader traits and leader behaviors. Both traits and behaviors give us foundational understanding of leaders and their role, however, it is important to understand the distinction between the two components.

Leader traits can be thought of as fixed attributes a person has. When thinking about traits, we can draw from many different fields in order to build a better understanding. When thinking about traits, we often draw from a biological perspective. We know that many of our physical features are the result of traits. Using this understanding from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, Judge, Piccolo, and Kosalka (2009) reference the role of leader traits. They go on to extend this idea by defining certain traits, such as intelligence and those described in Five Factor Model (Big Five Personality Test). Their efforts not only helped to categorize traits associated with leaders, but also further demonstrated that traits are innate and persist over time. Perhaps a more inclusive definition of traits in relation to leaders was given by Zaccaro (2007), he suggested that leader traits were consistent and cohesive characteristics that help to facilitate effective leadership in given situations. This definition asserts that while traits persist, they also exist collectively.

In contrast, leader behavior is often viewed with regard to observable responses or actions. Behaviors can be thought of as responses to the environment and are a function of a person’s traits. Given the understanding of the role that traits have in relation to leaders, we can say that traits influence behaviors. Leader behaviors are categorized. Derue (2011) describes four common categories of behaviors including: task-oriented, relational-oriented, change-oriented, and passive leadership. He goes on to acknowledge that behaviors are more related to leadership. Like in leader traits, classification of behaviors bring better understanding of enduring factors that pertain to leaders. Understanding leader behavior is important since we know that behaviors are closely tied to effectiveness which produce desired outcomes.

While leader traits and leader behavior can be thought of individually, they share commonalties and should be thought of correspondingly. Much research on leaders begins by describing traits of leaders, then moves on to examine behaviors. When examining traits, aspects such as intelligence, conscientiousness, extroversion, and openness are most prominent (Judge et al., 2009). When looking at behavior, planning, support, communication, problem solving, and decision making are commonly described leader behaviors (Fleishman et al., 1992). When we begin to evaluate traits and behaviors, it becomes more clear that they are a function of one another. Derue (2011) suggests that traits influence behaviors which lead to outcomes. While outcome is usually the main focus when viewing leadership, especially from an organizational perspective, it is important to understand the relationship between traits and behaviors.

Traits are often thought of as stable, while behaviors can be thought of as fluid. Although they have significant distinctions, it is important to understand that they exist functionally. While there is some debate as to which better explains leaders within research, one cannot dispute the value in both traits and behaviors. Without traits it would be hard to understand behaviors, which could make it difficult to assess desired outcomes. We know that looking at both traits and behaviors in leaders is important, but taking a more holistic approach that considers various traits and differing behaviors may provide a better way to understand leaders.

PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

11,

–5

TRAIT AND BEHAVIORAL THEORIES
OF LEADERSHIP: AN INTEGRATION AND
META-ANALYTIC TEST OF THEIR RELATIVE VALIDITY

SCOTT DERUE
Stephen M. Ross School of Busines

University of Michigan

JENNIFER D. NAHRGANG
W.P. Carey School of Business

Arizona State University

NED WELLMAN
Stephen M. Ross School of Business

University of Michigan

STEPHEN E. HUMPHREY
Smeal College of Business

The Pennsylvania State University

The leadership literature suffers from a lack of theoretical integra-
tion (Avolio, 2007, American Psychologist, 62, 25–33). This arti-
cle addresses that lack of integration by developing an integrative
trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then exam-
ining the relative validity of leader traits (gender, intelligence,
personality) and behaviors (transformational-transactional, initiat-
ing structure-consideration) across 4 leadership effectiveness crite-
ria (leader effectiveness, group performance, follower job satisfac-
tion, satisfaction with leader). Combined, leader traits and behavio

explain a minimum of 31% of the variance in leadership effectiveness
criteria. Leader behaviors tend to explain more variance in leadership
effectiveness than leader traits, but results indicate that an integrative
model where leader behaviors mediate the relationship between leader
traits and effectiveness is warranted.

Leadership is one of the most discussed and debated topics in the
social sciences (Avolio, Sosik, Jung, & Berson, 2003; Bass, 1990;
Bennis, 2007). Research on leadership began with a search for herita-
ble attributes that differentiated leaders from nonleaders and explaine

individuals’ effectiveness as leaders (Galton & Eysenck, 1869). In effect,
this early research was the beginning of the trait paradigm of leadership re-
search. Subsequent studies have established that individual characteristics,

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to D. Scott DeRue,
Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations, Stephen M. Ross School of Busi-
ness, University of Michigan, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; dsderue@
umich.edu.
C© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

8 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

such as demographics, skills and abilities, and personality traits, predict
leadership effectiveness (e.g., Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995; Judge,
Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Judge, Colbert, & Ilies, 2004; Mumford,
Campion, & Morgeson, 2007).

Critiques of the leader trait paradigm (Jenkins, 1947; Mann, 1959;
Stogdill, 1948) prompted scholars to look beyond leader traits and
consider how leaders’ behaviors predicted effectivenes

This led to
research on initiation of structure and consideration (Hemphill &
Coons, 1957; Stogdill, 1963), and established the behavior paradigm of
leadership research. The influence of the leader behavior paradigm can be
seen across leadership theories, including Fiedler’s (1967) contingency
model, Blake and Mouton’s (1964) managerial grid, and the work on
transformational and transactional leadership (the full range model of
leadership; Avolio et al., 2003; Bass, 1985; Podsakoff, MacKenzie,
Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). Not only did the leader behavior paradigm
provide the basis for new theory, but meta-analytic evidence also suggests
that leader behaviors are important predictors of leadership effectiveness
(Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004).

Both leader traits and behaviors have been investigated in scores of re-
search studies. Despite the theoretical and applied value of these studies,
leadership research is plagued by a lack of integration. In fact, schol-
ars dating back to Bennis (1959) and as recently as Avolio (2007) have
lamented over the proliferation and lack of integration of leadership theo-
ries and constructs. The primary criticism is that leadership scholars create
new theories of leadership without attempting to compare and contrast the
validity of existing theories.

The lack of integration in leadership research is evident both within
and across the trait and behavior paradigms, as research within each
paradigm generally focuses on a single trait or behavioral perspective. For
example, within the trait paradigm, Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, and van
Engen (2003) provided meta-analytic estimates for gender and leadership
effectiveness, whereas Judge et al. (2002, 2004) did the same for person-
ality and intelligence, respectively. None of these studies controlled for or
compared the effects of different traits, such as gender, personality, and
intelligence concurrently. This lack of integration is problematic given
that many of these studies found similar effect sizes across leader traits.
For example, Judge et al. (2002) found absolute effect sizes ranging from
.16 to .24 for personality and leadership effectiveness, whereas Judge et al.
(2004) found an effect size of .21 for intelligence. However, because there
was no integration across traits, it remains unclear as to whether these are
independent effects.

Similarly, research within the leader behavior paradigm often focus

on a single behavioral perspective. For example, Judge and Piccolo (2004)

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 9

meta-analyzed the literature on transformational and transactional leader-
ship, and Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies (2004) did the same for initiating struc-
ture and consideration. Neither of these studies integrated across leader
behaviors or considered whether the effects were independent. Yet, ini-
tiating structure and transactional leadership both focus on task-oriented
leader behaviors, whereas consideration and transformational leadership
both comprised relational-oriented leader behaviors (Bass & Bass, 2008;
Fleishman, 1953). Given the conceptual similarity, it is not surprising that
separate meta-analyses found similar effect sizes—for example, overall
validities of .41 for consideration and .44 for transformational (Judge &
Piccolo, 2004; Judge et al., 2004). Thus, the two leader behavior paradigms
that have shaped leadership research for decades may not be independent,
and even more importantly, it is unclear if one is a better predictor of
leadership effectiveness.

This article reviews and integrates the literature on leader traits and
behaviors, and takes a first step toward an integrative theory of how leader
traits and behaviors influence leadership effectiveness. To accomplish
this, we follow a three-stage process. First, based on a narrative review
of the literature, we develop a conceptual model that organizes the cur-
rent literature and models how leader traits and behaviors affect leadership
effectiveness (see Figure 1). Second, we empirically test the relative valid-
ity of select leader traits and behaviors using a combination of previously
published meta-analytic data and new meta-analyses. Third, we investi-
gate an exemplary set of relationships from our conceptual model to see
if leader behaviors are one possible mechanism through which individual
traits influence leadership effectiveness.

Conceptualizing Leadership Effectiveness

Before presenting our integrative model, we first define the leadership
effectiveness domain. Scholars often vary in their definition of leadership
effectiveness (Avolio et al., 2003; Yukl, 2006), which is one reason the
literature is not well integrated. Based on our review of the literature, lead-
ership effectiveness criteria can be conceptualized along three dimensions:
(a) content, (b) level of analysis, and (c) target of evaluation. As shown
in Figure 1, the content of leadership effectiveness can relate to task per-
formance (e.g., individual or group performance), affective and relational
criteria (e.g., satisfaction with the leader), or overall judgments of effec-
tiveness that encompass both task and relational elements (e.g., overall
effectiveness of the leader). The level of analysis corresponds to whether
leadership effectiveness is conceptualized at the individual, dyadic, group,
or organizational level. For example, some studies conceptualize leader-
ship effectiveness as individual-level leader effectiveness, whereas other

10 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

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D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 11

studies focus on dyadic-level relationships, group-level performance, or
organizational performance (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). Finally, tar-
get of evaluation refers to whether the leader is the target of evaluation
(e.g., leader effectiveness, satisfaction with leader) or another outcome
that is within the domain of leadership effectiveness but not specific to the
leader (e.g., group performance).

As Yukl (2006: 11) notes, “the selection of appropriate [leadership
effectiveness] criteria depends on the objectives and values of the per-
son making the evaluation, and people have different values. . . it is
usually best to include a variety of criteria in research on leadership
effectiveness.” In this study, we focus on four distinct leadership effective-
ness criteria: (a) individual leader effectiveness, (b) group performance,
(c) follower satisfaction with leader, and (d) follower job satisfaction. We
chose these criteria for two reasons. First, we wanted to cover a range
of content dimensions, levels of analyses, and targets of evaluation. In-
dividual leader effectiveness provides an individual-level, leader-focused
assessment of overall effectiveness. Group performance offers a group-
level, other-focused assessment of task-related performance, and follower
satisfaction (with the leader and job) provides an affective, individual-
level, and other-focused assessment of leadership effectiveness. Second,
given that we are using meta-analytic techniques, we can only include
those criteria that have been examined across a sufficient number of stud-
ies. With these criteria, we meet both of these parameters and are able to
examine the relative validity of traits and behaviors across a diverse set of
important criteria.

Toward an Integrated Model of Leader Traits and Behaviors

Although prior research has established that leadership effectiveness
is influenced by both leader traits and behaviors, it is not clear from this
research how leader traits and behaviors complement or supplement each
other, and how they can be incorporated into a more integrative model
of leadership effectiveness. Based on prior reviews (Avolio et al., 2003;
Bass & Bass, 2008; Yukl, Gordon, & Taber, 2002) and our own review
of the literature, most leader traits can be organized into three categories:
(a) demographics, (b) traits related to task competence, and (c) interper-
sonal attributes. Similarly, leader behaviors are often discussed in terms of
whether the behavior is oriented toward (a) task processes, (b) relational
dynamics, or (c) change.

Drawing on this classification scheme, we develop a conceptual frame-
work that organizes the current literature and models how leader traits and
behaviors affect leadership effectiveness (Figure 1). In this model, we in-
corporate a wide range of leader traits and behaviors that were identified in

12 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

our narrative review. Our empirical tests focus on a subset of these leader
traits and behaviors. Specifically, we focus on those traits and behaviors
that comprise most of the empirical research on leadership, and at least
one trait or behavior from each major category. Although we incorporate
other, less commonly studied variables in our model, these traits and be-
haviors have not been studied enough empirically to be included in our
meta-analytic tests.

With respect to leader traits, we focus on gender, intelligence, and the
Big Five personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Collectively, these
leader traits span the demographic, task competence, and interpersonal di-
mensions. For leader behaviors, we focus on transformational leadership,
specific dimensions of transactional leadership (e.g., contingent reward),
initiating structure, and consideration. We also focus on leader behaviors
related to passive leadership, namely laissez-faire and management by
exception-passive (MBEP). For the sake of clarity, we italicize in Figure 1
those leader traits and behaviors that are examined in our empirical anal-
yses.

Finally, an important aspect of our model is that we position leader
behaviors as one possible mechanism through which leader traits influence
leadership effectiveness. In some cases, it might be that leader traits and
behaviors have independent effects on effectiveness, but we posit that
behaviors can also serve as a key mediator in the relationship between
leader traits and effectiveness. Considering that leader traits such as gender
and personality are often discussed in terms of the behaviors associated
with those traits, the idea that leader behaviors mediate the relationship
between leader traits and effectiveness seems especially plausible. We
also posit that traits impact outcomes not through actual behavior but
rather by how those traits are perceived by others and the attributions that
people make related to individual traits. Altogether, Figure 1 provides an
integrative account of research on leader traits and behaviors, and points
to possible mechanisms linking traits, behaviors, and effectiveness.

The Leader Trait Paradigm

In reviewing trait theories of leadership, Bass (1990) proposed two
questions: (a) Which traits distinguish leaders from other people, and
(b) what is the magnitude of those differences? With respect to the first
question, leadership scholars have generally examined leader traits re-
lated to demographics (e.g., gender, age, education), task competence
(e.g., intelligence, Conscientiousness), or interpersonal attributes (e.g.,
Agreeableness, Extraversion; Bass & Bass, 2008). Unfortunately, little to
no research has systematically addressed Bass’ second question regarding
the relative magnitude of effects across leader traits.

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 13

Understanding the relative validity of leader traits is important be-
cause traits might not be independent. For example, there are biological
and sociocultural reasons for why men and women score differently on
personality and intelligence (Feingold, 1994; Halpern, 1997). The biologi-
cal model posits that gender differences are a function of innate differences
between sexes, whereas the sociocultural model posits that social and cul-
tural factors directly produce differences. A detailed discussion of these
models is beyond the scope of this article, but it is clear that gender differ-
ences exist for both intelligence and personality (Feingold, 1994; Halpern,
1997; Hedges & Nowell, 1995). In addition, meta-analyses on the rela-
tionship between intelligence and personality suggest that Extraversion
and Openness to Experience are related to intelligence (Ackerman &
Heggestad, 1997; Judge, Jackson, Shaw, Scott, & Rich, 2007). This find-
ing is especially interesting considering that Extraversion and Openness
to Experience are personality traits that have been shown to have strong
relationships with leadership effectiveness (Judge et al., 2002). Thus, it is
likely that the effects of gender, intelligence, and personality are not in-
dependent. In the following sections, we build a theoretical case for why
certain leader traits will be more predictive of leadership effectiveness
than other traits. Moreover, we specify how the relative validity of leader
traits will vary by leadership effectiveness criteria.

Demographics. Among the possible demographics of leaders, gender
has received the most attention. Other demographics such as physical
characteristics (e.g., height; Judge & Cable, 2004), education (Howard &
Bray, 1988), and experience (Fiedler, 1970) have been examined in prior
research, but the amount of research on these other demographics pales
in comparison to the research on gender and leadership. Most notably,
Eagly and colleagues (Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Eagly, et al., 1995, 2003)
meta-analyzed the relationship between gender and leadership and found
that, although men and women exhibit some differences in leadership
style, men and women appear to be equally effective—thus drawing into
question gender as a valid predictor of leadership effectiveness.

Based on this research, we do not expect to see differences between
genders in terms of leadership effectiveness. We also propose any dif-
ferences that might exist are due to confounding relationships with other
leader traits such as intelligence and personality (Feingold, 1994; Halpern,
1997). Thus, when examining gender in conjunction with these other
leader traits, we do not expect to observe a meaningful effect of gender
on leadership effectiveness.

Task competence. Task competence is a general category of leader
traits that relate to how individuals approach the execution and perfor-
mance of tasks (Bass & Bass, 2008). Although a variety of task-related per-
sonality traits have been studied, leadership scholars most often describe

14 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

task competence in terms of four traits: intelligence, Conscientiousness,
Openness to Experience, and Emotional Stability. Intelligence reflects a
general factor of cognitive abilities related to individuals’ verbal, spatial,
numerical, and reasoning abilities, and has been established as a consis-
tent predictor of task performance (Hunter & Hunter, 1984). With respect
to intelligence and leadership, Judge et al. (2004) meta-analyzed 151
samples and found that intelligence was positively related to leadership
effectiveness (rc = .21).

Beyond intelligence, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and
Emotional Stability are often used to describe how one approaches and
reacts to task work (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Conscientiousness reflects
the extent to which a person is dependable, dutiful, and achievement-
oriented, and is often associated with deliberate planning and structure.
Openness to Experience is commonly associated with being imaginative,
curious, and open minded to new and different ways of working. Emotional
Stability refers to a person’s ability to remain calm and not be easily upset
when faced with challenging tasks. In a meta-analysis of 73 independent
samples, Judge et al. (2002) found that Conscientiousness (rc = .16),
Openness to Experience (rc = .24), and Emotional Stability (rc = .22)
were all positively related to leadership effectiveness.

Interpersonal attributes. Interpersonal attributes is a general category
of leader traits that relate to how individuals approach social interactions
(Bass & Bass, 2008). These traits include the interpersonal plane of per-
sonality (i.e., Extraversion, Agreeableness; Costa & McCrae, 1992), as
well as skills and abilities related to social functioning (e.g., commu-
nication skills; Klimoski & Hayes, 1980). The most commonly studied
interpersonal attributes of leaders are Extraversion and Agreeableness,
with prior meta-analyses finding that both Extraversion (rc = .24) and
Agreeableness (rc = .21) were positively related to leadership effective-
ness (Judge et al., 2002).

Relative validity of leader traits. Research suggests that leader traits
related to task competence and interpersonal attributes are important pre-
dictors of leadership effectiveness. Yet, we expect that the relative validity
of these leader traits will vary depending on the effectiveness criterion. In
particular, to the degree that the content of leadership effectiveness criteria
focuses on execution and performance, we expect that leader traits related
to task competence will be particularly important. Highly intelligent and
conscientious leaders, for example, will be especially adept at ensuring
their followers have sufficient role clarity, structure, and goals to help facil-
itate task performance. In contrast, to the degree leadership effectiveness
criteria focus on affective and relational elements, we expect that the in-
terpersonal attributes of leaders, namely Extraversion and Agreeableness,
will be important. For example, leaders who are especially extraverted or

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 15

are highly agreeable are more likely to invoke strong emotional ties and
build high-quality relationships with followers (Nahrgang, Morgeson, &
Ilies, 2009), which should lead to improved scores on affective criteria
such as follower satisfaction with the leader.

Hypothesis 1: Leader traits related to task competence will exhibit
a stronger, positive relationship with task performance
dimensions of leadership effectiveness than leaders’ de-
mographics or interpersonal attributes.

Hypothesis 2: Leader traits related to interpersonal attributes will ex-
hibit a stronger, positive relationship with affective
and relational dimensions of leadership effectiveness
than leaders’ demographics or traits related to task
competence.

Following this same logic, to the degree that leadership effectiveness
criteria rely on a more general or global assessment of effectiveness, we
expect that leader traits related to task competence and the interpersonal
attributes of the leader will both be important in predicting leadership
effectiveness. This is because overall effectiveness criteria encompass the
degree to which leaders facilitate task performance but also the degree
to which leaders develop relationships with and consider the welfare of
followers (Yukl, 2006).

Hypothesis 3: Leader traits related to (a) task competence and (b)
interpersonal attributes will both be positively re-
lated to overall leader effectiveness and more so than
demographics.

The Leader Behavior Paradigm

In their narrative review of the leader behavior literature, Fleishman
and colleagues (1991) identified 65 distinct classifications of leader be-
havior, and subsequent reviews have only further highlighted the prolif-
eration of leader behavior typologies and theories (Avolio et al., 2003;
Pearce et al., 2003). Unfortunately, new leader behavior theories continue
to be conceived without explicit comparison to or falsification of existing
leader behavior theories.

One consistent theme in the literature is that behaviors can be fit into
four categories: task-oriented behaviors, relational-oriented behaviors,
change-oriented behaviors, and what we refer to as passive leadership.
In this section, we illustrate how two of the most studied theories of leader
behavior, initiating structure-consideration (IS-C; Halpin, 1957; Stogdill,
1963) and transformational-transactional (T-T; Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978),

16 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

can be arranged along these behavioral dimensions. We also discuss how
these theories of leader behavior overlap conceptually in ways that in-
form our understanding of their relative validities in predicting leadership
effectiveness.

Task-oriented behaviors. Initiating structure and select transac-
tional leader behaviors, namely contingent reward and management by
exception-active (MBEA), represent task-oriented behaviors. Initiating
structure describes behaviors such as defining task roles and role rela-
tionships among group members, coordinating group members’ actions,
determining standards of task performance, and ensuring group mem-
bers perform up to those standards. Similarly, transactional leaders make
clear what is expected in terms of task performance and the rewards for
meeting those expectations (contingent rewards), anticipate task-oriented
problems, and take corrective action (MBEA). Both initiating structure
and contingent reward describe leaders as being clear about expectations
and standards for performance, and using these standards to shape follower
commitment, motivation, and behavior. Moreover, initiating structure and
MBEA discuss dealing with deviations from those standards via the use
of structure and routines.

Relational-oriented behaviors. Relative to initiating structure and
transactional leadership, consideration leader behaviors describe more
relational-oriented behaviors. In particular, leaders high on consideration
show concern and respect for individual group members, are friendly
and approachable, are open to input from others, and treat all group
members as equals (Bass, 1990). Similar relational-oriented behaviors
are described in research on empowering (Conger, 1989; Srivastava,
Bartol, & Locke, 2006), participative (Kahai, Sosik, & Avolio, 1997),
and democratic (Gastil, 1994) leadership. A common theme among these
relational-oriented behaviors is that the leader acts in ways that build
follower respect and encourage followers to focus on the welfare of the
group. It should be noted that certain aspects of transformational leader
behaviors (e.g., individualized consideration) also consist of a relational
orientation, which is a point we revisit later in the manuscript. However,
broadly speaking, transformational leadership is conceptualized as a set of
behaviors designed to create and facilitate change in organizations, which
brings us to our third category of leader behaviors.

Change-oriented behaviors. Leader behaviors oriented toward fa-
cilitating and driving change in groups and organizations represent a
third category of leader behaviors that is conceptually distinct from
task and relational-oriented behaviors. According to Yukl et al. (2002),
change-oriented leader behaviors encompass actions such as devel-
oping and communicating a vision for change, encouraging innova-
tive thinking, and risk taking. For example, transformational leaders

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 17

(inspirational motivation) focus on communicating a compelling vision for
the future; in addition, transformational leaders (intellectual stimulatio

seek different perspectives from group members, challenge assumptions,
and take risks. These dimensions of transformational leadership conceptu-
ally distinguish it from the research on task and relational-oriented leader
behaviors.

Passive leadership. In addition to task, relational, and change-
oriented leader behaviors, many leader behavior taxonomies also include
reference to leader inaction or passive leadership. For example, as part of
the transactional model of leader behaviors, MBEP refers to how lead-
ers only engage their followers when task-related problems or challenges
emerge (Bass, 1990). When a problem does not exist or is not apparent to
the leader, the leader does not actively engage. Similarly, a common di-
mension of leader behaviors is laissez-faire, which describes the absence
of leader behaviors (Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999).

Relative validity of leader behaviors. These models of leader be-
havior, IS-C and T-T, have developed and evolved largely independent
of each other. However, given the conceptual similarities between these
models, there is reason to question the independence of their effects and
their relative validity as predictors of leadership effectiveness. Similar to
our discussion of leader traits, we expect that task-oriented leader behav-
iors will ensure that followers have specific goals, an established group
structure with clear roles, and transparent metrics upon which to com-
pare their performance. As a result, task-oriented leader behaviors should
promote greater task productivity in follower or group performance. We
also expect change-oriented leader behaviors to be important predictors of
task performance. By establishing a vision for the future and challenging
followers to not settle for the status quo, change-oriented leader behaviors
should facilitate improvements in task productivity. Thus, to the degree
that the content of leadership effectiveness criteria focuses on task execu-
tion and performance, we expect task-oriented and change-oriented leader
behaviors will be important.

Hypothesis 4: Task-oriented and change-oriented leader behaviors will
exhibit a stronger, positive relationship with task per-
formance dimensions of leadership effectiveness than
relational-oriented or passive leader behaviors.

In contrast, leaders who engage in relational-oriented behaviors are
empathetic and skilled at sensing the needs of their followers; likewise,
these leaders show concern for others and appeal to followers’ emo-
tions. These leader behaviors should invoke a strong interpersonal connec-
tion with followers and ultimately higher levels of follower satisfaction.
Likewise, change-oriented behaviors can also enhance the attitudes and

18 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

satisfaction of followers. Prior research shows that individuals who
feel that they are growing, developing, and making improvements over
time feel more satisfied at work (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). We
expect that change-oriented leader behaviors will enhance these feel-
ings of growth and development. Thus, to the degree that leadership
effectiveness criteria focus on affective and relational elements, we
expect relational-oriented and change-oriented leader behaviors to be
important.

Hypothesis 5: Relational-oriented and change-oriented leader be-
haviors will exhibit a stronger, positive relationship
with affective and relational dimensions of leader-
ship effectiveness than task-oriented or passive leader
behaviors.

As noted above, global assessments of leadership effectiveness reflect
a leader’s ability to facilitate task performance as well as manage re-
lationships and interpersonal concerns within the group. Therefore, task-
oriented, relational-oriented, and change-oriented leader behaviors should
be important predictors of overall leader effectiveness.

Hypothesis 6: Task-, relational-, and change-oriented leader behaviors
will be positively related to overall leader effectiveness
and more so than passive leader behaviors.

With respect to passive leader behaviors, namely MBEP and laissez-
faire leadership, it is clear that there is a negative relationship between
these leader behaviors and leadership effectiveness (Judge & Piccolo,
2004). In terms of relative (absolute) validity, however, it is unclear how
these passive leader behaviors compare to more active task- and relational-
oriented behaviors—and how this relative validity might differ across
leadership effectiveness criteria.

Most research on leader traits and behaviors is embedded within a
formal social structure whereby leaders hold formal positions that come
with an expected set of role behaviors (Biddle, 1979). When leaders do
not actively engage in behaviors consistent with these role behaviors, the
inaction becomes symbolic (Pfeffer, 1981) and likely renders the person
a nonleader in the eyes of followers. Thus, to the degree leadership effec-
tiveness criteria focus on the leader as the target of evaluation, we expect
passive leadership behaviors to be important predictors of effectiveness.
Thus, we expect passive leadership to be a more important predictor for
outcomes such as leader effectiveness and satisfaction with leader, as op-
posed to group performance or follower job satisfaction. In fact, given the
importance of action in leadership, even if that action is purely symbolic
(Pfeffer, 1981), we propose that passive leadership will be as important

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 19

in predicting leader effectiveness and satisfaction with leader as will the
active forms of leader behaviors.

Hypothesis 7: In comparison to more active forms of leader behavior,
the relative validity of MBEP and laissez-faire leader-
ship will be greater for criteria that have the leader as
the target of evaluation than for criteria that do not focus
specifically on the leader.

Leader Traits Versus Behaviors: A Test of Relative Validity

Thus far, we have focused purely on the predictive validities of leader
traits relative to other leader traits and leader behaviors relative to other
leader behaviors. However, in order to progress toward an integrative
understanding of leadership, we must simultaneously consider alternative
trait and behavioral explanations. It is this direct comparison of alternative
explanations of leadership effectiveness that is absent from the current
literature.

We offer several theoretical explanations for why leader behaviors will
have greater validity than leader traits in predicting leadership effective-
ness. First, consistent with recent literature on the distal and proximal
antecedents to leadership effectiveness (Van Iddekinge, Ferris, & Heffner,
2009), we submit that leader behaviors are more proximal to the act of
leadership than are traits and, thus, will be more predictive of leadership
effectiveness. Second, although traits reflect behavioral tendencies in peo-
ple, the manifestation of those traits into behaviors can be affected by the
situation. Drawing from trait activation theory (Tett & Guterman, 2000;
Tett & Burnett, 2003) and related research (Mischel & Shoda, 1995), traits
manifest into the expected set of behaviors only when the situation makes
the need for that trait behavior salient. When situations do not call for a
particular trait, the trait does not manifest and its impact on outcomes is
marginalized. Given the complexity and ambiguity of leadership contexts
(Pfeffer, 1977), it is likely that leadership situations vary with respect to
trait relevance. In other words, leaders’ traits will not always manifest in
ways that impact leadership effectiveness. Contrast this with assessments
of leader behavior, where the assessment measures actual, observed be-
havior that has already manifested during the act of leadership, and we
would expect that leader behaviors will be more predictive of leadership
effectiveness than leader traits.

Hypothesis 8: Leader behaviors will predict more variance in leader-
ship effectiveness than leader traits.

20 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

Traits, Behaviors, and Leadership Effectiveness: An Integrated Model

As illustrated in Figure 1, we propose that there are two mechanisms
through which individual traits affect leadership effectiveness. The first
involves actual behaviors that result as a function of the leader’s traits.
The current literature on leadership has treated leader traits and behaviors
as independent explanations of leader effectiveness. However, if leader
traits and behaviors are not entirely independent, an alternative model is
that leader behaviors serve as one meditational mechanism. The second
mechanism through which leader traits might impact effectiveness is not
through actual behavior but rather how followers attribute and identify
with the leader’s traits. Specifically, we propose that certain traits, espe-
cially those that are highly salient to followers, have symbolic meaning
and can be the basis upon which followers make judgments about that
leader that are independent of any actual behavior.

Leaders behaviors. The notion that leader behaviors mediate the rela-
tionship between traits and effectiveness seems especially plausible con-
sidering the conceptual and empirical links between individual traits and
behaviors that are apparent in much of the personality literature (Barrick
& Mount, 1993) and research on gender in leadership (Eagly & Johnson,
1990). In particular, the interpersonal attributes of leaders, such as Ex-
traversion and Agreeableness, should predict the degree to which leaders
engage in relational-oriented and change-oriented behavior. For example,
extraverted individuals will be more inclined to seek input from followers,
talk enthusiastically about the work, and be more comfortable setting a
direction and vision for the group. Similarly, agreeable individuals will
be more friendly and approachable, likely to help followers develop their
strengths, and respectful to followers. All of these behaviors are akin
to those articulated in the consideration and transformational theories of
leader behavior.

Likewise, the traits related to task competence (intelligence, Consci-
entiousness, Openness to Experience, and Emotional Stability) should
predict how leaders approach behaviors such as structuring task work,
challenging assumptions, risk taking, and solving problems. For exam-
ple, conscientious leaders, due to their preference for planned rather than
spontaneous behavior, will be inclined to initiate structure in leadership
contexts (Humphrey, Hollenbeck, Meyer, & Ilgen, 2007). They will also
be more inclined to actively monitor and intervene when problems arise,
which are behaviors associated with MBEA. Similarly, leaders who are
high in Openness to Experience are more likely to monitor their envi-
ronment, challenge assumptions, recognize the possible implications of
external forces, and then intervene as appropriate. Finally, leaders who are
emotionally stable will be more likely to remain calm, maintain order and

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 21

structure, and be more comfortable with taking risks during challenging
situations.

Hypothesis 9: Relational-oriented and change-oriented leader behav-
iors will mediate the relationship between leader-
ship effectiveness and the interpersonal attributes of
leaders.

Hypothesis 10: Task-oriented and change-oriented leader behaviors
will mediate the relationship between leadership effec-
tiveness and leader traits related to task competence.

Attributions and identification processes. Drawing on leadership cat-
egorization theory (Lord, 1985) and related research on attributional and
identification processes in leadership (Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Hogg,
Hains, & Mason, 1998), we submit that leader traits can influence lead-
ership effectiveness by way of attributions that followers make about the
leader and perceived identification and similarity with the leader. For ex-
ample, independent of leader behaviors, Cherulnik, Turns, and Wilderman
(1990) found that physical appearance in terms of maturity and attractive-
ness influenced attributions of leadership emergence and effectiveness.
Similarly, numerous studies have found that gender is an important factor
in shaping followers’ attributions of leadership and effectiveness (e.g.,
Sczesny, Bosak, Neff, & Schyns, 2004). Finally, drawing from the simi-
larity attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971), research has consistently shown
that followers who perceive a leader to be similar to themselves report
stronger identification with the leader and grant that leader more favorable
evaluations (Engle & Lord, 1997; Liden, Wayne, & Stilwell, 1993; Turban
& Jones, 1988).

Hypothesis 11: Follower attributions and identification processes will
mediate the relationship between leader traits and
effectiveness.

As noted earlier, we present our conceptual model of leader traits,
behaviors, and effectiveness to help organize and integrate the existing
literature. In our empirical analyses and hypothesis testing, we examine
an exemplary set of relationships from this model. Specifically, we focus
on those relationships where meta-analytic data already existed or there
were sufficient primary studies for us to conduct our own meta-analyses.
In some cases, such as with leader attributions and identification pro-
cesses, there was insufficient data for us to examine these relationships.
In our Discussion section, we return to these relationships, discuss the
implications of our findings for these other variables and processes, and
outline an agenda for future research that will be critical for developing a
more integrative understanding of leadership.

22 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

Methods

To examine these hypotheses, we use previously published meta-
analytic estimates, update previously published meta-analytic estimates,
and conduct our own meta-analyses of primary studies. Table 1 provides
the sources of the intercorrelations among all study variables. In total,
59 studies consisting of 13 existing meta-analyses and 46 primary stud-
ies were included in our final analysis. Of the 143 bivariate relationships
estimated in Table 2, 90 of the estimates were drawn from previously pub-
lished meta-analyses, and 53 were estimated via our own meta-analyses
of primary studies or via updating previously published meta-analyses.

The correlation matrix used as an input for our analyses (Table 2) was
constructed via a two-step process. First, where meta-analytic estimates of
a relationship were available, those data were used directly. In some cases,
it appeared the authors of the original study had meta-analytic estimates
relevant to our study that were not reported in the original meta-analysis.
In such cases, we contacted the authors directly and obtained the meta-
analytic estimates. Second, where previous meta-analytic estimates were
published before 2003, we updated the existing meta-analyses with recent
primary studies. Third, where meta-analytic estimates were unavailable,
we conducted our own meta-analyses by collecting and examining primary
studies.

Literature Search

To identify previous meta-analyses, we searched the online databases
PsycINFO (1887–2008) and Web of Science ISI (1970–2008) using com-
binations of the terms leader, leadership, or manager with the terms
meta-analysis or quantitative review. Our search was supplemented with
a reference search of key articles in the area of leadership (e.g., Avolio
et al., 2003; Day, 2000; Yukl, 1989). We identified 919 articles in our ini-
tial search but narrowed this down to 79 studies based on a review of the
abstracts. We then examined each of these studies to determine whether
the study should be included in our analysis. To be included, a study had to
be a meta-analysis, contain a variable of interest per our hypotheses, and
the effect size for the bivariate relationship had to be reported in the study.
In some cases, we identified multiple studies that reported meta-analytic
estimates for the same bivariate relationship. In these cases, we used the
meta-analytic estimate that was the most recent and had the largest sample
size.

For bivariate relationships where meta-analytic estimates were not al-
ready available, we conducted our own meta-analyses of primary data. To
identify the relevant primary studies, an additional literature search was

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 23

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(2
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.

24 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

T
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D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 25

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is
.

26 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

conducted using PsycINFO (1887–2008) and Web of Science ISI (1970–
2008). The search terms used to identify primary studies for each bivariate
relationship where meta-analytic estimates were not available included
the following key words: gender, cognitive ability, intelligence, mental
ability, Big Five, five factor model, Openness, Emotional Stability, Neu-
roticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, extroversion,
introversion, introversion, initiating structure, consideration, transforma-
tional, management by exception, contingent reward, laissez-faire, group
performance, group effectiveness, team performance, team effectiveness,
satisfaction, leadership, leader, and manager. Our searches yielded 729
articles, which were reviewed for inclusion in the meta-analysis.

Procedures for Meta-Analytic Estimates

We created a comprehensive list of codes for the variables reported
across all studies. The studies were divided among the authors who then
coded the meta-analytic estimates for the variables of interest from each
study. When an individual was not clear about what code to assign to a
specific variable, the authors reviewed the study and discussed the variable
in question until consensus was reached regarding the appropriate code.

Where possible, we coded the meta-analytic estimate that had been
corrected for measurement error in both the predictor and criterion scores.
For some relationships, a corrected meta-analytic estimate was not avail-
able (e.g., gender–personality). In these cases, we took the uncorrected
meta-analytic estimate and corrected for measurement error based on
existing reliability data. For example, for the gender–personality rela-
tionships, we corrected for error in the measurement of the personality
dimensions using existing reliability data from the NEO Manual (Costa
& McCrae, 1992). We assumed perfect reliability in the measurement of
gender.

Some studies selected for inclusion reported effects in terms of the
statistics rather than correlations. For these studies, the data were trans-
formed from effect sizes into correlations (see Lipsey & Wilson, 2001).
We also coded the 90% confidence interval from previous meta-analyses
based on information provided in the meta-analyses. For 11 relationships
(e.g., initiating structure-leader effectiveness), the previous meta-analyses
did not provide enough information for us to calculate the 90% confidence
interval but did indicate that the 90% confidence interval did not cross zero.
We have noted this in Table 2.

For meta-analytic estimates that were published before 2003, we up-
dated the estimates using procedures outlined by Schmidt and Raju (2007).
For conducting our own meta-analyses of primary studies, we used the
Schmidt–Hunter psychometric meta-analysis method (Hunter & Schmidt,

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 27

2004). We first corrected the primary estimates for measurement error in
both the predictor and criterion scores. The majority of primary studies
provided the reliabilities of the measured scores. However, for studies
missing this coefficient, we used the average reliability coefficient from
the other studies also reporting data for those variables of interest (Hunter
& Schmidt, 2004) or from publishers of the measures (e.g., NEO Manual;
Costa & McCrae, 1992). For each of these estimates, we calculated 90%
confidence intervals using a random effects estimate of the standard error
of the mean corrected correlation (Burke & Landis, 2003). All of the pri-
mary studies used in our meta-analysis are marked with an asterisk in the
reference section.

Testing Relative Importance and Validity

To determine the relative importance of predictors, researchers of-
ten examine regression coefficients or zero-order correlations with the
criterion. When predictors are uncorrelated, these indices are appropriate
because they are equivalent, and the squares of the indices sum to R2. Thus,
relative importance can be expressed as the proportion of variance each
variable explains. When predictor variables are correlated, however, these
indices are considered inadequate for determining the relative importance
of predictor variables because the indices are no longer equivalent, do
not sum to R2, and take on different meanings (Budescu, 1993; Johnson,
2001; Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001).

The use of epsilon is one way of determining relative importance when
predictors are correlated (Johnson, 2000). The estimates derived from ep-
silon, often labeled relative weights, sum to the model R2. Thus, the relative
weights represent the proportionate contribution each predictor makes to
R2, considering the predictor’s direct effect and its effect when combined
with other predictors. Researchers can also calculate the percentage of R2

explained by each predictor by dividing the relative weight of each pre-
dictor by the total R2. Because of these attributes, epsilon is the preferred
statistic for computing relative importance (Johnson & LeBreton, 2004;
LeBreton, Binning, Adorno, & Melcher, 2004). Thus, we use the epsilon
statistic in the current study to examine the relative predictive validity of
leader traits and behaviors.

Testing the Full Model

For testing Hypotheses 9–10, we utilized EQS 6.1 (Bentler, 1995)
to model the relationships among the leader traits, leader behaviors, and
leadership effectiveness. We created a complete mediation model, which

28 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

tested the extent to which the leader traits were completely mediated by
the leader behaviors specified in the hypotheses.

After examining the results of this model, we also used a fully satu-
rated model where the leader traits were directly related to all of the leader
behaviors and leadership effectiveness, whereas the leader behaviors were
also directly related to leadership effectiveness. We chose to use a fully
saturated model because doing so allowed us to examine the extent to
which all leader traits were mediated by each behavior. Using this ap-
proach, we were able to identify any nonhypothesized relationships that
should be explored in future research. Because the model is fully saturated,
the model fit statistics are not informative and thus are not reported.

Results

Table 2 provides the meta-analytic estimates of the intercorrelations
among the study variables. In this table, we present several pieces of infor-
mation about the population correlation estimates, including the corrected
correlation (rc) estimates, the 90% CI for the corrected correlation (rc),
the number of studies included in determining the correlation (k), and the
total number of participants in the studies (n). It is important to note that
a few of our estimated effects are based on a relatively small number of
studies (e.g., the relationship between intelligence and leader behaviors).
Although other meta-analyses both inside and outside of the leadership
domain have relied on similar numbers of original studies (e.g., Baas,
De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2008; Balkundi & Harrison, 2006; Bono & Judge,
2004; De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; Gerstner & Day, 1997; Ng & Feldman,
2009), it is important that we address this potential threat to the validity of
our results. To address this concern for the relationships where we claim
statistical support, we conducted a series of fail-safe k analyses, which
indicate how many similarly sized studies with null findings would need
to be conducted before the estimated effect would lose statistical support
(Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). The average fail-safe k for the relationships
between leader traits and effectiveness outcomes is 145, 186 for the rela-
tionships between leader behaviors and effectiveness outcomes, and 26 for
the intercorrelations between leader traits and behaviors. Based on these
results, a substantial number of studies with null findings would have to
be conducted before our reported effects would lose statistical support.

Testing Relative Validity

Hypotheses 1–3 were concerned with the relative validity of leader
traits. Table 3 presents the direction of the relationship (positive or neg-
ative) and the percentage of R2 explained by the specific leader trait for

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 29

T
A
B
L

E
3

R
el
a
ti

ve
Im

p
o

rt
a

n
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up

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2
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4
.0
2
.0
6

30 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

each leadership effectiveness criteria. Overall, leader traits explain be-
tween 2% and 22% of the variance in leadership effectiveness criteria.
For group performance, a task performance dimension of leadership ef-
fectiveness, the most important predictor is Conscientiousness, which is
positively related to group performance and accounts for 61.5% of the
total explained R2. This percentage is almost three times that of the next
most important predictor of Agreeableness, which accounts for 22.0% of
total explained R2. Overall, the leader traits explain 14% of the variance
in group performance, and traits related to task competence account for
77.7% of the total explained R2. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported.

For the affective and relational dimensions of leadership effectiveness,
Extraversion and Agreeableness are both positively related to follower job
satisfaction and account for 25.9% and 1.8% of total explained R2, respec-
tively, whereas Conscientiousness accounts for 50.6% of total explained
R2. Leader traits only explain 2% of the total variance in follower job
satisfaction, and interpersonal attributes account for only 27.7% of the
total explained variance. For satisfaction with leader, Agreeableness is
the most important trait predictor, is positively related to satisfaction with
leader, and accounts for 81.0% of total explained R2. Overall, leader traits
explain 6% of the variance in satisfaction with leader, with traits related
to interpersonal attributes accounting for 81.6% of the total explained R2.
Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported for follower satisfaction with leader
but not follower job satisfaction.

Finally, for overall leader effectiveness, the most important leader traits
are Extraversion and Conscientiousness. These traits, which span across
task competence and interpersonal attributes, are both positively related
to effectiveness and account for 35.3% and 27.6% of the total explained
R2, respectively. In total, leader traits explain 22% of the variance in
overall leader effectiveness, and traits related to task competence and
interpersonal attributes explain 98.6% of the total explained R2. Thus,
Hypothesis 3 was supported.

Hypotheses 4–7 were concerned with the relatively validity of leader
behaviors. As shown in Table 4, leader behaviors explain between 20%
and 70% of the variance in leadership effectiveness criteria. The most
important leader behavior for predicting group performance is initiat-
ing structure, which is positively related to group performance and ac-
counts for 32.9% of total explained R2. Combined with contingent reward
and MBE-active, which are also positively related to group performance,
task-oriented leader behaviors account for 47.6% of total explained vari-
ance. Next, change-oriented transformational leader behaviors account for
28.5% of the total explained variance in group performance. In contrast,
consideration behaviors and passive leader behaviors account for 16.6%
and 7.3% of total explained variance, respectively. Thus, Hypothesis 4 was

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 31

T
A
B
L

E
4

R
el
a
ti
ve
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p
o
rt
a
n
ce
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1
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32 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

supported in that task and change-oriented behaviors were most important
for performance-related criteria, whereas relational-oriented and passive
leader behaviors were less important predictors of group performance. In
total, leader behaviors explain 20% of the variance in group performance.

For follower job satisfaction, contingent reward is the most important
behavioral predictor, accounting for 43.9% of total explained R2. Transfor-
mational and consideration behaviors are positively related to follower job
satisfaction and explain 21.0% and 13.6% of total variance in follower job
satisfaction, respectively. In comparison, passive leader behaviors (MBE-
passive, laissez-faire) combine to account for 17.9% of total variance
explained. Overall, leader behaviors explain 51% of the variance in fol-
lower job satisfaction. In predicting satisfaction with leader, consideration
leader behaviors account for 44.9% of total variance explained, whereas
transformational behaviors account for 19.8% of total variance explained.
Collectively, task-oriented and passive leader behaviors account for 20.1%
and 15.2% of total explained variance. In total, leader behaviors explain
70% of the variance in satisfaction with leader. Thus, Hypothesis 5, which
predicted that relational-oriented behaviors would be most important for
affective criteria, was supported for follower satisfaction with leader but
not follower job satisfaction.

Finally, task-oriented leader behaviors are positively related to overall
leader effectiveness and account for 33.3% of total explained R2. Trans-
formational and consideration behaviors are also positively related to
overall leader effectiveness and account for 22.8% and 19.5% of total
explained R2, respectively. Passive leader behaviors are negatively related
to leader effectiveness and explain 24.4% of total explained R2. In total,
leader behaviors explain 47% of the variance in leader effectiveness. Thus,
Hypothesis 6 was supported in that task, relational, and change-oriented
leader behaviors were important predictors of overall leader effectiveness.

For leader effectiveness and satisfaction with leader, which both have
the leader as the target of evaluation, passive leader behaviors account for
24.4% and 15.2% of total explained R2, respectively. For criteria that do not
focus specifically on the leader, passive leader behaviors account for 7.3%
and 17.9% of total explained variance in group performance and follower
job satisfaction, respectively. In general, the portion of total variance
explained by passive leader behaviors is less than the variance explained by
more active leader behaviors. Thus, although there is evidence suggesting
that laissez-faire behaviors are an important predictor of leader-centric
criteria, Hypothesis 7 was generally unsupported.

Table 5 provides the results of our analyses examining the relative
importance of leader traits and behaviors concurrently. In Hypothesis 8,
we predicted leader behaviors would be more predictive of leadership
effectiveness than leader traits. Combined, leader traits and behaviors

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 33

T
A
B
L

E
5

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p
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34 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

explain between 31% and 92% of the variance in leadership effectiveness
criteria. For leader effectiveness, leader behaviors account for 74.5% of
total explained R2. In total, leader traits and behaviors explain 58% of the
variance in leader effectiveness. For group performance, leader behaviors
account for 62.4% of total explained R2. Overall, leader traits and be-
haviors explain 31% of the variance in group performance. For follower
job satisfaction, leader behaviors account for 93.7% of total explained
R2. Overall, leader traits and behaviors explain 56% of the variance in
follower job satisfaction. Finally, leader behaviors account for 85.0% of
total explained R2 in satisfaction with leader. Together, leader traits and
behaviors explain 92% of the variance in satisfaction with leader. Thus,
Hypothesis 8 was supported.

Testing an Integrated Model

Hypothesis 9–11 predicted the validity of an integrated model whereby
leader behaviors and follower attributions and identification processes
mediate the relationship between leader traits and the four leadership
effectiveness criteria. Because there was insufficient data on follower
attributions and identification, we were unable to test Hypothesis 11.

Table 6 presents the path coefficients for the completely mediated
model. First examining Hypothesis 9 (i.e., relational and change-oriented
behaviors will mediate the effect of interpersonal traits), we find that
Agreeableness was mediated by consideration (but not transformational)
behaviors, whereas Extraversion was mediated by both consideration and
transformational behaviors. Thus, the results show partial support for
Hypothesis 9.

Turning to Hypothesis 10, which predicted that task and change-
oriented leader behaviors would mediate the effect of task competence-
related leader traits, the results demonstrate that the effect of intelligence
on leadership effectiveness was mediated by initiating structure, transfor-
mational leadership, and contingent reward. Similarly, Conscientiousness
was mediated by initiating structure and transformational leadership. In
contrast, Emotional Stability was only mediated by contingent reward,
whereas openness was only mediated by initiating structure. Thus, the
results show partial support for Hypothesis 10.

We next examined a fully saturated model relating all of the traits in
our model to all of the behaviors and ultimately leadership effectiveness.
Examining a fully saturated model allows us to observe the full extent
to which leader behaviors mediate the relationships between leader traits
and effectiveness, as well as identify nonhypothesized relationships that
are present in our data. Table 7 presents the direct, indirect, and total
effects for the full model among leader traits, behaviors, and leadership

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 35

T
A
B
L

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36 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

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D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 37

effectiveness. The direct effect reflects the variance explained by each
leader trait through some mechanism other than leader behaviors, whereas
the indirect (mediated) effect represents the variance explained by leader
behaviors in the relationship between leader traits and leader effectiveness.
The total effect is the summation of the direct and indirect effects.

In terms of nonhypothesized effects that emerged from the fully satu-
rated model, the most striking finding was the extent to which laissez-faire
leader behaviors mediated the relationship between leader traits and lead-
ership effectiveness. For example, laissez-faire explained almost half of
the variance in the relationships for gender and intelligence with lead-
ership effectiveness, and to a lesser extent Agreeableness and Openness
to Experience. In addition, contingent reward was one of the strongest
mediators of Agreeableness and Extraversion.

Discussion

In this study, we addressed the lack of integration in the leadership
literature by meta-analytically examining the relative predictive validity
of leader traits and behaviors across a range of leadership effectiveness
criteria. In addition, we developed and tested an integrated trait-behavioral
model of leadership. Within the trait paradigm, leader traits predicted
affective and relational criteria more so than performance-related criteria.
Although there was variation across the criteria, Conscientiousness was
the most consistent trait predictor of leadership effectiveness. Within the
behavioral paradigm, transformational leadership was the most consistent
predictor across the criteria. Other behaviors contributed to effectiveness,
but their relative validity was contingent on the particular outcome of
interest. Overall, we found that leader behaviors had a greater impact on
leadership effectiveness criteria than did leader traits.

Our results provide support for an integrated trait-behavioral model
of leadership effectiveness. In general, leader traits associated with task
competence related to task-oriented leader behaviors, which improve
performance-related leadership outcomes. In contrast, leaders’ interper-
sonal attributes were associated with relational-oriented behaviors, which
improve affective criteria such as follower satisfaction with leader. As
predicted, both task competence and interpersonal attributes predicted,
at least marginally, leaders’ change-oriented behaviors. Finally, passive
leader behaviors were negatively associated with effectiveness and medi-
ated some of the key relationships.

Theoretical Implications

The results of this study provide some confirmation that the leader-
ship literature suffers from construct proliferation. Our narrative review

38 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

revealed that many supposedly distinct leadership traits and behaviors
overlap theoretically and empirically. In fact, our findings indicate that
certain leader traits and behaviors lose much of their predictive validity
when considered in conjunction with other leadership traits and behaviors.
These findings have three implications for leadership research.

First, as leadership scholars, we must commit to integrating our re-
search both within and across research paradigms. For example, behavioral
theories of leadership should include discussions and empirical tests of
which traits contribute to individuals being especially adept at the spec-
ified leadership behaviors. The second implication is that the bar for the
acceptance of “new” leadership theories needs to be raised. Proponents
of a new leadership theory should explicitly compare and contrast their
theory with existing theories and design empirical tests to demonstrate
that an emerging theory of leadership explains incremental variance in
leadership effectiveness. Far from inhibiting future leadership research,
such an approach would highlight the specific contribution of a new the-
ory, prevent construct proliferation, and allow the body of knowledge on
leadership to accumulate more efficiently. Finally, given the empirical
similarities between leader behaviors found in this study, we encourage
scholars to develop new or revise existing measures of leader behaviors
such that we can better capture the conceptual distinctions among leader
behaviors.

Based on our findings, one area that is especially in need of
integration is the conceptualization and measurement of transforma-
tional leadership. Consistent with original theories of transformational
leadership (Bass, 1985), we initially conceptualized transformational
leadership as a change-oriented behavior. However, our results clearly
indicate that transformational leadership has a significant relational com-
ponent to it and overlaps conceptually and empirically with both initi-
ating structure and consideration. For example, both consideration and
transformational (individualized consideration) describe behaviors such
as showing concern and respect for followers, looking out for follower
welfare, and expressing appreciation and support (Bass, 1990). In ad-
dition, transformational leaders (idealized influence) focus on the inter-
ests of the group and act in ways that build follower respect, which is
akin to how considerate leaders focus on the welfare of the group and
treat all group members as their equal. These conceptual similarities are
mirrored in the measures most commonly used to assess consideration
and transformational leadership (see Table 8). Likewise, there are also
strong similarities between measures for the two task-oriented leader be-
haviors, initiating structure and transactional leadership. Although the
LBDQ and MLQ are popular measures of leader behaviors, our em-
pirical data strongly suggest that these and other existing measures are

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 39

T
A
B
L

E
8

M
ea

su
re

m
en

t
o

f
Ta

sk
a

n
d
R
el
a
ti
o
n

a
l-

O
ri

en
te

d
L

ea
d

er
B

eh
a
vi
o
rs
In
it
ia
ti
ng
st
ru
ct

ur
e-

co
ns
id
er
at
io

n
T

ra
ns
fo
rm
at
io

na
l-

tr
an

sa
ct

io
na

l
(L

B
D

Q
;

H
al

pi
n,

19
57

)
(M

L
Q

;
B

as
s

&
A

vo
li

o,
19

95
)

T
as

k-
or

ie
nt

ed
le

ad
er
be
ha
vi
or
In
it
ia
ti
ng
st
ru
ct
ur
e
T
ra

ns
ac

ti
on

al
•A

sk
s

gr
ou

p
m

em
be

rs
to

fo
ll

ow
st

an
da

rd
ru

le
s
an
d

re
gu

la
ti

on
s

•A
ss

ig
ns

gr
ou
p
m
em
be
rs
to

pa
rt

ic
ul

ar
ta

sk
s
an
d

ro
le

s
•M

ai
nt

ai
ns

de
fi

ni
te

st
an

da
rd

s
of

pe
rf
or
m
an
ce
an
d

cr
it

ic
iz

e
m

is
ta

ke
s

•C
la

ri
fi

es
pe

rf
or
m
an

ce
ta

rg
et
s
an

d
w

ho
is

re
sp

on
si

bl
e

fo
r

ac
hi

ev
in

g
th

os
e

ta
rg

et
s

(c
on
ti
ng
en
t
re
w

ar
d)

•F
oc

us
es

n
m

is
ta
ke
s
an
d

de
vi

at
io

ns
fr

om
pe

rf
or
m
an

ce
st

an
da

rd
s

(m
an

ag
em

en
t

by
ex

ce
pt

io
n-

ac
ti

ve
)

R
el
at
io
na
l-

or
ie

nt
ed

le
ad

er
be

ha
vi

or
C

on
si
de
ra
ti
on
T
ra
ns
fo
rm
at
io
na

l
•F

in
ds

ti
m

e
to

li
st

en
to

gr
ou
p
m
em
be

rs
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re
at

s
gr

ou
p

m
em

be
rs

as
hi

s/
he

r
eq

ua
l

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oo

ks
ou

t
fo

r
th

e
pe

rs
on

al
w

el
fa

re
of

in
di

vi
du

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gr

ou
p
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on

su
lt

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n
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ak
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ci
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(i

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s
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(i
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co
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C
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ng
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ob
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(i
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ev
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m
un

ic
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pe
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in
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(i
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N
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te
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pl
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ed

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du
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to
co

py
ri

gh
t

re
st

ri
ct

io
ns

40 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

limited in their ability to distinguish between different categories of leader
behaviors.

Our finding that leader behaviors tend to predict more variance across
a variety of effectiveness criteria than do leader traits also provides guid-
ance for future researchers. Specifically, our results suggest that although
having certain traits may predispose individuals to certain behaviors,
behaviors are the more important predictor of leadership effectiveness.
Given that behaviors can be learned and developed, this finding high-
lights the need for more research on what individuals and organiza-
tions can do to develop leaders’ ability to exhibit such behaviors (e.g.,
Day, 2000; DeRue & Wellman, 2009; Dragoni, Tesluk, Russel, & Oh,
2009). In particular, one question that scholars might ask is whether dif-
ferent leadership behaviors require different approaches to learning and
development.

Finally, we encourage scholars to explore a variety of meditational
mechanisms and effectiveness criteria. Our results indicate that leader
behaviors mediate the effect of some leader traits but not others. More-
over, even when behaviors do mediate the effect of leader traits on
leadership effectiveness, that mediation is far from complete. One way
to extend our model would be to specify mechanisms that explain the
effect of leader traits such as Emotional Stability, which influence ef-
fectiveness but not through the behaviors specified. In addition, our
results suggest that the nature of the leadership effectiveness criteria
plays an important role in determining which traits and behaviors are
most important. For example, highly extraverted leaders achieve superior
effectiveness scores as rated by others, but Extraversion has little influ-
ence on group performance. Based on these findings, scholars should
be wary about drawing wide-ranging conclusions about leadership effec-
tiveness, especially if those conclusions are based on narrowly defined
criteria.

Practical Implications

Understanding the relative importance of specific leader traits and be-
haviors as predictors of leadership effectiveness can help organizations
improve their leader selection and development practices. Although con-
temporary organizations use a wide variety of trait-based assessments
for leader selection (Dobbins & Platz, 1986; Fulmer & Conger, 2004;
Phillips & Schmidt, 2004), our results suggest that the traits of Con-
scientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness are particularly impor-
tant predictors of success in leadership positions. Individuals who are
high in Conscientiousness and Extraversion are more likely to be evalu-
ated as effective leaders, and individuals high in Conscientiousness and

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 41

Agreeableness tend to improve the performance of the groups they lead.
Although we acknowledge that there are traits not included in this study
(e.g., motivation to lead; Chan & Drasgow, 2001) that could likely also
be used to select effective leaders, our data suggest that organizations
might benefit by focusing on certain key aspects of personality, rather
than gender or intelligence, when selecting individuals for leadership
roles.

In addition, our findings can stimulate and guide organizational lead-
ership development programs. Day (2000) reviews a variety of practices,
such as 360-degree feedback, mentoring, networks, job assignments, and
action learning, that can shape the behavior of individuals in leadership
positions and hence serve as the building blocks of leadership develop-
ment. Although a further review of these practices is outside the scope of
this study, we draw on our findings regarding leadership behaviors to make
two suggestions about the appropriate content for leadership development
programs.

First, our results suggest that leadership development programs should
emphasize the importance of actively and assertively occupying the lead-
ership role. The large negative relationship we found between passive
leadership behaviors and effectiveness suggests that even engaging in
suboptimal leadership behaviors is better than inaction. Thus, leadership
development initiatives should encourage individuals to proactively as-
sume their leadership responsibilities rather than passively waiting to act
until problems develop. Development programs that encourage individ-
uals to see themselves as leaders should help facilitate leadership action
(DeRue, Ashford, & Cotton, 2009). Moreover, considering that passive
leadership was often the strongest mediator of the leader trait-effectiveness
relationship, leadership development programs will have to actively work
to overcome the laissez-faire tendencies associated with specific traits.

Second, our results suggest that leadership development programs
should touch on all three dimensions of leadership behavior: task,
relational, and change. Effective leaders must successfully plan and
schedule work (task-oriented behaviors), support and help their follow-
ers (relational-oriented behaviors), and encourage and facilitate change
(change-oriented behaviors). Based on our results, leader behaviors that
focus on one of these dimensions are predictive of certain effective-
ness criteria but not others. In contrast, transformational leadership,
which seems to span across relational- and change-oriented behav-
iors, was a relatively strong predictor across all effectiveness criteria.
We recommend that organizations design their development programs
such that each dimension of leader behavior is sufficiently covered and
promoted.

42 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

Strengths and Limitations

Our study has several limitations that should be noted. Because a suf-
ficient number of primary studies are needed to obtain a meta-analytic
estimate, we were limited by the extant body of leadership research.
Specifically, we could not test all of the components of our concep-
tual model due to a lack of research on specific leader traits, behaviors,
and attributional processes. For example, we were forced to omit behav-
ioral leadership theories such as ethical leadership (Brown, Trevino, &
Harrison, 2005), servant leadership (Greenleaf, Spears, & Covey, 2002),
and empowering leadership (Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000),
as well as research on attribution-based accounts of leadership (e.g., im-
plicit leadership theory; Lord, 1985).

Another limitation is that we rely on a hierarchical, leader-centric view
of leadership, which is necessary considering that most of the existing
research assumes that leadership is structured as a top-down, hierarchical
process. In contrast, recent theories of leadership have conceptualized the
concept as a collective process that gets enacted through mutual influence
among social actors at all levels of a group or organization (Day, Gronn,
& Salas, 2004; Pearce & Conger, 2003; Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam,
2010). Moreover, existing research frequently approaches leadership as a
singular, undifferentiated effect. Yet, recent research has begun to examine
how the effect of the leadership traits and behaviors discussed herein differ
across followers (Wu, Tsui, & Kinicki, 2010), across organizations (Aime,
Johnson, Ridge, & Hill, 2010), and across jobs (Morgeson & Humphrey,
2008). We encourage leadership scholars to continue pursuing this line of
research but also to explicitly compare and contrast these emerging forms
of leadership with the traditional, hierarchical view of leadership so that
we continue to move toward an integrative understanding of leadership
processes in organizations.

A final limitation of this study is that we were not able to explore
boundary conditions that might apply to our integrated trait-behavioral
model. We recognize there may be situational factors that moderate the
effect of traits and behaviors on the various leadership effectiveness out-
comes, particularly in light of how traits and behaviors impact behavior in
the presence of specific critical roles (Humphrey, Morgeson, & Mannor,
2009). This is evident in contingency theories of leadership (e.g., Fiedler,
1967; Hersey & Blanchard, 1969; House & Mitchell, 1974), although it is
worth noting that empirical support for existing contingency approaches
has been weak (Avolio et al., 2003; Graeff, 1997; Vroom & Jago, 2007).
Based on our model and findings, we highlight two boundary conditions
that seem relevant. First, interactionist approaches to the study of person-
ality (Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Tett & Burnett, 2003) suggest that aspects

D. SCOTT DERUE ET AL. 43

of the work context can “activate” the expression of a given trait by sug-
gesting that behaviors associated with that trait are necessary, appropriate,
and desirable. Thus, the relationship between leader traits, namely person-
ality, and leadership behaviors and effectiveness would be expected to be
influenced by the structure of work (Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson,
2007) and, therefore, should be strongest when the situation calls for that
particular trait to be activated. Second, we expect time to be an important
moderator. For example, the amount of prior experience followers have
with leaders should be important for determining the relative validity of
leader traits and behaviors. For relatively “new” leadership relationships,
the impact of traits on outcomes will most likely be mediated by attri-
butions and identification processes. Over time, followers will have more
exposure to leaders’ behaviors, and thus behaviors will likely become a
more important explanation for the effect of leader traits on effectiveness.

Beyond these limitations, this study also has several strengths that
bolster its contribution to the current literature. First, this study represents
the most comprehensive meta-analysis of the leadership literature to date.
Whereas other meta-analyses have focused within the trait (e.g., Judge
et al., 2002, 2004) or behavioral (Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Judge, Piccolo,
& Ilies, 2004) paradigm, our study is the first to span across and compare
leadership paradigms. Second, our study examines the relative validity of
leader traits and behaviors across a wide range of effectiveness criteria
and, in contrast to prior studies, develops theory for and tests how the
nature of the criterion influences substantive relationships. Finally, our
study directly responds to calls for more integrative approaches to the
study of leadership (Avolio, 2007) and, given our findings, provides the
motivation for such research.

Concluding Remarks

This study integrates popular trait and behavioral perspectives of lead-
ership and tests how different traits and behaviors combine to predict
leadership effectiveness criteria. Our hope is that this study begins to re-
verse the trend of construct proliferation in the leadership literature, and
thus provides some clarity to leadership studies. We call on others to fol-
low this work with additional research that compares and contrasts other
theories and perspectives on leadership, all with the goal of developing an
integrative understanding of leadership in organizations.

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APPENDIX

Source of meta-analytic
estimate Type of estimate Method of estimation

Bono and Judge (2004)

r • Sample size weighted mean
correlation

• Corrected for measurement error
in both the predictor and criterion

Burke, Stagl, Klein,
Goodwin, Salas, and
Halpin (2006)

r • Weighted by inverse of effect size
sampling error

• Did not correct for unreliability
Dobbins and Platz (1986) d statistic • Weighted by study sample size

• No other corrections noted
• Updated using Schmidt and Raju

(2007) method
Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt,

and van Engen (2003)
d statistic • g (difference between leadership

style of male and female leaders,
divided by pooled standard
deviation) converted to d statistic
by correcting them for bias

• Each d weighted by reciprocal of
its variance in the analysis

Judge, Bono, Ilies, and
Gerhardt (2002)

R • Sample size weighted mean
correlation

• Corrected for measurement error
in both the predictor and criterion

• Updated using Schmidt and Raju
(2007) method

Judge et al. (2004) R • Corrected for measurement error
in both the predictor and criterion

Judge and Piccolo (2004) r • Sample size weighted mean
correlation

• Corrected for measurement error
in both the predictor and criterion

Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies
(2004)

r • Sample size weighted mean
correlation
• Corrected for measurement error
in both the predictor and criterion

Judge, Jackson, Shaw, Scott,
and Rich (2007)

r • Estimated population (corrected)
correlations

Lynn and Irwing (2004) d statistic • Weighted by sample size
• Corrected for measurement error

Lippa (2005) d statistic • Weighted by study sample size
• No other corrections noted

Ones, Viswesvaran, and Reiss
(1996)

r • Estimated population (corrected)
correlations

Podsakoff, Bommer,
Podsakoff, and MacKenzie
(2006)

r • Weighted mean correlations
• Corrected for measurement error

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Trait-Based Perspectives of Leadership

Stephen J. Zaccaro
George Mason University

The trait-based perspective of leadership has a long but
checkered history. Trait approaches dominated the initial
decades of scientific leadership research. Later, they were
disdained for their inability to offer clear distinctions be-
tween leaders and nonleaders and for their failure to
account for situational variance in leadership behavior.
Recently, driven by greater conceptual, methodological,
and statistical sophistication, such approaches have again
risen to prominence. However, their contributions are
likely to remain limited unless leadership researchers who
adopt this perspective address several fundamental issues.
The author argues that combinations of traits and at-
tributes, integrated in conceptually meaningful ways, are
more likely to predict leadership than additive or indepen-
dent contributions of several single traits. Furthermore, a
defining core of these dominant leader trait patterns re-
flects a stable tendency to lead in different ways across
disparate organizational domains. Finally, the author sum-
marizes a multistage model that specifies some leader traits
as having more distal influences on leadership processes
and performance, whereas others have more proximal ef-
fects that are integrated with, and influenced by, situational
parameters.

Keywords: trait-based leadership, leadership theories

The quantitative analysis of leadership dates backperhaps to Galton’s (1869) Hereditary Genius. Gal-ton emphasized two basic points that have come to
form, and sometimes misinform, popular notions of lead-
ership. The first point defined leadership as a unique prop-
erty of extraordinary individuals whose decisions are ca-
pable of sometimes radically changing the streams of
history (see also Carlyle, 1849). This point remains a most
persistent view of leadership in the popular literature; in
many best-selling books, authors seek to explain leadership
by describing the transformational influences of certain
individuals. The second point grounds the unique attributes
of such individuals in their inherited or genetic makeup.
Galton (1869) argued that the personal qualities defining
effective leadership were naturally endowed, passed from
generation to generation. The practical implication of this
view, of course, is that leadership quality is immutable and,
therefore, not amenable to developmental interventions.

This perspective guided the preponderance of leader-
ship research into the 20th century until the late 1940s and
early 1950s. Then, on the basis of some important reviews
(Stogdill, 1948; Mann, 1959), many researchers discarded
trait-based leadership approaches as being insufficient to

explain leadership and leader effectiveness. This rejection
was widespread and long lasting, and it echoed in most of
the major social and industrial and organizational psychol-
ogy textbooks for the next 30 – 40 years (e.g., Baron &
Byrne, 1987; Blum & Naylor, 1956; Ghiselli & Brown,
1955; Muchinsky, 1983; Secord & Backman, 1974).

In the 1980s, research emerged that directly chal-
lenged the purported empirical basis for the rejection of
leader trait models (Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983; Lord, De
Vader, & Alliger, 1986). Also, models of charismatic and
transformational leadership rose to prominence in the lead-
ership literature. These models, while recognizing the im-
portant role of the situation in leadership, pointed once
again to the extraordinary qualities of individuals as deter-
minants of their effectiveness (House, 1977, 1988). More
recently, a number of studies have linked personality vari-
ables and other stable personal attributes to leader effec-
tiveness, providing a substantial empirical foundation for
the argument that traits do matter in the prediction of leader
effectiveness (e.g., Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002;
Peterson, Smith, Martorana, & Owens, 2003; see Zaccaro,
Kemp, & Bader, 2004, for a review). Thus, traits have
reemerged in the lexicon of scientific leadership research.

In this article, I argue for four critical points that need
to be considered in models and theories positing leader
traits and attributes as explaining significant amounts of
variance in leadership. First, such frameworks cannot be
limited in their elucidation of central leader attributes.
Many research efforts focus their attention on small sets of
individual differences that should predict leadership. Al-
though other efforts do provide long lists of key leader
attributes, they are rarely organized in a coherent and
meaningful conceptual construction. Leadership represents
complex patterns of behavior, likely explained, in part, by
multiple leader attributes, and trait approaches to leader-
ship need to reflect this reality (Yukl, 2006; Zaccaro et al.,
2004).

A second point concerns the integration of leader
attributes. Rarely do studies consider how the joint combi-
nations of particular leader characteristics influence lead-
ership behavior (Yukl, 2006; Zaccaro, 2001; Zaccaro et al.,

Some material in this article is based on previous work by the author
(Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ste-
phen J. Zaccaro, Department of Psychology, MSN3F5, George Mason
University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030. E-mail:
szaccaro@gmu.edu

6 January 2007 ● American Psychologist
Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association 0003-066X/07/$12.00

Vol. 62, No. 1, 6 –16 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.62.1.6

2004). Likewise, leader attributes may exhibit curvilinear
relationships with outcomes. Speculations on such combi-
nations and relationships have been around for a long time.
For example, Moss (1931) suggested that cognitive ability
without social competence could not greatly affect leader-
ship performance. Stogdill’s (1948) review of leader at-
tributes indicated that the influence of leader intelligence
was delimited by the level of intelligence exhibited by the
average group member. Along this line, Ghiselli (1963)
reported a curvilinear relationship between intelligence and
performance, with leaders who had very high or low intel-
ligence being less effective. Fleishman and Harris (1962)
demonstrated curvilinear influences of initiating structure
and consideration (considered to be stable leadership
styles; see Harris & Fleishman, 1955, and Fleishman &
Peters, 1962) on employee grievances and turnover. How-
ever, most conceptual models posit only additive or linear
effects of leader attributes on leadership criteria. Leader
attributes likely exhibit complex multiplicative and curvi-
linear relationships with leadership outcomes, and trait
conceptualizations of leadership need to reflect this com-
plexity.

A third point is that trait and attribute approaches must
consider and account for the situation as a corresponding
source of significant variance in leadership. The literature
abounds in trait-by-situation models of leadership, perhaps
the most prominent being Fiedler’s contingency models
(1964, 1971; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987). These models led
many to agree with Stogdill’s (1948) statement that “per-
sons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily
be leaders in other situations” (p. 65). Yet, both empirical
research (e.g., Ferentinos, 1996; Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983;
Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991) and reports in the popular
literature support the premise that individual leaders can be

effective across situations demanding very different lead-
ership approaches. The situation is critical in explaining
variance in leadership behavior; however, it may not be as
critical in explaining differences between leaders and non-
leaders. Trait perspectives of leadership need to account for
the role of situational variance.

Finally, leader individual differences may differ in
their relative stability or malleability over time and in the
degree to which they are specific to particular situations.
Several researchers have noted the distinction between
traitlike individual differences (e.g., cognitive ability, per-
sonality) and statelike individual differences (e.g., self-
efficacy, task skills) (Ackerman & Humphreys, 1990;
Chen, Gully, Whiteman, & Kilcullen, 2000; Hough &
Schneider, 1996; Kanfer, 1990, 1992). This distinction
suggests that some leader attributes will be more stable and
cross situational in their influences, whereas others will be
more situationally bound (indicating another important role
for the leadership situation). More important, stable or
traitlike individual differences may predict the level of
statelike attributes that can be attained and exhibited by the
leader (e.g., cognitive ability influences task-specific self-
efficacy; Chen et al., 2000; Kanfer, 1990, 1992). Models
positing such relationships suggest that traitlike individual
differences act more distally on performance through their
influence on more proximal attributes (Chen et al., 2000;
Kanfer, 1990, 1992; Zaccaro et al., 2004). Accordingly,
trait perspectives of leadership need to consider how leader
attributes may differ in their sensitivity to situational fac-
tors and their proximity, in cause, to leadership behavior.

In the remainder of this article, I present some ideas
around these points. I begin with a definition of leader trait
that is broader, in some respects, than some more tradi-
tional definitions that limit this term to personality at-
tributes (Zaccaro et al., 2004). Then, I recount the historical
ebb and flow of the leadership trait perspective and con-
clude by summarizing a model that incorporates several of
the issues and themes just elucidated.

The Meaning of Leader Traits
Early in the leadership scientific research tradition, traits
were understood to be innate or heritable qualities of the
individual. No doubt influenced by Galton’s (1869) work,
most early researchers considered leader traits to be immu-
table properties that were present at the birth of a future
leader. This perspective shifted, however, in the first half of
the 20th century to include all relatively enduring qualities
that distinguished leaders from nonleaders (Kirkpatrick &
Locke, 1991). Indeed, Bird’s (1940) summary of leader
traits included accuracy in work, knowledge of human
nature, and moral habits. Stogdill’s (1948) review cited
decisiveness in judgment, speech fluency, interpersonal
skills, and administrative abilities as stable leader qualities.

Reflecting this shift away from traits as purely herita-
ble qualities, leader traits can be defined as relatively
coherent and integrated patterns of personal characteristics,
reflecting a range of individual differences, that foster
consistent leadership effectiveness across a variety of
group and organizational situations (see the definition by

Stephen J.
Zaccaro

7January 2007 ● American Psychologist

Zaccaro et al., 2004, p. 104). This definition has three key
components. First, leader traits are not to be considered in
isolation but rather as integrated constellations of attributes
that influence leadership performance. As noted earlier,
researchers in most prior leader trait studies took predom-
inantly univariate approaches to uncover the differences
between leaders and nonleaders, or they focused on the
independent contributions of each in a small set of personal
qualities. Behavior, especially complex forms such as lead-
ership, rarely can be grounded in so few personal determi-
nants. Understanding leadership requires a focus not only
on multiple personal attributes but also on how these at-
tributes work together to influence performance (Yukl &
Van Fleet, 1992; Zaccaro et al., 2004).

A second component in this definition of leader traits
concerns the inclusiveness of a variety of personal qualities
that promote stability in leader effectiveness. Traits have
traditionally referred to personality attributes. However, in
line with most modern leader trait perspectives, the quali-
ties that differentiate leaders from nonleaders are far rang-
ing and include not only personality attributes but also
motives, values, cognitive abilities, social and problem-
solving skills, and expertise. The emphasis in this definition
is on the variety of individual differences that predict leader
effectiveness. This approach is similar to the one adopted
by Yukl (2006), who defined traits in terms of leader
effectiveness and included personality, motives, needs, and
values in his definition. Although he contrasted traits and
skills, the latter were defined (p. 181) as having both
experiential and inherited foundations as well as operating
at both general (e.g., intelligence, interpersonal abilities)
and specific (persuasion and verbal skills) levels.

Admittedly, this emphasis may blur important distinc-
tions among personality, skills, competencies, and exper-
tise. However, later in this article, I summarize a model of
leader attributes and effectiveness (Zaccaro et al., 2004)
that, in turn, sharpens these distinctions, placing them in
causal correspondence to one another. Also, although some
personality theorists challenged such an expansion of the
trait concept (Pervin, 1994), others embraced it (Cattell,
1965; Guilford, 1975). The defining element of leader
traits, here, refers to the range of qualities that can consis-
tently and reliably differentiate leaders from nonleaders
and, consequently, can serve as the basis for leader assess-
ment, selection, training, and development.

Note that leader traits are defined in reference to
leader effectiveness. This follows from functional ap-
proaches to leadership that define leadership in terms of
organizational problem-solving activities (Fleishman et al.,
1991; Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman,
2000; Zaccaro et al., 2000). Accordingly, Mumford, Zac-
caro, Harding, et al. (2000) specified a number of individ-
ual differences that promoted effective leader problem
solving. Such an approach implicitly assumes congruence
between leader effectiveness and leader emergence or,
more broadly, leader role occupancy. One can argue that
the individual differences promoting effectiveness also
should promote leader emergence. Hogan, Curphy, &
Hogan (1994) stated that “research on leader emergence

and leader effectiveness identifies the factors associated
with someone being perceived as leaderlike” (p. 496). The
attributes that contribute to effectiveness presumably
should be encoded as part of follower–leader prototypes
that form the basis for leader role nominations (Lord &
Maher, 1991). Indeed, researchers in several studies have
demonstrated significant overlap in the components of
these prototypes and many listings of individual differences
proposed as contributing to leader effectiveness (e.g., in-
telligence, dominance; cf. Keeney & Marchioro, 1998;
Lord et al., 1986). However, Judge et al. (2002) found that
although extraversion and openness exhibited effect sizes
that were consistent with and similar to those of leader
effectiveness and emergence, other personality attributes
exhibited inconsistent relationships with these two sets of
leadership criteria. Also, Luthans (1988) contrasted man-
agers who were successful, as evidenced by rapid promo-
tion rates, with managers who were effective, as defined by
unit performance and subordinate motivation. This com-
parison, although not perfectly analogous to the distinction
between leader emergence and effectiveness, does suggest
differences between these two criteria that may correspond
to differences in predictive individual differences.

The question of whether the leader attributes predicting
leader emergence differ significantly from those predicting
leader effectiveness represents an important issue for future
research. Judge et al.’s (2002) meta-analysis of personality
attributes and leadership suggests both consistency and dif-
ferences in personal attributes; however, there is not yet an
overarching conceptual framework that elucidates the com-
mon and unique characterological predictors of different lead-
ership criteria and how these alternate criteria relate to one
another. For the purposes of the present analysis, the afore-
mentioned definition of leader traits does not vary across
distinctions in leadership criteria.

The third component in this definition of leader traits
specifies leader attributes as relatively enduring, producing
cross-situational stability in leadership performance. Cross-
situational consistency, or coherence (James & Mazerolle,
2002), is, of course, a central element of most personality
trait approaches (Funder, 2001). However, most personal-
ity theorists, and certainly leadership researchers, accept
that actual behavior varies considerably across situations.
This variability has been the crux for pure situational or
person–situation models in personality theory. A review
and summary of this argument and its potential resolution
is beyond the scope of this paper (see Funder, 2001; Funder
& Oser, 1983). However, similar observations and argu-
ments fueled the rise of situational and contingency models
in leadership research. Yet, some of the same observations
and arguments offered by theorists to counter the premises
of situational models in personality also apply to situational
leadership models and, accordingly, buttress leader trait
models. For example, several researchers have noted that
earlier statistical estimates of the low predictability of
leader traits were inaccurate (Judge et al., 2002; Keeney &
Marchioro, 1998; Lord et al., 1986). Also, observations of
low cross-situational stability in leader emergence have not
been supported in other experimental studies (Ferentinos,

8 January 2007 ● American Psychologist

1996; Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991) or in reanalyses of the
earlier research cited as evidence for situational specificity
(Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983).

The offered definition of leader traits rests on the
characteristics that distinguish effective leaders from non-
leaders. An interesting question that has not received much
attention in the research literature pertains to the qualities
that distinguish effective leaders from other high-perform-
ing individuals.1 Effective leadership represents one form
of high performance. The inherently social nature of lead-
ership (Yukl, 2006; Zaccaro, 2004) may be the key factor
that contrasts this form from other forms of high perfor-
mance. Successful and effective leadership means, funda-
mentally, influencing others by establishing a direction for
collective effort and managing, shaping, and developing
the collective activities in accordance with this direction
(Jacobs & Jaques, 1991; Zaccaro, 2001). Accordingly, the
specification of corresponding leader traits and individual
differences should be more grounded in social dynamics
that characterize this form of high performance than other
forms that derive from the more solitary endeavors of the
performer. This specification does not argue, however, that
effective leadership as high performance is completely
distinct from other forms of high performance; effective
problem-solving processes are likely to be important pre-
cursors of all types of achievement effectiveness, including
leadership (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000; Zac-
caro et al., 2000). The question of distinctions and com-
monalities between leadership as a form of high perfor-
mance and other forms of successful achievement
represents an interesting and important challenge for future
research.

The enduring quality of leader attributes does not
mean that they are immutable. Some leader attributes,
particularly those described earlier as statelike, can be
altered substantially through maturation, experience, and
targeted training interventions. Indeed, the acquisition of
leader skills and expertise occurs mostly through experi-
ence and training and often exhibits a constant evolution in
effective leaders. However, other attributes, more tradition-
ally traitlike in nature, are not likely to be as malleable.
These differences point, again, to the situation as an im-
portant determinant of leadership growth and performance.

The Role of Situation
Although, in this article, I argue for renewed consideration
of leader traits as important sources of variance in leader
effectiveness, I do not, by any means, wish to minimize the
importance of the leader’s situation. Despite considerable
research during a period of about 50 years, however, the
role of the situation for the leader stills needs some clarity.
Specifically, three arguments can be posed regarding the
leader’s situation (see the exchange of letters between
Robert Sternberg and Victor Vroom [Sternberg & Vroom,
2002] that discuss related and broader issues regarding
leader individual differences and leadership situations).
First, as noted above, some individual differences exhibit
strong cross-situational influences in their effects on per-
formance, whereas others are more situationally related.

For example, leadership skills and expertise are likely to be
more closely bound and constrained by situational require-
ments. Individuals with particular kinds of skills and ex-
pertise can, indeed, be leaders in one situation but not in
others that require very different knowledge and technical
skill sets. However, note that general or more cross-situa-
tional traits are likely to act as precursors to the develop-
ment and attained level of particular skills and expertise.
Accordingly, their influences on leader effectiveness are
likely to be more distal, although still significant. Situa-
tional determinants become more salient for those leader
attributes that are more proximal to performance.

The second argument regarding the leader situation
reflects the crucial distinction between who the leader is
and what the leader does to be effective (cf. Sternberg &
Vroom, 2002). The behavioral acts that leaders need to
display to perform effectively will vary widely across dif-
ferent situations. However, the same individuals can and do
serve as leaders across situations that entail different per-
formance requirements, and they do so effectively (Kenny
& Zaccaro, 1983; Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991). Leader
effectiveness reflects, fundamentally, an ability to respond
appropriately across different dynamic organizational re-
quirements (Zaccaro, Gilbert, Thor, & Mumford, 1991). To
do so, leaders need to be able to display an array of
different approaches and styles to leadership. The crucial
question then becomes whether leaders are capable of
displaying significant behavioral variability; if not, then,
indeed, persons can be leaders only in specific situations
that are commensurate with their mix of attributes. How-
ever, several prominent leadership theories and models,
including some situational perspectives, can accept as part
of their basic premises both leader constancy and behav-
ioral variability (e.g., Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975;
Hersey & Blanchard, 1969; House, 1971; Vroom & Yetton,
1973). Further, Hooijberg and colleagues (Hooijberg,
1996; Hooijberg & Quinn, 1992) argued that effective
leaders have an expansive behavioral repertoire and can
effectively apply the appropriate responses to different
situations (see also Zaccaro, Gilbert, et al. 1991; Zaccaro,
2002). These studies support the argument that contextual
parameters determine leadership behavior but may play
less of a role in determining the leader role occupant.

The third argument about the leader situation follows
from the second argument and, actually, refers to the spec-
ification of leader traits relative to situational dynamism.
Most prominent and traditional treatments of leader traits
assume behavioral constancy, that is, a trait presumably
reflects a behavior pattern that remains stable across dif-
ferent types of situations. Recently, however, researchers
have argued for traits and attributes of the leader that
promote an ability to adapt and change one’s behavior as
the situation changes. These attributes include cognitive
complexity, cognitive flexibility, metacognitive skills, so-
cial intelligence, emotional intelligence, adaptability, open-

1 I want to acknowledge and thank an anonymous reviewer for
raising this point.

9January 2007 ● American Psychologist

ness, and tolerance for ambiguity (Boal & Whitehead,
1992; Kozlowski, Gully, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 1996;
McCrae & Costa, 1987, 1990; Ployhart & Bliese, 2006;
Streufert & Swezey, 1986; Zaccaro, 2001, 2002). These
characteristics are enduring qualities of the leader, that is,
traits that foster behavioral variability in response to situ-
ational variability. This point of view can account for both
the importance of situational parameters as the primary
source of variance in leadership behavior (i.e., what the
leader does) and the importance of traits as the primary
source of variance in leader role occupancy (i.e., who the
leader is).

The Ebb and Flow of the Leader Trait
Perspective
These views of leader traits and the leader situation have
evolved from several earlier perspectives of leadership.
Although the rise and fall (and rise, again) of leader traits
often has been described in stark terms in most textbooks,
the reality of their prominence in leadership research is
more ambiguous (Day & Zaccaro, 2007). The decline in the
popularity and esteem of the leader trait perspective is,
perhaps, most traceable to Stogdill’s (1948) review. After
surveying research from 1904 to 1947, he stated, “The
evidence suggests that leadership is a relation that exists
between persons in a social situation, and that persons who
are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders
in other situations” (p. 65). This statement (along with
reviews by Bird, 1940, Jenkins, 1947, and Mann, 1959) has
been cited ubiquitously as sounding the death knell for the
leader trait perspective. Indeed, during the next 30 years,
many textbooks disclaimed that leaders were different from
followers in their personal attributes. Consider these exam-
ples:

Under one set of circumstances an individual will be a good
leader and under others he will be a poor one. (Ghiselli & Brown,
1955, p. 47)

The conclusion . . . that leaders do not differ from followers in
clear and easily recognized ways, remains valid. (Baron & Byrne,
1987, p. 405)

These observations prompted the movement to a more
situational view of leadership. Some frameworks offered
contingency models, emphasizing the interaction between
traits and situations (Fiedler, 1964, 1971; Fiedler & Garcia,
1987), whereas others stressed primarily the leadership
situation (e.g., House, 1971; Vroom & Yetton, 1973).
However, Stogdill’s (1948) next sentences, which appear in
the same paragraph as his famous quote and have never
been cited as far I know, stated the following:

Must it then be assumed that leadership is entirely incidental,
haphazard, and unpredictable? Not at all. The very studies which
provide the strongest arguments for the situational nature of
leadership also supply the strongest evidence that leadership
patterns as well as non-leadership patterns of behavior are per-
sistent and relatively stable. (p. 65)

Accordingly, Stogdill, in his 1948 review and in his
updated review (1974; see also a further update by Bass,

1990), listed several personal qualities that distinguish the
“average person who occupies a position of leadership”
from “the average member of his group” (Stogdill, 1948, p.
63). So do most of the other oft-cited reviews of leader
qualities, such as the review in which Mann (1959) stated
that “a number of relationships between an individual’s
personality and his leadership status in groups appear to be
well established” (p. 252). However, these nuances and
observations were lost in the shifting zeitgeist to situation-
ism and interactionism in the 1950s and 1960s. This shift
cannot be considered to have been entirely data driven.
Although the observed associations between leader at-
tributes and leadership criteria were not impressive, neither
were they negligible, especially given the strong likelihood
that their sizes were attenuated by a host of measurement
errors and biases (Gibb, 1954; Zaccaro et al., 2004). In-
deed, subsequent meta-analyses of leader characteristics
and personality that were designed to correct for some of
these attenuating factors consistently demonstrated signif-
icant effects (Day, Schleicher, Unckless, & Hiller, 2002;
Judge et al., 2002; Keeney & Marchioro, 1998; Lord et al.,
1986).

What about Stogdill’s (1948) assertion that persons
can be leaders in one situation but not necessarily in others?
The premise of situational constancy in leader role occu-
pancy was tested in a series of rotation design studies
(Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983) in which aspects of the situation,
such as group membership or group task, are altered, with
situational variations presumably calling for different
leader performance requirements. Team members are then
evaluated on indices of leader emergence. Several early
studies (Barnlund, 1962; Bell & French, 1950; Borgatta,
Couch, & Bales, 1954; Carter & Nixon, 1949; Gibb, 1947)
concluded, on the basis of their results, that leader emer-
gence was indeed situationally grounded: Leaders in one
situation did not tend to emerge in other situations. How-
ever, as in earlier leader attribute studies, both methodolog-
ical and measurement issues attenuated the magnitude of
these effects, as well. For example, all of these studies, with
the exception of Barnlund (1962), failed to vary both group
membership and group task, rendering them inadequate
tests of the situational constancy argument. Regarding the
Barnlund (1962) study, in which authors used the more
complete design, Kenny and Zaccaro (1983) reexamined
the data from this study using more sophisticated statistical
models. They found that, contrary to Barnlund’s (1962)
original conclusions, between 49% and 82% of the vari-
ance in leader emergence could be attributed to properties
of the leader. In other more recent studies, researchers
reported similar conclusions from rotation designs that also
varied task and group membership (Ferentinos, 1996; Zac-
caro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991). Simply put, persons who
emerge as leaders in one situation also emerge as leaders in
qualitatively different situations.

Stogdill’s (1948) review, although cited as evidence
against leader traits, contained conclusions supporting an
individual difference argument, as did Mann’s (1959)
study. In the subsequent meta-analyses of these earlier
studies (e.g., Lord et al, 1986), and in the results of the

10 January 2007 ● American Psychologist

rotations design studies, researchers suggested that the earlier
data on leader traits and outcomes were stronger than stated in
most interpretations. Yet, in contravention to these findings,
the shift in the leadership literature to a more situational or
interactionist approach to leadership was fairly ubiquitous,
certainly more than warranted by the data. Why was the shift
to an alternate view so pervasive and long lasting in main-
stream leadership literature? Day and Zaccaro (2007) argued
that this changing zeitgeist in leadership research reflected the
growing focus on leadership by social psychologists during
the mid 1930s to the late 1940s. Led by Lewin’s classic
premise that behavior derives from person and environment
factors, social psychologists emphasized the context as the
predominant impetus for understanding most behavior. This
orientation became applied to leadership.

The emergence of situational perspective in leadership
studies dates from the research programs occurring at Ohio
State University and the University of Michigan, and both
programs reflected the influence of this social psychologi-
cal perspective. For example, Ed Fleishman, one of the
major contributors to the Ohio State University program,
noted that Lewin’s classic study of leadership climate
(Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939) greatly influenced his own
dissertation (also a classic; E. A. Fleishman, personal com-
munication, April 14, 2003). The suggestion of this focus
to Fleishman came from John Hemphill, who, during his
graduate career, was, in turn, mentored by a social psycholo-
gist. The University of Michigan program also reflected this
perspective through the leadership studies of Daniel Katz
(Katz, Maccoby, Gurin, & Floor, 1951; Katz, Maccoby, &
Morse, 1950) as well as the Institute of Social Research,
which was attended by several of Lewin’s students.

Although the prevailing zeitgeist in the leadership liter-
ature from 1950 to 1980 was predominantly situational, indi-
vidual differences still were evident in several research lines,

particularly in the practices of industrial psychologists. This
research tended to take place with organizational managers
using advancement and promotion as criteria. Research by
Miner (1978) and McClelland and Boyatzis (1982) provided
evidence linking motivational traits to managerial advance-
ment and effectiveness. Bray, Campbell, and Grant (1974)
conducted longitudinal research linking attributes such as
achievement motivation, interpersonal skills, intelligence, and
administrative skills to levels of attained positions 20 years
later. Looking at failure to advance, McCall and Lombardo
(1983) identified managerial attributes that derailed rising
executives from attaining high positions.

In these and other studies (e.g., Bentz, 1967; Boyatzis,
1982), researchers provided substantial empirical evidence
that supported trait-based leadership perspectives. How-
ever, with some exceptions, this research tradition tended
to be atheoretical, without a systematic conceptual frame-
work that explained how or why particular leader attributes
were to be associated with targeted leadership criteria. This
lack may have diminished the potential influence of the
attributes on the stream of leadership thought. Indeed, the
paucity of conceptual models relating leader characterolog-
ical attributes to leadership processes and outcomes has
been an early and ongoing problem (Zaccaro et al., 2004).
These models need to specify how different leader at-
tributes operate in joint or multiplicative ways to affect
leadership outcomes as well as to provide mediating mech-
anisms by which such attributes exert influence.

A Model of Leader Traits and
Leadership
Zaccaro et al. (2004) offered a model of how leader at-
tributes influence indicators of leader performance. This
model, shown in Figure 1, is based on other models of

Figure 1
A Model of Leader Attributes and Leader Performance

Leader Processes

Leader Emergence

Leader Effectiveness

Leader Advancement
and Promotion

Leader’s Operating Environment

Distal Attributes Proximal Attributes Leadership Criteria

Problem
solving
skills

Social
Appraisal
Skills

Cognitive
Abilities

Personality
Motives
Values

Expertise/
Tacit
Knowledge

Note. From “Leader Traits and Attributes,” by S. J. Zaccaro, C. Kemp, & P. Bader, 2004, in J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo, and R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The Nature
of Leadership (p. 122), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Copyright 2004 by Sage Publications. Reprinted with permission.

11January 2007 ● American Psychologist

leader individual differences and performance (Mumford,
Zaccaro, Harding, Fleishman, & Reiter-Palmon, 1993;
Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000) and rests on
several tested premises about leader traits. The first premise
argues that leadership emerges from the combined influ-
ence of multiple traits. However, although many recent
studies have taken a multivariate approach to maximize
explained variance in leadership (e.g., Connelly et al.,
2000; Hammerschmidt & Jennings, 1992; Judge et al.,
2002), few studies have taken an integrated approach to
describe how multiple traits are combined in optimal ways
to jointly influence leadership. Zaccaro (2001) argued that
effective executive leadership derived from an integrated
set of cognitive abilities, social capabilities, and disposi-
tional tendencies, with each set of traits contributing to the
influence of the other. For example, although leaders may
have the cognitive ability to derive complex mental repre-
sentations of their operational environment, a low tolerance
for ambiguity or low need for achievement may mitigate
the leader’s use of such abilities to solve organizational
problems. Likewise, high intelligence that can be useful in
problem construction and solution generation will be use-
less for leader effectiveness if the leader also does not have
the social capacities to implement generated solutions.

In several recent studies, researchers have offered
some evidence for the efficacy of this trait pattern approach
to leadership (Bader, Zaccaro, & Kemp, 2004; Kemp,
Zaccaro, Jordan, & Flippo, 2004; Smith & Foti, 1998).
Kemp et al. (2004) assessed metacognition, tolerance for
ambiguity, and social intelligence in military officers and
found that rated performance on a 3-day decision-making
simulation was stronger for officers who exhibited high
levels of all three attributes. Officers who displayed lower
scores on one or two of these attributes performed no more
effectively than did officers who were low on all three
attributes. Similar trait pattern findings in which research-
ers used different leader attributes have been reported by
Bader et al. (2004) and Smith and Foti (1998).

A related line of research refers to leader types. Al-
though this research has been limited in number, in some
studies researchers have demonstrated how different com-
binations or patterns of individual differences influence
leadership. McCaulley (1990) examined distinctions
among the 16 types composing the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (Myers, 1962; Myers & McCaulley, 1985) across
levels of successful and unsuccessful leaders. Using these
data, Zaccaro (2001) noted that intuitive/thinking types
were somewhat more prevalent at higher organizational
levels (Jacobs & Jaques, 1991). Bray et al. (1974) associ-
ated differences in leader types with career tendencies to
embrace new experiences and learn from them. Mumford
et al. (2000) identified seven different leader types among
Army officers. Three of the types were more characteristic
of upper level officers, whereas differences in problem-
solving skills and patterns of career development were
discerned across the seven types. In these studies, research-
ers argue for a more sustained focus on leader types. For
example, are there generic leader types that (a) are exhib-
ited consistently across different organizational contexts

and (b) demonstrate consistent relationships with leader-
ship criteria across these contexts? Also, what are the
dynamics and conceptual connections that bind different
characteristics to particular types, and how do these con-
nections relate, conceptually, to leadership criteria? The
studies to date suggest that future efforts at examining and
addressing these and other related questions can provide a
promising frontier in research on leader traits and at-
tributes.

The model in Figure 1 defines several integrated sets
of leader attributes, including cognitive capacities, person-
ality or dispositional qualities, motives and values, prob-
lem-solving skills, social capacities, and tacit knowledge
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000). Reviews by
Bass (1990), Zaccaro (2001), Zaccaro et al. (2004), and
Yukl (2006) have specified the particular attributes that
belong in each of these sets. For example, cognitive capac-
ities include general intelligence, cognitive complexity,
and creativity. Dispositional attributes include adaptability,
extroversion, risk propensity, and openness. Motives and
values include need for socialized power, need for achieve-
ment, and motivation to lead. Social capacities include
social and emotional intelligence as well as persuasion and
negotiation skills. Problem-solving skills include metacog-
nition, problem construction and solution generation, and
self-regulation skills. This list is by no means exhaustive;
readers are referred to the references noted previously in
this paragraph for more extensive treatments of specific
leader attributes.

As noted previously, some of these characteristics are
more situationally bound than others. For example, the
weighted contributions of certain leadership skills vary
across different situations. Likewise, expertise and tacit
knowledge are even more strongly linked to situational
performance requirements. Nonetheless, several cognitive,
social, and dispositional variables will exert a constant,
stable, and significant influence on leadership, relatively
independent of situational influences (see reviews by Bass,
1990; Zaccaro, 2001; Zaccaro et al., 2004; see also meta-
analyses by Judge & Bono, 2000; Judge et al., 2002; Lord
et al., 1986).

Another premise of the model in Figure 1 argues that
leader traits differ in their proximal influence on leadership.
This model is a multistage one in which certain distal
attributes serve as more universal precursors for the growth
and development of more situationally bound and proximal
personal characteristics (Ackerman & Humphreys, 1990;
Barrick, Mitchell, & Stewart, 2003; Chen et al., 2000;
Hough & Schneider, 1996; Kanfer, 1990, 1992; Mumford,
Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000). These attributes serve as
foundational or basic qualities that promote core effective-
ness across most generic leadership situations. Proximal
traits include attributes such as problem-solving skills, so-
cial appraisal and interaction skills, and knowledge. The
leader trait model specifies the proximal traits as precursors
to leadership processes that, in turn, predict leadership
outcomes. Situational influences help determine the
weighted contribution of particular skills (Yukl, 2006). For
example, changes in performance requirements across or-

12 January 2007 ● American Psychologist

ganizational levels will alter the importance or contribution
of particular traits and trait patterns (Hunt, 1991; Zaccaro,
2001). Likewise, certain group parameters (such as cohe-
sion and collective expertise) and certain organizational
variables (such as degree of formalization, types of struc-
ture, and support for innovation) can inhibit or constrain
the practice of leadership, regardless of particular leader
qualities (Kerr & Jermier, 1978). Situational influences,
then, moderate (a) the effects of specific proximal attributes
(e.g., expertise) on leadership processes and (b) the effects
of processes on leadership outcomes (Zaccaro et al., 2004).
The quality and level of these proximal skills, however, are
fundamentally defined by more universal distal traits.

This model, then, integrates situational influences into
a framework that remains grounded in the stable individual
differences distinguishing leaders from nonleaders. How-
ever, as noted previously, the role of the leader’s situation
and of situation moderators remains ambiguous. In future
studies, researchers need to disentangle the importance of
context as a factor in the relationships between leader
attributes and performance. Although Fiedler’s (1964,
1971) contingency model provided an important perspec-
tive on this issue, Zaccaro and Klimoski (2001) defined the
leadership context in broader terms. They argued that the-
ories of organizational leadership need to specify more
clearly how context shapes the performance requirements
for leaders and how attributes of leaders promote consistent
effectiveness across varying organizational requirements.

Leader Traits and Leader
Development
The model in Figure 1 describes how leader traits and
attributes shape subsequent leader performance and other
leadership criteria. As expected, the relationship is not
simple or direct. The influences of distal attributes are
mediated by proximal attributes, whereas the effects of the
latter are mediated by leadership processes and are mod-
erated by aspects of the leader’s operating environment.
Note that distal attributes provide the foundation for the
emergence and growth of proximal attributes as well as the
level of their display by leaders. This is a complex model
of leader attributes and performance, and many of its
proposed categorical linkages have received limited tests.
Accordingly, in future studies, researchers need to focus on
expanding and testing parts of this model.

The model in Figure 1 suggests several implications
for leader development. Distal or foundational attributes
are likely to be relatively immune to most typical leader
development interventions. These interventions emphasize
proximal attributes such as skills and requisite behavior
patterns. Systematic and long-term interventions may have
some impact on distal attributes: For example, the Army
leader development system has a career-long perspective
that emphasizes different courses and operational assign-
ments as a leader ascends the organizational ranks. How-
ever, the question remains open (and is an important focus
for future research) as to whether such a system can,
indeed, foster changes in fundamental qualities such as

cognitive complexity, social intelligence, and openness to
experience.

Because distal attributes tend to be relatively immutable,
most companies are likely to assess a candidate’s readiness for
leader development on the basis of his or her level of attain-
ment on such qualities (Zaccaro, Wood, & Herman, 2006).
However, subsequent interventions will tend to focus on de-
velopment and change in particular skills, competencies, and
expertise, which are defined as contributors to effective lead-
ership in future anticipated roles. That is, proximal attributes,
such as these qualities, are more malleable and susceptible to
sustained and systematic intervention. Recent treatises (Day,
2000; Day, Zaccaro, & Halpin, 2004; McCauley & Van
Velsor, 2004; Mumford, Marks, Connelly, Zaccaro, & Reiter-
Palmon, 2000; Zaccaro & Banks, 2004; Zaccaro et al., 2006)
speak more fully to the role of development in shaping growth
in leader attributes and leadership capacity. Different types of
developmental assignments, particularly those that stretch the
existing expertise and capabilities of the leader (McCauley,
Eastman, & Ohlott, 1995; Ohlott, 2004), will have varying
effects on different sets of leader skills. The timing of these
assignments, relative to emerging leader performance require-
ments, also will determine their efficacy in shaping the devel-
opment of particular leader attributes (Mumford, Zaccaro,
Johnson, et al., 2000; Zaccaro et al., 2006). These propositions
remain important issues for future research on leader traits.
Specifically, researchers need to do more empirical studies to
examine precisely how different developmental interventions
promote growth in particular leader qualities and what training
strategies are most suited for particular sets of proximal leader
attributes.

In this article, I have discussed leader traits primarily as
precursors to leader effectiveness. However, certain personal
attributes promote how leaders learn and grow from experi-
ence. Indeed, Tesluk and Jacobs (1998) defined several means
by which individual differences can influence experience-
based development. Traits such as openness to experience and
risk tolerance can determine the likelihood that individuals
will approach and accept developmental or stretching assign-
ments. Also, cognitive and motivational attributes, such as
metacognitive skills, self-regulation skills, mastery motives,
and learning goal orientation, may influence how much
knowledge and information a leader derives from his or her
experience. Along this line, Banks, Bader, Fleming, Zaccaro,
and Barber (2001) reported that developmental work experi-
ences resulted in tacit knowledge gains in Army officers only
when they had the requisite metacognitive skills and cognitive
complexity to interpret the lessons offered by such experi-
ences. Thus, traits and attributes are important not only for the
leader’s present effectiveness but also for acquiring, from training
and experience, the kinds of more situationally based and prox-
imal skills that are likely to predict effectiveness in future con-
texts that reflect more complex performance requirements
(Mumford, Marks, et al., 2000; Zaccaro et al., 2006).

Conclusion
I have made five arguments in this article. First, the prior
rejection of trait-based approaches was not sufficiently
founded on empirical bedrock. Second, a substantial and

13January 2007 ● American Psychologist

growing empirical research base argues for traits that are
significant precursors of leadership effectiveness. Third,
combinations of traits and attributes, integrated in concep-
tually meaningful ways, are more likely to predict leader-
ship than are independent contributions of multiple traits.
Fourth, dominant leader trait patterns are likely to be those
that reflect an individual’s stable tendency to lead in dif-
ferent ways across disparate organizational domains. Fi-
nally, some leader traits have more distal influences on
leadership processes and performance, whereas others have
more immediate effects that are integrated with, and influ-
enced by, situational parameters.

Despite the long history of the trait-based approach
and its recent resurgence, a consensus about the role of
leader traits, the magnitude and mechanisms of their influ-
ence, and the determining role of leadership situations has
remained elusive. In the arguments offered here, I mean to
provide a basis for more conceptually driven and sophisti-
cated research. Throughout this article, I have offered a
number of possible future directions. Such research, paired
with the methodological and statistical innovations that, in
part, fueled the resurgence in the study of leader traits, may
provide the means of defining the basis for the extraordi-
nary qualities of effective leaders.

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The Leadership Quar

erly 20 (2009) 855–875

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Leadership Quarterly

journal homepage: www

elsevier.com/locate/leaqua

The bright and dark sides of leader traits: A review and theoretical extension
of the leader trait paradigm

Timothy A. Judge a,⁎, Ronald F. Piccolo b, Tomek Kosalka c

a University of Florida, United States
b Rollins College, United States
c University of Central Florida, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: timothy.judge@cba.ufl.edu (T.A.

1 House and Aditya (1997) themselves did not espou
leadership community.

a b s t r a c t

Keywords:

The leader trait perspective is perhaps the most venerable intellectual tradition in leadership
research. Despite its early prominence in leadership research, it quickly fell out of favor among
leadership scholars. Thus, despite recent empirical support for the perspective, conceptual work in
the area lags behind other theoretical perspectives. Accordingly, the present review attempts to
place the leader trait perspective in the context of supporting intellectual traditions, including
evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics. We present a conceptual model that considers
the source of leader traits, mediators and moderators of their effects on leader emergence and
leadership effectiveness, and distinguish between perceived and actual leadership effectiveness.
We consider both the positive and negative effects of specific “bright side” personality traits: the
Big Five traits, core self-evaluations, intelligence, and charisma. We also consider the positive and
negative effects of “dark side” leader traits: Narcissism, hubris, dominance, and Machiavellianism.

Leadership
Personality
Leader trait

If one sought to find singular conditions that existed across species, one might find few universals. One universal that does
exist, at least those species that have brains and nervous systems, is leadership. From insects to reptiles to mammals, leadership
exists as surely as collective activity exists. There is the queen bee, and there is the alpha male. Though the centrality of leadership
may vary by species (it seems more important to mammals than, say, to avians and reptiles), it is fair to surmise that whenever
there is social activity, a social structure develops, and one (perhaps the) defining characteristic of that structure is the emergence
of a leader or leaders. The universality of leadership, however, does not deny the importance of individual differences — indeed the
emergence of leadership itself is proof of individual differences. Moreover, even casual observation of animal (including human)
collective behavior shows the existence of a leader. Among a herd of 100 cattle or a pride of 20 lions, one is able to detect a
leadership structure (especially at times of eating, mating, and attack). One quickly wonders: What has caused this leadership
structure to emerge? Why has one animal (the alpha) emerged to lead the collective? And how does this leadership cause this
collective to flourish — or founder?

Given these questions, it is of no surprise that the earliest conceptions of leadership focused on individual differences. The most
famous of these is Thomas Carlyle’s “great man” theory, which argued, “For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has
accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here” (Carlyle, 1840/2008, p. 1). Despite its
intuitive and presumably historical appeal, until recently, this “great man” (or woman) approach, and the trait perspective in general

fell on hard times. Reviewers of the literature commented that the approach was “too simplistic” (Conger & Kanungo, 1998, p. 38),
“futile” (House & Aditya, 1997, p. 410), and even “dangerous” and a product of “self-delusion” (see Andersen, 2006, p. 1083).1

Judge), rpiccolo@rollins.edu (R.F. Piccolo), tkosalka@bus.ucf.edu (T. Kosalka).
se this viewpoint. Rather, they were summarizing what they perceived to be the prevailing sentiment in the

mailto:timothy.judge@cba.ufl.edu

mailto:rpiccolo@rollins.edu

mailto:tkosalka@bus.ucf.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.09.004

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10489843

856 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

As so often happens in intellectual affairs, however, as the obituaries were being written, the seeds of a reemergence were
being sown. Personality theory, for many years fragmented by issues both pragmatic (how to measure personality) and
philosophical (whether to focus on individual differences [nomothetics] or individual development [idiographics]), began to
coalesce, at least to some degree, around a typology that provided both an organizing structure and a reasonable measurement
approach. This structure – called the five-factor model or the Big Five – has been related to virtually all applied criteria (e.g., Barrick
& Mount, 1991). Independently, meta-analyses of a diverse set of topics caused re-examination of many previously held
assumptions — in general, these meta-analyses showed that subjective eyeballing of data across studies generally leads reviewers
to overestimate the variability in the data, and underestimate central tendencies. The intersection of these trends – meta-analyses
using the five-factor model as an organizing framework – has produced powerful insights into many if not most organizational
behavior (see R. Hogan, 2005; Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, & Judge, 2007).

The leadership literature is no exception. In the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date, Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt
(2002) analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. They found that four of the Big Five traits had non-trivial correlations with
leadership emergence and effectiveness: extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience.
Together, the five traits had a multiple correlation of R=.53 with leader emergence and R=.39 with leadership effectiveness. The
gains revealed by the quantitative review notwithstanding, critics of the trait approach remain.

First, some remain unimpressed by the size of the validity coefficients. In comparing the personality literature to an oft-cited,
earlier review (Guion & Gottier, 1965), Murphy and Dzieweczynski (2005, p. 345) concluded, “One major concern was that the
validity of personality inventories as predictors of job performance and other organizationally relevant criteria seemed generally
low. An examination of the current literature suggests that this concern is still a legitimate one.” Andersen (2006, p. 1088)
concluded: “The main point is that the relationship (measured as correlation) is low. Consequently, personality has low
explanatory and predictive power.” Morgeson et al. (2007) went even further, arguing, among other things, that multiple
correlations (between an entire Big Five typology and a criterion) are inappropriate, and that personality validities remain so poor
as to cast doubt on their utility for organizations.2

Another, somewhat related, criticism – of particular relevance to leadership – is that while personality may reveal whether an
individual is perceived as leader-like, personality is less than successful in identifying whether those leaders are successful in an
objective sense. Kaiser, Hogan, and Craig (2008) criticized the Judge, Bono et al. (2002) and Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, (2002)
study for this (failed) distinction, noting, that the study focuses on “how leaders are regarded and tells us little about leading
effective teams” or how such traits “help organizations prosper” (p. 102). Morgeson et al. (2007) also criticize the Judge, Bono
et al. (2002) and Judge, Erez et al. (2002) meta-analysis on these grounds, arguing, “Perceived influence is not equivalent to
effectiveness, and showing that there is a correlation of a personality dimension with perceived influence does not provide a
strong basis for use of this measure to select managers who will be effective” (p. 1044). Though Judge, Bono et al. (2002) and Judge,
Erez et al. (2002) did distinguish between leader emergence – who is recognized as a leader of a group – and leadership
effectiveness – how well that leader performs in that role, it is fair to conclude that most of the studies they cumulated for
leadership effectiveness still relied on subjective evaluations.3

Third, its growth and widespread acceptance notwithstanding, there remain general critics of the five-factor model. One
prominent critic – Block (1995, 2001) – focused mostly on the inductive origins of the taxonomy, both statistically (limitations in
the use of factor analysis) and methodologically (the input into the factor analysis, namely the lexical and questionnaire
approaches). Another critic – McAdams (1992) – argued that the selection of five factors is insufficiently justified conceptually and
empirically, that the five traits are too broad to provide insights into many aspects of human behavior, and that they are
decontextualized accounts of human nature. Further, the five-factor model, based largely on results from studies conducted in
Anglo-Germanic languages, has been criticized for not generalizing to other languages and cultures (Salgado, 1997).

Another line of research, that while not necessarily standing in opposition to the five-factor model, argues in favor of either
fewer (e.g., Digman, 1997) or more (e.g., Benet-Martinez & Waller, 1997) core factors. Goldberg, for example, despite being a
strong advocate of the notion that the most salient individual differences become encoded in natural language (i.e., lexical
hypothesis), favors a circumplex model of trait interactions (Abridged Big Five Dimensional Circumplex, AB5C; Hofstee, de Raad, &
Goldberg, 1992), whereby blends of the five traits are treated as more valid indicators of personality than the otherwise distinct
five factors. Moreover, despite widespread use of the five-factor model, including facets of subdimensions of these factors (see
DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007), there still is not widespread agreement on the lower-order facets.

Finally, there are other trait perspectives that may be relevant to the topic at hand. For example, Gray’s (Gray, 1990; Pickering
& Gray, 1999) Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, with its emphasis on the Behavioral Approach/Behavioral Inhibition System
(BAS/BIS), might be argued to be particularly relevant to the leader trait paradigm. There is some evidence that these approaches
share similarities: BAS is linked to high levels of extraversion, and BIS to high levels of neuroticism (Smits & Boeck, 2006). The
choice of one framework does not dismiss the potential utility of another. We rely largely on the five-factor model because it has

2 Our mention of these arguments should not be construed as an endorsement. The criticisms are, we believe, somewhat one-sided, unduly harsh, and no
representative of most scholars’ views. Nevertheless, they are relevant to an appraisal of the leader trait approach, and guide the current effort in some sense

3 Objective measures of leadership effectiveness have problems of their own, of course. They may be badly contaminated by extraneous influences, and often
present causal inference problems that may be as serious as those underlying subjective appraisals. A correlational analysis relating leader traits (say, of U.S
Presidents) to objective outcomes (American economic and foreign policy performance) is generally full of judgment calls and subjective appraisals of its own
no matter how well considered and conducted (see House, Spangler, & Woycke, 1991).

t
.

.
,

857T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

been shown to be relevant to the leader trait perspective (Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002), but that does not mean
we deem other frameworks inappropriate or irrelevant.

With the foregoing review in mind, the purpose of this Yearly Review article is to review the leader trait approach, and provide
an agenda for future research. In so doing, beyond addressing the above criticisms, we borrow from two recent perspectives in
personality research. First, we focus not only on the Big Five traits, but consider the leadership implications of more narrow, but
also possibly more powerful, personality traits. Second, we draw from recent thinking on the paradoxical implications of traits
for fitness (Nettle, 2006). We do consider the advantages of positively-valenced (“bright”) traits and the disadvantages conferred
by negatively-valenced (“dark”) traits. However, we also consider the possible advantages of “dark side” traits, and the possible
disadvantage of “bright side” traits (Judge & LePine, 2007).

Before our specific discussion of traits, we first review several underlying relevant theoretical perspectives. Specifically, we
review research on evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, socioanalytic theory, and other
perspectives. These perspectives ground the conceptual model we develop, as well as our discussion of the bright and dark sides of
the specific traits.

1. Theoretical perspectives underlying leader trait paradigm

Because the trait approach to leadership, like all theoretical approaches, makes some (often unarticulated) assumptions about
human nature, it is important to place the perspective in context. Accordingly, we review three theoretical perspectives that
underlie the trait approach: (1) evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology; (2) behavioral genetics; and (3) socioanalytic
theory. These of course, do not exhaust the realm of perspectives relevant to the trait approach. Moreover, because each
perspective may be worthy of an article in its own right, our treatment of each perspective is admittedly brief and somewhat
superficial. Nevertheless, our goal in providing a brief review is to ground the propositions we offer in our extended model, and to
inform our discussion of the positive benefits and potential negative consequences of personality traits.

1.1. Evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary theory does many things relevant to the leader trait perspective, including: (1) providing a theory for the
existence of certain traits in humans (or other species [Gosling, 2008]); (2) providing an explanation, if only in part, for the efficacy
of certain traits; and (3) also providing a prediction, at least in a general form, for trait paradoxes. We consider each of these
contributions in turn.

1.1.1. Existence of traits
First, and most obvious, is that evolutionary theory predicts that all species characteristics arise from a process of mutation and

selection. Humans have opposable thumbs because those who developed that genetic mutation better survived (where able to
make and utilize tools that aided survival). Many (male) birds’ feathers have color because it helps them attract females.
Evolutionary psychology tells us, however, that psychological traits also developed from mutation and selection. Conscientious-
ness may have been inculcated in humans because prudence, planning, and diligence aid survival. Agreeableness may exist
because it fosters communal attachments and cooperation within and between groups.4 What we argue here, though, must go
further. Specifically, if evolutionary theory is to support the presence of certain traits in leaders, the theory relies on the general
premise that such traits facilitate the emergence of leadership, and that such leadership emergence is linked to fitness (i.e.,
psychological adaptation, or the degree to which a mechanism solves adaptive problems necessary to procreation and survival).
Put another way, what we argue, necessarily, is that one of the reasons humans possess certain individual differences is because
those differences facilitate leadership, which in turn facilitates fitness. The first link – between four of the Big Five traits and
leadership – was already established. We now discuss the second link — between leadership and fitness.

There are two mechanisms by which leaders with the right traits ascend to leadership positions, and enjoy greater fitness in
turn. First, it is intuitively obvious – perhaps even a truism – that being a leader enhances opportunities for procreation. Alpha
males (and females) have first choice in procreating across many species, and they have more mates; there is little reason to think
the situation is much different with humans (Buss, 2009). Enhanced procreation opportunities mean that the genetic material of
alpha males and females is more likely to be passed down the ancestral line, meaning that their traits are more likely to become
dominant over time. Although all extraverted individuals may have such advantages because they are dominant, sensation-
seeking, and affectionate (MacDonald, 1995), extraverted leaders may particularly benefit. Second, leaders with the “right” traits
are more fit (i.e., more likely to thrive and survive) because they are in a better position to adapt, and to use adaptation to benefit
themselves. While leaders may be in a better position to detect novel or systemic threats to their collective (Van Vugt, Hogan, &

4 As the reader might imagine, the degree to which certain traits exist due to adaptive fitness is a complicated issue. There is not yet a consensus in
evolutionary psychology regarding how mutation and selection work together in terms of producing offsets in personality phenotypes. Some, such as Tooby and
Cosmides (1990, 1992), argue that the adaptive fitness of personality traits is either neutral or functionally superficial, and further argue that genetic variation is
contrary to adaptation (few humans are born with more than five fingers on each hand, etc.). Others, however, disagree (Buss & Greiling, 1999), on the argument
that there is non-genetic sources of variation in personality, or on the argument that adaptability depends on context. We return to this issue later.

858 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

Kaiser, 2008), particularly those leaders who are perceptive, prudent, and vigilant, those same skills should aid their own survival
as well. Leaders with adaptive traits are also better able to solve another adaptation problem: nourishment. When a prey is caught,
the alpha male (or female) is the first, not the last, to eat. When a company is failing, rarely is it the leader who suffers most —
hence the presence of so-called golden parachutes (Hirsch, 1986; Wade, O’Reilly, & Chandratat, 1990).

Given the advantages of leadership, one might well ask why anyone would choose to be a follower? After all, if followership
means that one is literally placed at the back of the queue for sustenance and reproduction, why not simply chose to be at the
front? There are two responses to this question. First, one might assume that followers are making the best of a bad hand. They
realize, perhaps subconsciously, that they were not dealt the most favorable hand (i.e., they realize, or are made to see outcomes of
dominance-submission episodes, that their traits do not favor their ascension to leadership), and their best chances of survival are
to play their cards wisely. Yes, leaders with the “right” traits are favored, but this observation does not address what the rest of us
should do when we do not have the “right stuff”. Nothing might spell our doom faster than failing to appreciate our limitations.
Second, even though in many collectives there is only one leader, in many others, several leaders emerge. Shared leadership –
where leadership is distributed among group members – can be an important predictor of group performance (Carson, Tesluk,
& Marrone, 2007). In leadership research, too often we have assumed that only one (or a few) leads — a so-called “vertical
leadership” approach (Pearce & Sims, 2002). But leadership takes place on many levels: even leaders follow at some point, and
followers are often asked to lead. Most collectives thrive and survive based not only on leadership at the top, but leadership at
other levels as well. Indeed, as Ensley, Hmieleski, and Pearce (2006) note, the fate of an organization may depend on both vertical
(top) and distributed (shared) leadership.

In short, evolutionary psychology predicts that certain traits are in evidence because they present advantages for survival
fitness, sexual fitness, or both. The leader trait perspective both informs and is informed by evolutionary psychology in suggesting
leadership reasons for the fitness implications of certain traits, and evolutionary theory, in turn, provides a reason why “leaders are
not like other people” (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991, p. 49).

1.1.2. Efficacy of traits
In addition to supporting the existence of traits, evolutionary psychology also supports or explains their effectiveness. It can be

argued that traits become inculcated in a species when they are important to survival. This is particularly true when one compares
it to other, narrower characteristics. Conscientiousness is surely a more central characteristic to human survival than are narrower
manifestations of the trait, such as fastidiousness or time sensitivity. Moreover, broad traits may be both more heritable and more
adaptive than narrower traits. Anyone can be described along a conscientiousness dimension, but fondness for eating dirt would
seemingly characterize few individuals.5 Not all individual differences – MacDonald (1995) cites variation in fingerprint ridge
count as one example – have direct fitness implications. Personality traits should be no exception.

The situation should be similar when viewed from the leader trait perspective. The possession of certain traits allows leaders to
emerge and to perform their roles well. The absence of certain traits may keep an individual from emerging as a leader at all, or
performing well even if she or he does. Implicit in this discussion is the idea that leader emergence is distinct from leadership
effectiveness. Evolutionary theory does not presuppose that the traits that exist because they help an individual emerge as a leader
(and thereby enjoy greater fitness) are necessarily the same as those that help a leader be effective. It is even possible that the
fitness advantages of one set of traits (those traits that foster leader emergence) are greater than the other (those traits that
facilitate leader effectiveness).

Moreover, whether traits are linked to leader emergence and leadership effectiveness may depend on context. As adaptive
and coordinative problems grow, the premium placed on leadership grows, too. There is little need for prudent, bold, flexible
leadership when the collective faces little conflict from within or without, when resources are abundant, and the environment is
quiescent. When a harsh winter comes, when a predator or competing collective encroaches, or when business conditions change,
leadership may not only be important, it may be the sole path to successful adaptation and survival.

There is also a certain circularity that favors the leader — the better the leader, the more effective his or her group, and the
better that group can (and will) protect the leader when threats inevitably arise. Thus, if a leader has traits that enable her or him
to chose more able group members, she or he benefits directly as a function of that group member’s skills. If the leader also has
traits that engender loyalty (unwillingness to leave collective, willingness to fight on behalf of or to protect the leader), then all the
better.

There is one other point to be made here. Frequency-dependent selection may operate with leader traits, such as the positive
effects of a leader with high levels of a particular trait may increase as others share the trait. It may do a leader little good, for
example, to be highly conscientious if his or her followers’ lack of conscientiousness undoes every organizing activity he or she
plans. Similarly, while cooperation is crucial to group effectiveness and thus leader effectiveness (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005), a leader’s
tendency to cooperate (as assayed by agreeableness) might well be undone by cunning, devious subordinates who scheme to use
his good will against him. It is interesting that R. Hogan, Curphy, and J. Hogan’s (1994) analysis of how leaders fail enumerated
what might be described as excessive agreeableness (“reluctance to confront problems and conflict”) as the primary cause of
management failure, and excessive disagreeableness (“tyrannizing their subordinates”) as the second most common cause.

5 We recognize a paradox in this argument: If a broad, generalized trait is heritable and fitness-related, would not selection work how to minimize variation?
We address this question in the next section.

859T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

Finally, the above examples consider positive frequency-dependent selection — when the evolutionary advantages of a trait
increase as it becomes more common. However, there is also the possibility of negative frequency-dependent selection — where
the fitness advantage of a trait increases as it becomes less common. Consider the example of disagreeableness — the highly
disagreeable leader may have greater advantage when she is surrounded by agreeable fellow leaders (the proverbial lion with the
lambs) than when all are disagreeable. Similarly, within a group, the dominant requires the submissive: If everyone is dominant,
one would imagine that high conflict, with little leadership out of the conflict, would ensue.

1.1.3. Paradox of traits
The interaction of species with their environment is rife with paradox. What might lead to fitness at one time or in one set of

conditions might become a serious disadvantage at another time or in a different situation. Moreover, survival fitness and sexual
fitness often contradict one another: Males sometimes die or are damaged in mating rituals, females’ impregnation endangers
their survival both pre- and post-partum (Kirkpatrick & Ryan, 1991). Here we focus on three evolutionary paradoxes relevant to
the leader trait perspective: (1) the salutary effects of a trait at one time or in one context may be reversed when times or
situations change; (2) traits rarely have unalloyed advantages (or disadvantages) even in a single context at a single point in time;
and (3) non-linearities in the effect of a trait on fitness or leadership outcomes.

First, a trait that promotes fitness at one time (or in one situation) may become irrelevant or, worse, counterproductive, when
situations change. Galapagos finches with small beaks do well when the climate is favorable as they can quickly peck many seeds.
However, when drought comes, the situation reverses, and natural selection favors finches with large beaks, so as to better
penetrate the barren soil (see Nettle, 2006).

As applied to the leader trait perspective, this paradox suggests a possible mismatch between the traits of leaders and
contemporary demands. Evolution is, as judged against the length of lifespan, an extraordinarily long process. The high mutation
rate of humans notwithstanding (Penke, Denissen, & Miller, 2007), many if not most characteristics we have today evolved
over tens of thousands if not millions of years. Yet compare civilization today against human existence 10,000 years ago — a
comparatively very short period of time in human evolution.6 Just as some characteristics, both physical (e.g., teeth) and
psychological (e.g., alertness) might have waned in importance to survival, so might other characteristics become more important
(e.g., refinement, demureness) only relatively recently.

In short, the traits we, and our leaders, possess today may not be as well suited to contemporary society and its demands as to
the demands of ancient social, economic, and anthropological organization. As Van Vugt et al. (2008) note, “Traits that were
adaptive in ancestral environments might no longer produce adaptive behaviors in modern environments, especially when these
environments dramatically differ, as is the case with those of modern humans” (p. 191). In short, leadership conditions change
quickly, and pose new and complex requirements on leaders (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007) that may be mismatched to
our current “stock” of traits.

Second, even when limited to a single environment at one point in time, evolutionary paradox occurs. This form of paradox
might be labeled “antagonistic pleiotropy” (Penke et al., 2007), where polymorphisms (i.e., a specific genetic variant or mutation
that is discernable) have a positive effect on one fitness-related trait and a negative effect on another. Given the complex set of
behaviors that underlie solving adaptive problems (i.e., survival is based on many, many adaptive problems), it would be unusual
for a trait to be linked to survival through every conceivable process. As Kirkpatrick and Ryan (1991) note, animals balance two
underlying motives in their interactions: mating success and survival. Animals often endanger themselves to mate, and short-term
survival is often compromised by reproduction. As extrapolated to the leader trait paradigm, this would suggest that a trait which
aids one’s ascension to or success as a leader, might in other ways represent threats to one’s success or survival as a leader (or the
collective that the leader leads).

Adapting this to the topic at hand, these observations suggest that just as certain characteristics may have countervailing
effects on fitness, so too might they have similar effects on leader effectiveness. A trusting, gentle, compassionate leader might
earn the affection of her followers, but also might be vulnerable to being manipulated or duped by others. A shrewd, scheming,
cunning leader might be despised and distrusted by those who know him well, but might gain many advantages at the expense of
the uninitiated.

Third, traits may not have linear effects — on fitness, or on leadership outcomes. Comparing two leaders being one standard
deviation apart on conscientiousness may mean one thing if both leaders are below the overall conscientiousness mean, and may
mean something quite different if both leaders are above the mean. The higher scoring leader might be seen as more dutiful,
abiding, and ambitious in the former case, but compulsive, controlling, and ascetic in the latter case.7 Similarly, bold and assertive
actions position oneself to “claim” valuable resources for oneself and one’s clan (Ames & Flynn, 2007), and first mover advantages

6 Primates have existed for at least 85million years, and the first homo sapiens appeared only 200,000–250,000 years ago (Diamond, 2006). Many modern
individual differences, such as emergence of light skin color, are much more recent (6000–12,000 years ago) (Gibbons, 2007).

7 By extremes, we mean values in the tails of a normal distribution. Whether such extremes constitute psychopathology is a question for clinical psychologists.
Our concern here is whether a 10% difference in a trait means the same thing at the middle of a trait’s distribution as in the tails of the distribution (with the
distribution being scores of actual or potential leaders). This point notwithstanding, as Widiger and colleagues (Widiger, 2005; Widiger & Trull, 2007) have
shown, there is no necessary conflict between psychopathy and extreme scores of “normal” personality measures (personality measures intended for normal
populations, or distributions of scores in non-clinical populations).

860 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

are often important to group survival (Van Vugt et al., 2008). However, overly bold actions can become foolhardy, and expose
oneself or one’s collective to unwanted attention, counterattacks, and resource depletion. Thus, certain curvilinearities are to be
expected.

Similarly, the fitness implications of traits may be complex, and may be affected by the presence or absence of other traits. The
eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr noted, “The genotype…is always in the context with other genes, and the interaction
with those other genes make a particular gene either more favorable or less favorable” (Diamond, 2001, p. 39; see also Mayr, 2001).
A genotypic predisposition toward conscientiousness may reveal a phenotypic manifestation in many different ways, perhaps
depending on the presence of other traits. Whether the conscientious leader is effective may depend on how that conscientiousness
is expressed.

1.2. Behavioral genetics

Genetic sources of personality traits are now so well established that one might reasonably call it a law (Turkheimer, 2000): We
know of no broad personality trait for which there is not a significant genetic source, or, in Turkheimer’s (2000, p. 160) first law:
“Everything is heritable.”

It is quite true that, at least to some extent, leaders are born in the sense that identical twins reared apart share striking
similarities in terms of their leadership emergence. Numerous studies now show that various measures of leadership – from
indicators of leader emergence (leadership offices held) to leadership effectiveness measures (measures of transformational
leadership behavior) – show significant heritabilities, often in the 30%–60% range (Arvey, Rotundo, Johnson, Zhang, & McGue,
2006; Johnson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2004; Johnson et al., 1998). A significant part of the heritability of leadership is no doubt due
to the heritability of individual differences associated with leadership (Ilies, Gerhardt, & Le, 2004).

There are a couple of other relevant points to make sure. First, though most estimates suggest that roughly half of the variance
in personality is heritable (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001), that does not necessarily mean that the other half is environmental in the
sense that this variance is reducible to a set of conditions. To be sure, some of the unexplained variance is environmental, but
researchers have struggled mightily to find environmental variables that explain much of the unexplained variance, leading to a
“gloomy prospect” (Turkheimer, 2000): the non-shared variance may be highly idiosyncratic.

Second, it is important to recognize that even seemingly situational variables often have a genetic source. Research by Plomin
and colleagues has found that various environmental measures – including both the child’s household rearing environment
(Butcher & Plomin, 2008) and his or her classroom environment (Walker & Plomin, 2006) – are rather strongly related to genes.
Plomin labels this “the nature of nurture” and its implications for organizational behavior in general, and leadership research
in particular, should not be underestimated. People are not placed into their environments randomly (at least fully randomly).
People’s genes cause them to select themselves into, or to be selected into, different environments, and people with similar genes
find themselves in similar environments. Failure to account for this effect leads to many possibly erroneous causal inferences.

Third, genes interact with the environment, and cannot and do not exist independent of the environment. For example, if
conscientious people live longer because they exercise more, use fewer drugs, and take fewer life-threatening risks (Bogg &
Roberts, 2004), how are genes and the environment separable? Ilies, Arvey, and Bouchard (2006) cite an analogy offered by Olson,
Vernon, Harris, and Jang (2001, pp. 845–846) in noting the inseparability of genetics and the environment: “Asking how much
a particular individual’s attitudes or traits are due to heredity versus the environment is nonsensical, just like asking whether a
leaky basement is caused more by the crack in the foundation or the water outside. In a very real sense, genetic effects are also
environmental because they emerge in an environment, and environmental effects are also genetic because they are mediated by
biological processes.”

It is reasonable to ask how evolutionary theory and behavioral genetics can be reconciled. After all, if a phenotype is helpful to
reproductive success or survival, then variation in that trait should become attenuated over time as those who are low on the
characteristic are disproportionately selected out. Put another way, if mutation adds variation, then evolution removes it (by
selecting out those with counter-adaptive variation).

Evolutionary selection, however, has its own process, and there are various reasons why genetic individual differences persist
(Penke et al., 2007). First, there is selective neutrality, where selection is blind to an individual difference (i.e., the characteristic is
unrelated to fitness). One might, for example, observe characteristics in some leaders (say, sensitivity to criticism) that say little
about their effectiveness or their evolutionary fitness. Second, there is mutation–selection balance, where selection does not
perfectly eliminate the individual difference, often because the nature of the context has changed (i.e., some of the characteristics
that led to fitness in the early stages of humanity may not apply to fitness in contemporary life). Third, there is balancing selection,
where selection itself maintains genetic variation (i.e., a characteristic may be positively related to fitness in some environments or
contexts, and negatively related to fitness in others). There are also more complex mechanisms that allow genetic mutation and
evolutionary adaptation to maintain individual differences. One possibility was mentioned earlier: frequency-dependent
selection, where the fitness implications of a particular trait depend on its prevalence in other members of the species (see Ilies
et al., 2006). The benefits of psychological collectivism, for example, may accelerate as collectivism in a species or sub-population
increases (i.e., the payoff to collectivism increases as others in one’s population are similarly collectivistic [positive frequency-
dependent selection]).

What are the implications of behavioral genetics for the leader trait perspective? As noted above, it provides an explanation for
why, at least in part, leaders are born. To a significant degree, leadership is rooted in individual genes, namely, their genetic
predispositions to have psychological (personality, intelligence) and physical (height, attractiveness) characteristics that

861T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

predispose them to seek leadership positions, to be selected by others into such positions, and to thrive in such positions once
selected.

1.3. Socioanalytic theory

Socioanalytic theory (R. Hogan, 1983, 1996) concerns the degree to which success and attainment is predicated on individual
differences. Relative to other conceptualizations of individual differences, socioanalytic theory is interpersonal, meaning that it is
rooted in two assumptions: “People always live (work) in groups, and groups are always structured in terms of status hierarchies”
(J. Hogan & Holland, 2003, p. 100). In such group-centric activity, socioanalytic theory holds that individuals possess two primary
motives: getting along (communion), and getting ahead (agency). Research has suggested that these motives are closely linked to
personality, such that agreeable individuals are motivated to get along with others, and conscientious and extraverted individuals
are motivated to get ahead (Barrick, Stewart, & Piotrowski, 2002).

The latter motive – getting ahead – is easier to link to leadership outcomes than the former (getting along). While it is difficult
to envision emerging as a leader if one is absent cooperative tendencies, it is also easy to envision an individual being so agreeable
as to be seen as subordinate. Moreover, while a leader’s hostile intentions may sow the seeds of conflict both within and between
groups, one can also easily envision a leader so cooperative that he or she is unable to quell dissent, challenges to his or her
leadership, or threats from competitors for resources. To be sure, one can see a leader being undone by pursuing status with too
much ardor or at the expense of ethics (into which they often draw their followers [Uhl-Bien & Carsten, 2007]). Though these
outcomes happen, they are accompanied by rewards richly reaped by outsized ambitions. Conversely, it is difficult to see situations
in which leaders emerge from among those of whom have little ambition for success or status.8

Beyond its focus on status-striving, socioanalytic theory is relevant to the leader trait perspective in an even more fundamental
way. Socioanalytic theory makes a distinction between identity and reputation. Simply, identity is how an individual construes
him- or herself, while reputation is how that individual is construed by others. Because leadership is inherently collectivistic and
therefore dependent on the construal of others, one might well make the argument that reputation is at least as important to
leadership as identity. How, though, is this relevant to the leader trait perspective?

First, it suggests a revision in measurement approaches. Identity is best assessed with self-report measures of personality, but
reputation is better assessed by observer appraisals (R. Hogan, 2005). Since the vast majority of personality research – and the
leader trait research is no exception (Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002) utilizes self-reports – socioanalytic theory
suggests that the yield from such research in understanding status-striving (getting ahead) may be more limited than is realized.
Second, what is interesting about the socioanalytic approach is that not only does it suggest revisiting the measures of leader traits
(most commonly, self-reports), it also suggests revising the measures of leadership outcomes (most commonly, follower-reports).
R. Hogan and J. Hogan (2001, p. 40) flatly state, “The ideal way to evaluate leadership…(is) in terms of the performance of the unit
for which the leader is responsible.” Though not all leadership scholars would agree that there is one ideal way to evaluate
leadership, most would surely agree that unit performance is an important – and often unmeasured – aspect of effectiveness.
Finally, to the dual-motive approach, R. Hogan and Shelton (1998) added a third motive: finding meaning. As R. Hogan and Shelton
(1998) noted, “People want their lives to be predictable, orderly, and sensible, and they fear chaos, randomness, and unpleasant
surprises” (p. 130). This third motive has clear implications for leadership, and for the leader trait perspective. What kinds of
leaders, or leaders with which traits, provide meaning to followers? If contemporary collective action is predicated on not simply
goal articulation, but explanation for the goal, then effective leadership requires more than competing (e.g., setting ambitious
goals, and ensuring that the goals are met) and cooperating (e.g., enlisting the support and commitment of followers); it also
requires, as research on charismatic (House, 1977) and transformational (Bass, 1985) leadership tells us, inspiring followers to
strive toward a purpose that has meaning and the promise of fulfillment.

2. Conceptual model

Based on the foregoing review, Fig. 1 presents a conceptual model we term the Leader Trait Emergence Effectiveness (LTEE)
heuristic model. The model integrates behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology by showing each as a source of personality.
The model also includes Hogan’s (R. Hogan, 1983; R. Hogan & Shelton, 1998) socioanalytic concepts as mediators of the effect of
leader traits on leader emergence. Following prior leader trait research (Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002), the
model distinguishes between leader emergence and leadership effectiveness. Based on criticisms of the leader trait paradigm
(Kaiser et al., 2008), it also draws a distinction between subjective leadership effectiveness – follower ratings of leaders, follower
affective reactions to leaders – and objective effectiveness – as reflected in group performance, group survival. Finally, the model
also suggests various moderating influences: from traits to leader emergence, and from leader emergence to leadership
effectiveness.

The model is purposely broad so as to make it flexible. Like Weiss and Cropanzano’s (1996) Affective Events Theory, or Mischel
and Shoda’s (1995) cognitive–affective personality system (CAPS) theory, we believe the model will prove more useful if it

8 It is possible that the ideal leader is some composite of these strivings, with the functional composition depending on the context. To emerge as leader in a
very difficult, turbulent, threatening context may require a greater amount of getting ahead (than getting along). Conversely, in situations in which resources are
abundant and threats are minimal, leaders who strive toward communion, or getting along, may thrive.

9 Potential interactions between traits, as the agreeableness×conscientiousness example given here, as well as possible curvilinearities mentioned previously
(Ames & Flynn, 2007), are examples of the general nature of the model in Fig. 1. Such interactions and nonlinearities are quite consistent with the underpinnings
of the model, but are not explicitly modeled for reasons of parsimony.

Fig. 1. The Leader Trait Emergence Effectiveness (LTEE) model. (Notes. CSE = core self-evaluations. ILTs = implicit leadership theories. Blue lines represent direc
effects of leader traits on mediators and subjective and objective outcomes. Red lines represent moderating influences.)

862 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

emphasizes breadth and flexibility rather than a rigid specificity. Of course, such breadth comes at the cost of potential vagueness
and inarticulation,9 but, as Shoda and Mischel (2006, p. 441) note with respect to their theory, “CAPS is a meta-theory. A meta-
theory provides the requirements for a more specific theoretical model.” They go on to note, “The potential power, as well as the
challenge, of this meta-theory comes from its ability, and the requirement, to generate a locally optimized, specific theory—a
theory that is guided by general principles but that is targeted to the specific problem and goals of interest” (Shoda & Mischel,
2006, p. 442).

Having presented the model in a general sense, we now discuss in more detail the linkages within the model. We organize this
discussion into three sections which correspond to the flow of the model: (1) causes of traits; (2) traits, leader emergence, and
socioanalytic theory; and (3) leadership effectiveness and moderators.

2.1. Causes of traits

Implicit in the model is a genetic source of traits and, by implications, leader emergence. It assumes that via mutation different
genotypes, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), produce phenotypic manifestations, the latter of which are reflected in scores
on the measures assessing each personality trait. Thus, one might allow that the “Genetics” box provides the genotype and the “Traits”
box provides the phenotype, with the specific genotype and phenotype obviously varying by trait. The model does not assume an
environmental source of personality, because such sources have been found to be quite small (between zero and 10%, with most
estimates closer to zero [Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001]). Turkheimer’s (2000) second law is that the environment – in the form of one’s
upbringing – accounts for a small percentage of the variability in personality. This, of course, does not mean that the environment is
wholly irrelevant. As Plomin and Daniels (1987) note, the term non-shared environment accurately depicts a situation in which
environment matters, but that environment is idiosyncratic to each individual. However, this may well be a “gloomy prospect” in that
such variance is, in traditional nomothetic designs, unexplainable. As Plomin, Asbury, and Dunn (2001, p. 231) noted:

We also need to consider the gloomy prospect that chance contributes to nonshared environment in terms of random
noise, idiosyncratic experiences, or the subtle interplay of a concatenation of events. Francis Galton, the founder of
behavioral genetics, suggested that nonshared environment is largely due to chance, when he commented that “the
whimsical effects of chance in producing stable results are common enough.” (Galton, 1889, p. 195).

863T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

The model makes a distinction between two evolutionary processes affecting the appearance of traits (and, by implication, the
degree to which they explain leader emergence and effectiveness). First, and most obvious, is survival. All animals struggle for survival,
and natural selection eliminates those who are not well adapted (or do not adapt well) to their environment. Over time, then, through
natural selection, species acquire characteristics that aid their survival. Predators acquire sharp teeth, preys develop evasive instincts,
and humans develop cunning and perseverance. Thus, traits come into existence because they have been useful in solving adaptive
problems. As noted by Buss (2001, p. 967), “It would be surprising if selection had not designed a complex psychology dedicated to
dealing with the complex problems of hierarchy negotiation, including motivational mechanisms, such as status striving and envy of
specific others.” In other words, variation in personality persists because of genetic mutation, and nature gradually selects in (or out)
individuals with the “right” (or “wrong”) stuff based on the degree to which the trait is important to survival.

Natural selection is insufficient to account for all individual differences, however. Darwin was first mystified and then irritated
by the colorful plumage displayed by many animals. Why would a peacock, for example, have plumage that would only succeed in
drawing the attention of predators? Writing a letter to a friend, he complained, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever
I gaze at it, makes me sick!” (Darwin, 1860, p. 42). Only when Darwin introduced sexual selection was the puzzle solved: while
natural selection favors animals with characteristics that aid survival, so sexual selection aids (through increased propagation)
those which reproduce more frequently or productively.

As applied to the leader trait paradigm, what this means is that “leaders are not like other people” (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991,
p. 49) for both genetic and evolutionary reasons. They become leaders as “extended phenotypes” (Plomin & Asbury, 2005, p. 90) —
their genes express themselves in terms of attraction toward leadership. However, they also are selected into such positions based
on their genes. Thus, genes determine the expression of traits (as observed in trait measures, of phenotypes), but evolutionary
processes, in organizations and in collectives more generally, determine which traits are “selected in” and “selected out.”

2.2. Traits, leader emergence, and socioanalytic theory

The middle portion of the model stipulates that traits affect leader emergence. Many – but certainly not all – of these links are
confirmed by the Judge, Bono et al. (2002) and Judge, Erez et al. (2002) meta-analysis. The model is not intended to be a
comprehensive account of all individual differences that may explain leader emergence and leadership effectiveness. For example,
height has been linked to leadership (Judge & Cable, 2004), and might explain some of the genetic source of leader emergence
(Ilies et al., 2004).

The mechanism linking leader traits to leader emergence is Hogan’s socioanalytic theory (R. Hogan, 1983). Specifically, we
posit that the reason these traits result in leader emergence is because, at least in part, of the motives the traits elicit. For example,
conscientious, extraverted, and emotionally stable (or high core self-evaluations) individuals may be more motivated to get ahead
(Barrick et al., 2002), extraverted and agreeable individuals may be more likely to go along (Barrick et al., 2002), and, more
speculatively, open, intelligent, and charismatic individuals may be more likely to provide meaning for their compatriots.
Similarly, narcissistic, hubristic, dominant, and Machiavellian individuals may be more likely to get ahead and less likely to get
along. How these “dark side” traits affect meaning is unclear.

Impossible to fully depict in the model, but of critical importance to this undertaking, are trait paradoxes. While traits underlie
leader emergence and, ultimately, effectiveness, all traits have bright and dark sides, and carry with them evolutionary paradoxes
that are often not imagined until revealed. This is an issue to which we return shortly, when we explicitly discuss the bright and
dark sides of the traits in the model.

2.3. Leadership effectiveness and moderators

The right-hand portion of the model links leader emergence to two aspects of leadership effectiveness: subjective effectiveness
and objective effectiveness. The former are perceived by stakeholders (often followers) and often take the form of leadership
ratings, satisfaction with the leader, and other psychological assessments. The latter are “hard” outcomes such as group or
organization performance, turnover in the group or unit, and survival of the unit or enterprise. Though R. Hogan and colleagues
(R. Hogan & J. Hogan, 2001; R. Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; R. Hogan et al., 1994) argue in favor of the importance of objective
effectiveness for leaders, their followers, and for leadership research, we take no such position here. Each is a relevant and
important perspective, and each has its own advantages and drawbacks.

The model makes the obvious assumption that one cannot be an effective leader without first emerging as a leader. However,
we also posit that these links – from emergence to subjective effectiveness and from emergence to objective effectiveness – are
moderated by contextual factors. (Our list of moderator variables is, of course, not exhaustive, and is not meant to be.) We posit
that traits moderate the link from emergence to subjective effectiveness, as do implicit leadership theories. Traits – charisma being
a good example – might moderate the link from emergence to effectiveness in that some traits not only predispose one to emerge
as leader, they also enable one to better translate one’s position into effectiveness, at least in the eyes of stakeholders. We do not
deny that traits may also work in the same fashion for objective effectiveness, but we do not depict them here for presentation
purposes. Similarly, implicit leadership theories (Keller, 1999; Lord, de Vader, & Alliger, 1986) may moderate the link between
emergence and effectiveness in that, the more closely a leader’s traits match stakeholder prototypes for judging effectiveness, the
more effective that leader will be perceived. For example, if a leader is expected to be positive, optimistic, and self-confident, then
the more a leader has these characteristics, the more able he or she will be able to translate his or her position into leadership that
is perceived to be effective.

864 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

As for moderators of the link between leader emergence and objective effectiveness, work in evolutionary psychology
(see Wolf, van Doorn, Leimar, & Weissing, 2007, for a review) has revealed that the fitness consequences of traits vary according to
shifting environmental conditions such as threats of predation pressure (which, in a business context, might be existential
organizational or career threats), resources (i.e., food availability, or economic and business conditions), and social conditions
(how collectives are organized). In our model, these are expressed in threats, resources, and culture. These moderators reflect the
Darwinistic view that while traits and their expression are central to human existence, ultimately, it is often the environment, in its
own seemingly capricious ways, that does the selecting in terms of fitness outcomes.10

Thus far, we have not discussed two other aspects of the model. First, the blue lines represent the view that while traits underlie
leader emergence, they also affect leadership effectiveness directly.11 Moreover, the moderator boxes also are affected, at least
in some fashion, by the traits. Put another way, even among leaders, we believe charismatic, intelligent, conscientious leaders
perform better (i.e., have higher subjective and objective effectiveness). As we noted earlier in the article, even context (or
“nurture”) is subject to genetic and personological influence (Plomin & Asbury, 2005), and, as Schneider (1987) has noted, the
situation is often a function of personality in the sense that people construct their own environments. Second, the model also
includes a moderating effect of evolutionary processes in the link between leader traits and leader emergence. That reflects the
earlier viewpoint that the environment selects based on traits.

3. Trait effects and paradoxes

As noted in the foregoing sections, many socially desirable personality traits (i.e., “bright”; those viewed positively by most
individuals in society) are likely to be valuable for leader emergence and leadership effectiveness in many if not most
circumstances. Yet these same traits could be counterproductive in particular contexts or with followers who do not regard these
narrow traits as favorable for group survival. Thus, bright traits, albeit favorable for leadership in general, also carry with them
paradoxical utility. We would also observe a similar phenomenon for socially undesirable traits (i.e., “dark”; those viewed
negatively by most individuals in society), such that these traits might compromise leader effectiveness in general, but actually
enhance group survival and fitness in others. Beyond context, where the effectiveness of traits depends on the situation, we could
also see similar countervailing effects of bright and dark traits based on the intensity of one’s trait disposition, whereby modest
levels of a bright trait (e.g., extraversion) are attractive, desirable, and functional for leadership and group effectiveness, but
extreme cases of extraversion, characterized in part by risk taking and self-serving pursuit of adventure, might threaten the
stability and survival of a particular group.

Thus, our organizing framework for the following section, as shown in Table 1, reflects general and leader-referenced
tendencies of bright (socially desirable) and dark (socially undesirable) traits. We discuss four possible implications for leader
emergence and leadership effectiveness of traits: (a) socially desirable traits that, in most cases, have positive implications;
(b) socially undesirable traits that, in most situations, have negative implication; (c) socially desirable traits that, in particular
situations and at extreme levels, have negative implications; and (d) socially undesirable traits that, in particular situations, have
positive implications. In so doing, we draw on a person-situation interactionist model of behavior and performance (Tett &
Burnett, 2003) to describe the conditions under which particular personality traits relate to leader effectiveness. A complementary
examination of the personality-leadership paradigm would consider extremely high or low scores on standard measures of
common traits, with discussion of how these scores affect leader effectiveness. We are mindful, however, of the possibility that
scores at the extremes could indicate borderline clinical or personality disorders, rather than ‘normal’ personality traits, and
therefore limit our discussion of this phenomena.7

We purposely offer our shortest reviews of the bright side of bright traits, as comprehensive examinations of the positive
implications of these traits (e.g., Big Five; Barrick & Mount, 1991; Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002) have already
been published. Instead, we focus on the three other categories in Table 1. For with the exception of a few critical studies (R. Hogan
& J. Hogan, 2001), the dark traits associated with leadership have been widely ignored, and rarely have scholars considered
countervailing or non-linear effects of personality (see Ames & Flynn, 2007, for an exception). We do not suppose that our
treatment of bright and dark traits is comprehensive, nor do we claim to be the first to conceptualize countervailing or paradoxical
effects of personality (see Conger, 1990; R. Hogan & J. Hogan, 2001; Judge & LePine, 2007).

4. Bright side of bright traits

4.1. Conscientiousness

Conscientious individuals tend to be disciplined in pursuit of goal attainment, efficient, and have a strong sense of direction
(Costa & McCrae, 1992). These individuals are detailed-oriented, deliberate in their decision-making, and polite in most

10 We realize, of course, that applying predation pressure and other evolutionary concepts to organizational leadership is a generalization that is, in some sense
metaphorical. However, we believe that evolutionary instincts do not evaporate from the human psyche once they enter organizations. It is true, of course, tha
the threat of being eaten by a tiger is not the same as a threat of being replaced as a leader, but the entire field of evolutionary psychology depends on a certain
generalization of threats, instincts, and responses.
11 In the model, there are both direct and indirect effects of the traits on leadership effectiveness. The indirect effects are mediated through leader emergence
and reflect the assumption that to be an effective leader, one must first emerge or be recognized as a leader. The direct effects reflect the view that even among
those who have emerged as leaders, there will be individual differences in leadership effectiveness that can be traced, in part, to individual differences in traits

,
t

,
.

Table 1
Framework for discussion of implications of personality traits for leader effectiveness.

Social desirability Actual effects in specific context or situation

Bright Dark

Bright Socially desirable trait has positive implications for leaders and
stakeholders
Example: Conscientious leader displays high ethical standards in
pursuing agenda in long-term interest of organization.

Socially desirable trait has negative implications for leaders and
stakeholders
Example: Self-confident (high CSE) leader pursues risky course
of action built on overly optimistic assumptions.

Dark Socially undesirable trait has positive implications for leaders
and stakeholders
Example: Dominant leader takes control of ambiguous situation,
and assumes responsibility for the outcome.

Socially undesirable trait has negative implications for leaders
and stakeholders
Example: Narcissistic leader manipulates stock price to coincide
with exercise of personal stock options.

Note. CSE = core self-evaluations.

865T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

interpersonal interactions (Costa & McCrae, 1992; R. Hogan & J. Hogan, 2001). As such, conscientiousness as a trait is positively
correlated with favorable work behaviors such as job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991) and cooperation in a team context
(LePine & Van Dyne, 2001), and negatively correlated with turnover intentions and the desire to commit deviant behaviors
(Salgado, 2002). The very nature of conscientiousness implies a link with contingent reward leadership behavior (Bono & Judge,
2004), suggesting that conscientious leaders will clearly and consistently define role expectations and fairly deliver on informal
contracts (Bass, 1985). Conscientious leaders will exhibit integrity (J. Hogan & Ones, 1997), more tenacity and persistence in
pursuit of organizational objectives (Goldberg, 1990), explaining perhaps, why conscientious leaders foster work climates
regarded as fair and just (Mayer, Nishii, Schneider, & Goldstein, 2007).

4.2. Extraversion

Extraverts are most often characterized as assertive, active, energetic, upbeat, talkative and optimistic individuals (Costa &
McCrae, 1992). Extraverts experience and express positive emotions (Watson & Clark, 1997), which are revealed in assessments of
job satisfaction (Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002) and subject well-being (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998). Their
optimistic views of the future allow extraverts to emerge as group leaders (Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002;
Stogdill, 1948), to be perceived as “leaderlike” (Hogan et al., 1994), and to exhibit behaviors consistent with the transformational
model of leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004). It is therefore no surprise that Bono and Judge (2004) recognized extraversion as “the
strongest and most consistent correlate of transformational leadership” (p. 901).

4.3. Agreeableness

Agreeableness is manifested in modesty and altruistic behavior with agreeable individuals being described as both trusting and
trustworthy (Costa & McCrae, 1992). As a bright social personality trait, agreeableness is positively correlated with helping
behaviors and interpersonal facilitation (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000), performance in jobs involving significant interpersonal
relations (Mount, Barrick & Stewart, 1998), and negatively correlated with deviant and counterproductive work behavior
(Salgado, 2002). Although some empirical evidence finds a weak correlation between agreeableness and leader effectiveness
(Judge, Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002), there are several explanations for a more positive association between the two.
Agreeable leaders will be cooperative, gentle, and kind (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997), choosing to be inclusive and promote
affiliation while avoiding conflict (Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, & Hair, 1996). As such, agreeable leaders are likely to promote
cooperation and helping behavior among team members (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000), be empathetic when delivering critical
feedback, and encourage a pleasant, friendly, and fair work environment (Mayer et al., 2008). Agreeable leaders have a genuine
concern for the well being of others, are attentive to an individual’s psychological needs, and are interested in a subordinate’s job
satisfaction and professional development. Similarly, Bono and Judge (2004) postulated that agreeable individuals may score high
in idealized influence (Bass, 1985) and be seen as attractive role models because of their trustworthy and cooperative nature.

4.4. Emotional stability

Emotionally stable leaders are calm, relaxed, consistent in their emotional expressions, and not likely to experience negative
emotions such as stress, anxiety, or jealousy (Judge & LePine, 2007). Emotional stability is associated with subjective well-being
(DeNeve & Cooper, 1998), lack of turnover intentions (Salgado, 2002), leadership, and job satisfaction (Judge, Bono et al., 2002;
Judge, Erez et al., 2002). Individuals prone to experiencing negative emotions tend to suffer low social status (Anderson, John,
Keltner, & Kring, 2001), as emotional stability is regarded as a necessity for effective leadership (Northouse, 1997). Leaders who
exhibit emotional stability are likely to remain calm in moments of crisis, be patient with employee development, and recover
quickly from group and organizational failures.

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4.5. Openness to experience

Those high in openness to experience are intellectually curious (McCrae, 1996), and have the tendency to be creative,
introspective, imaginative, resourceful and insightful (John & Srivastava, 1999), regularly engaged in patterns of divergent thinking
(McCrae, 1994). These characteristics of openness to experience are expressed in positive work behaviors such as leadership (Judge,
Bono et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002) and coping with organizational change (Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, & Welbourne, 1999). In
their comprehensive meta-analytic review, Bono and Judge (2004) found that open individuals score highly on the intellectual
stimulation and inspirational motivation components of transformational leadership, as these leaders have a vivid imagination, are
able to challenge conventional wisdom on critical issues, and visualize a compelling future for the organization.

4.6. Core self-evaluations

Core self-evaluations (CSE) is broad personality trait that captures one’s bottom-line self assessment, and is comprised of four
fundamental judgments — self-esteem, locus of control, generalized self-efficacy and emotional stability (i.e., low Neuroticism;
Judge, Locke, & Durham, 1997). These lower order traits are highly correlated with one another (Judge, Erez et al., 2002) and have
similar patterns of associations with such outcomes as job and life satisfaction, job performance (Bono & Judge, 2003; Judge, Bono
et al., 2002; Judge, Erez et al., 2002), self-determination (Judge, Bono, Erez, & Locke, 2005), task motivation, and goal-setting
behavior (Erez & Judge, 2001). Hiller and Hambrick (2005) offer a comprehensive review of the literature linking the core traits
and executive leadership, summarizing a study by Miller and Toulouse (1986) by noting that, “executives who have an internal
[locus of control] (i.e., feel in control of their fates) are associated with strategies involving innovation and product differentiation”
(p. 302), and perform with particular efficiency when pursuing those strategies. Hiller and Hambrick (2005) also suggest that high
levels of core self-evaluations in CEOs will be associated with simpler and faster strategic decision processes, a greater number of
large stake initiatives, and more enduring organizational persistence in pursuit of those initiatives.

4.7. Intelligence

Fewer individual characteristics are more valued in modern Western society than cognitive ability (i.e., intelligence; Judge,
Colbert, & Ilies, 2004; Judge; Piccolo, & Elies, 2004). Because of its robust link to a host of professional (e.g., job performance;
Schmidt & Hunter, 2000) and social advantages (e.g., economic self-sufficiency, affluence, educational achievement, marital
stability, legitimacy, and lawful behavior; Hernstein & Murray, 1994), intelligence is regarded as the most important trait in
psychology (Sternberg & Ruzgis, 1994), and the most “successful” trait in social and applied psychology (Schmidt & Hunter, 2000).
Intelligence (i.e., cognitive ability) has been identified as one of the great traits of leadership (e.g., Mann, 1959) and among the
most critical traits that must be possessed by all leaders (Judge, Colbert et al., 2004). Intelligent leaders are capable of addressing
important issues across a broad spectrum of organizational functions, carefully integrate important (or discard unnecessary)
information in critical decision-making, and creatively develop solutions for complex problems.

4.8. Charisma

Charisma is a personal trait is often characterized as a unique and special gift from God (Weber, 1947), and was the central focus
of House’s (1977) theory of effective leadership. House (1977), as well as Conger and Kanungo (1998), treats charisma as set of
behaviors manifest in a broad leadership process, but the core of charismatic leadership theory rests on the notion that a leader’s
influence on his or her followers is often beyond the legal and formal authority structure of a group or organization, and relies
instead on the leader’s personal charm, attractiveness, and persuasive communication. According to Weber, charismatic leaders are
able to influence followers by articulating a compelling vision for the future, arousing commitment to organizational objectives, and
inspiring commitment and a sense of self-efficacy among followers. The positive effects of charisma on individual, group, and
organizational functioning is well documented, with hundreds of empirical studies finding that charismatic leaders are able to
inspire high levels of performance and encourage deep levels of commitment and satisfaction among followers (Fuller, Patterson,
Hester, & Stringer, 1996; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993).

5. Dark side of dark traits

5.1. Narcissism

Narcissism is a personality trait that is characterized by arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement, and hostility (Rosenthal &
Pittinsky, 2006). Narcissists exhibit an unusually high level of self-love, believing that they are uniquely special and entitled to
praise and admiration. As a self regulatory defense mechanism against a grandiose yet shallow self concept (Morf & Rhodewait,
2001), narcissists tend to view others as inferior to themselves, often acting in insensitive, hostile, and self enhancing ways.
Narcissist leaders are more likely to interpret information with a self serving bias and make decisions based on how those decisions
will reflect on their reputations.

In general, these traits and behaviors translate into awkward interpersonal interactions, with narcissistic individuals lacking
empathy, manipulating conservational patterns towards their own interests and accomplishments, and arrogantly fantasizing

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about grandiose dreams. As such, a limited but growing body of research identifies some of the negative consequences of leader
narcissistic behaviors. Blair, Hoffman, and Helland (2008) found that narcissism was negatively related to integrity and ratings of
interpersonal performance, while Van Dijk and De Cremer (2006), in an experimental examination of leadership and social value
orientations, found that narcissistic managers were more self serving than their more humble counterparts, with an inclination to
allocate scarce organizational resources to themselves. Lastly, whereas narcissistic leaders may be prone to enhance self-ratings of
leadership, attractiveness, and influence, these same leaders are generally viewed negatively by others, which reveals itself in
lower job performance and fewer examples of organizational citizenship among subordinates (Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006).

5.2. Hubris

Hubris exists when an individual has excessive pride, an inflated sense of self-confidence, and makes self-evaluations in terms of
talent, ability, and accomplishment that are much more positive than any reasonable objective assessment would otherwise suggest.
Leaders who carry an exaggerated sense of self-worth are likely to be defensive against most forms of critical feedback (Baumeister,
Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003), and respond to negative feedback by questioning the competence of the evaluator and the validity
of evaluation technique (Kernis & Sun, 1994). When subordinates or peers disagree with hubristic leaders, these leaders deny the
credibility and value of negative evaluations(Smalley & Stake, 1996), and discount informationthat is in conflictwith their inflated self
views. Because they so strongly believe in their own ability to inspire performance and achieve extraordinary economic success, CEOs
with high levels of hubris are prone to pay higher than justified premiums in corporate acquisitions (Hayward & Hambrick, 1997).
These acquiring CEOs believe that they can accomplish what other less skilled CEOs could not — an attitude that clouds rational
decision-making and often translates into reduced corporate valuations and below market stock performance.

5.3. Social dominance

Whereas dominance, along with sociability, is often regarded as a lower-level facet of extraversion (Judge, Bono et al., 2002;
Judge, Erez et al., 2002; Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006; Harms, Roberts, & Wood, 2007), in the current paper, we refer to a
social dominance orientation (“dominance”) as proffered in Social Dominance Theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). Sidanus and
Pratto regard social dominance as one’s preference for hierarchy and stable status differentials in any given social system. The
concept is most often measured with the Social Dominance Orientation scale (“SDO”; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994),
in which respondents indicate their level of agreement with such items as, “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other
groups”, “To get what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups” and “To get ahead in life, it is
sometimes necessary to step on other groups.”

Dominant individuals, according to the SDO, prefer to control conversations, put pressure on others, and demand explanations
for otherwise normal activities. Early studies in the trait approach to leadership identified social dominance as a means to
distinguish leaders from non-leaders (Mann, 1959), but these demanding figures often motivate through fear, and rarely inspire
followers with behaviors that are regarded as ethical, supportive, considerate, or fair. In a broad study of personality and authority
in families, for example, Altemeyer (2004) found that highly dominating individuals were broadly regarded as prejudiced, power
hungry, and manipulative. Indeed, attempts to use dominating influence tactics are regarded as counterproductive (Driskell,
Olmstead, & Salas, 1993), whereas as inclusive, ethical, and considerate leader behaviors are widely regarded as effective across a
range of outcomes (e.g., motivation; Judge, Piccolo et al., 2004).

5.4. Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is a term used to define a personality trait characterized by cunning, manipulation, and the use of any means
necessary to achieve one’s political ends. The term derives from Niccolo Machiavelli, a 16th century author who authored The Prince, a
treatise on the accumulation and leverage of political power. Although nearly 500 years from the book’s original publication, many of
the lessons of The Prince are as relevant today as they were then. Embedded in Machiavelli’s advice, is the encouragement to lie,
perceive, manipulate, and forcefully persuade constituents towards a purpose that affords the leader usable political and social power.
Leaders described as Machiavellian are politically oriented, seek control over followers (McHoskey, 1999), use tactics of impression
management, and avoid motives of organizational concern and prosocial values (Becker & O’Hair, 2007). While these leaders have a
natural talent for influencing people (Goldberg, 1999), they can usually talk others into doing things for the leader’s personal benefit,
clearly abusing power embedded in an organization’s formal authority and power captured in the leader’s dominant behavior. Any
intrinsic meaning of work is lost under Machiavellian supervision, for these kinds of leaders are less willing to adhere to procedure or
pursue lofty ethical and moral standards, instead concerned with maximizing opportunities to craft their own personal power.

6. Dark side of bright traits

6.1. Conscientiousness

Highly conscientious individuals tend to be cautious and analytical, and therefore often less willing to innovate or take risks.
Cautious leaders, unfortunately, avoid innovation, resist change, and delay critical decision-making processes, hampered by their
need to gather compelling information and evidence in support their preferences (R. Hogan & J. Hogan, 2001). Leaders who are

868 T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

highly conscientious may be threatened by turbulent circumstances and organizational change, and experience stress when
impending deadlines and daunting workloads compromise their strong desires to follow strict and organized procedures. Indeed,
conscientious individuals tend to be less adaptable to change (LePine, Colquitt, & Erez, 2000), which could result in poor
organizational performance, failure to capitalize on organizational resources, or missed opportunities for aggressive investment in
new business opportunities.

Further, whereas conscientious individuals may be diligent in their work and attentive to detail, highly conscientious leaders
may emerge as perfectionists, inflexible about procedures and policies, and critical of their team’s performance (R. Hogan &
J. Hogan, 2001). Leaders who are highly conscientious but low on agreeableness, may be abrasive and impersonal with followers
when delivering negative feedback (Witt, Andrews, & Carlson, 2004), and although conscientious leaders may be mindful of the
preferences of a work group, these leaders may hesitate to make strategic decisions that in anyway oppose consensus opinion. As
such, conscientious leaders are unlikely to be perceived as charismatic or inspirational (Bono & Judge, 2004).

6.2. Extraversion

Individuals who are excessively extroverted have a tendency to behave in bold, aggressive, and grandiose ways. They like to be
the center of attention, quickly bounce from one conversation or idea to another, and are prone to over-estimating their own
capabilities (R. Hogan & J. Hogan, 2001). As such, extraverted leaders may be less likely to solicit input from subordinates and
colleagues, potentially alienating organizational members who prefer that attention and credit be shared. Further, extraverted
leaders who engage in short and shallow discussions with many people in an organization, might fail to provide a clear strategic
focus for followers, ultimately making extraverted leaders hard to please. Lastly, as sensation seekers who maintain short-lived
enthusiasm for projects, people, and ideas (Beauducel, Brocke, & Leue, 2006), extraverted leaders may make hasty decisions to
pursue aggressive acquisitions or investments, and change course prematurely if returns on such investments do not materialize
on an extravert’s bold and aggressive schedules.

6.3. Agreeableness

Highly agreeable leaders are likely to avoid interpersonal conflict (Graziano et al., 1996) and be overly sensitive to the feelings
and desires of others at work, leading them to avoid decisions that put them at odds with peers and subordinates. Their tendency
to be cooperative, accommodating, gentle, and kind (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997) could result in decision-making that minimizes
conflict and seeks the broadest level of approval. Further, agreeable managers are prone to giving lenient performance ratings
(Bernardin, Cooke, & Villanova, 2000), which deprives employees of an honest appraisal of their work and likely skews the
distribution of ratings in a way could put the company at risk for accusations of wrongful discharge or biases in promotion and
compensation decisions (Judge & LePine, 2007). Agreeable leaders who use a non-confrontational style may be ideally suited for
positions that demand complacent adherence to the status quo. Thus, it may be unlikely to find highly agreeable leaders proposing
radical process innovations or progressive advancements to organizational policy, two potential outcomes of the transformational
leadership pattern.

6.4. Emotional stability

Leadership is an inherently emotional process (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002). Leaders who have high levels of emotional
stability may be regarded as reserved, laid back, or leisurely, but seldom inject emotion into their relationships with followers and
rarely experience emotional highs and lows (Goldberg, 1999). Genuine emotional expressions enhance a leader’s credibility
(Kouzes & Posner, 2003), fostering his or her potential to garner respect and exert meaningful influence. Although emotionally
stable leaders are generally cool headed, failing to express emotion in a given situation could be interpreted as apathy or
disinterest.

Followers of leaders who fail to express either positive or negative emotions report lower levels of job satisfaction, trust, and
relationship quality, and higher levels of absenteeism and turnover (Farmer & Aguinis, 2005). Unexpressive leaders might conceal
their true assessments of individual employees (i.e., offer minimal feedback), leaving those employees uncertain about their
standing in the work group. In that vein, unemotional leaders may hamper employees who value frequent interaction with their
supervisors, and derive a sense of their own job satisfaction based in large part on feedback they get from supervisors. Leaders with
high levels of emotional stability are less likely to use inspirational appeal as an influence tactic (Cable & Judge, 2003), relying
instead on objective and rational arguments. In critical or intense situations that demand strong reactions from both leaders
and followers, leaders with little emotional expressiveness may be regarded as less credible than those who openly experience
emotion, and may be less effective in garnering timely responses from followers.

6.5. Openness to experience

McCrae (1996) characterized individuals scoring high on measures of openness to experience as nonconformists, those who
pride themselves on anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment attitudes, while Judge and LePine (2007) considered high openness
as a potential hazard in hierarchical, conventional, or traditional work settings. Because open leaders are willing to try most
anything in the pursuit of organizational success, these leaders might get easily distracted with vogue ideas, therefore pursuing

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short-term strategies that defy deeply held corporate values and traditions, potentially compromising an organization’s long term
stability. Indeed, openness to experience is negatively correlated with continuance commitment (Erdheim, Wang, & Zickar, 2006).
Collectively, followers of leaders who are complex, philosophical, and prone to bouts of deep analysis and reflection, might get
frustrated with an open leader’s engagements in fantasy and inability to develop a particular position on important issues. Open
leaders might lack focus on corporate objectives, regularly speculating on alternative viewpoints and seeking additional
perspectives. Thus, while these leaders are creative, intelligent, and reflective, they might alienate followers who need direct,
simple, and clear instructions. If a particular situation demands quick and decisive action, leaders prone to abstract and critical
thinking will likely compromise a group’s opportunity for advancement or survival.

6.6. Core self-evaluations

Because core self-evaluations (CSE) capture one’s fundamental judgments about his potential and functioning in the world,
extremely positive self-views can have the same adverse effects associated with narcissism and hubris. Hiller and Hambrick
(2005) describe this as hyper-CSE, suggesting that overconfidence (hubris) and self-love (narcissism) will reveal themselves in
strategic choices of CEOs including product innovation decisions (Simon & Houghton, 2003) and the price paid for an acquired
company (Hayward & Hambrick, 1997). While positive self-regard is positive for interpersonal and leadership functioning in
general, hyper-CSE will most likely hamper the objectivity of strategic judgments, whereby leaders with hyper-CSE might craft
organizational strategies that serve their own best interests, rather than those of the organization’s stakeholders.

Altough hyper-CSE shares some qualities with narcissism and hubris, CSE is conceptualized as much broader than both. CSEs do
not necessarily reflect pride or excessive self confidence, as does hubris, nor does it reflect entitlement or exploitation, as does
narcissism. Hyper-CSE may be related to narcissism and hubris, but the “dark side” behaviors of narcissism (e.g., engaging in
arrogant fantasies) and hubris (e.g., dismiss negative feedback) are not apparent in hyper-CSE. We therefore regard these three
related but distinct concepts.

6.7. Intelligence

Intelligence is positively associated with both leader emergence and leader effectiveness (Foti & Hauenstein, 1993). Intelligent
people have a rich vocabulary, use multi-syllabic words, take genuine enjoyment in reflective thought, and demonstrate mastery
over language and communication (Goldberg, 1999; Goldberg et al., 2006). Goldberg (1999) and Goldberg and his colleagues
(2006) also portray intellectual individuals as those interested in abstract ideas with a desire to learn deeply within a particular
subject matter. However, it is not uncommon for individuals with exceptionally high IQs to be perceived as atypical and treated as
outsiders to a work group. Bass (1990) and Stogdill (1948) hypothesized that it could be detrimental to a group if the leader’s
intelligence substantially exceeds that of group members. This speculation inspired Judge, Colbert et al. (2004) and Judge, Piccolo
et al. (2004) to suggest that group intelligence, a group’s collective intellectual capacity, would moderate the relationship between
leader intelligence and leader effectiveness, such that groups with a high IQ were more receptive to a highly intelligent leader than
groups with low IQs. Thus, intellect in and of itself may not be perfectly effective, especially if there exists a mismatch of IQs
between group members and the group’s leader.

Highly intellectual leaders have a high need for cognition (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996), which characterizes a
person’s desire to engage in complex thought. Those who demonstrate a high need for cognition enjoy solving challenging
cognitive problems, prefer difficult puzzles, and are concerned why both how and why solutions to problems work (Cacioppo
et al., 1996). However, leaders with a high need for cognition might be disinterested or inattentive to simplistic and mundane
problems, especially if those leaders view these problems as requiring little to no cognitive effort. It might also be possible that
highly intellectual leaders become so enamored with grappling with difficult problems, analyzing alternatives, considering
multiple perspectives, that these leaders find themselves hesitating on decisions of urgent concern. Leaders with a high need for
cognition may be less effective in situations that demand quick and decisive action.

6.8. Charisma

Charismatic leaders inspire unconditional devotion from followers, who often make public displays of their loyalty, no matter
how radical. The positive effects of vision, empathy, and charismatic communication are well documented (Fuller et al., 1996),
but in some extraordinary cases, an especially persuasive charismatic leader abuses his or her interpersonal power for self
enhancement and personal gain, and exploits followers who are vulnerable to the leader’s manipulative appeal (Howell, 1988).
Examples of such deviant behavior have been characterized as the personalized, ‘dark side’ of charismatic leadership (Conger,
1990; Howell, 1988), whereby particularly vulnerable followers in uncertain and troubling situations are prone to offer blind
loyalty and passive compliance with a leader’s vision, no matter how deviant.

Charismatic leaders tend to emerge when a social situation is conducive to radical change. By articulating a vision of change
that embodies shared values and promises for a better future, charismatic leaders encourage enduring commitments from
followers, who, being caught in an exceptional leader’s magnetic charm, discount any information that contradicts the leader’s
vision. As such, followers of charismatic leaders tend to think less critically about the leader and their own relationship with him or
her, leaving them subject to manipulation and exploitation. Because they are skilled and animated public speakers, charismatic
leaders have the ability to deliver powerful speeches, often using rhetoric, imagery, anecdotes, and fantastic claims. This

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communication pattern, however, is used to distract cynical followers from consideration of negative information and create an
illusion of competence and control (Conger, 1990). In this way, personalized charismatic leaders abuse the interpersonal power
they are afforded by willing and submissive followers.

7. Bright side of dark traits

7.1. Narcissism

Narcissistic individuals maintain exaggerated views of their own self worth, but the multidimensional trait appears to have
some positive associations in the leadership process. The authoritative component of narcissism (Emmons, 1984) predicted
ratings of leader emergence in four-person leaderless discussion groups (Brunell et al., 2008). Deluga (1997), in an archival
analysis of U.S. Presidential personalities, suggested that narcissistic entitlement and self sufficiency was positively associated
with charismatic leadership and ratings of executive performance. In a field study of 300 military cadets, the best rated leaders
were those who were high in egotism and self-esteem, two positive aspects of a narcissistic personality (Paunonen, Lönnqvist,
Verkasalo, Leikas, & Nissinen, 2006).

Narcissistic leaders are prone to engage in activities and conversations that enhance their own self images, but while narcissists
have an enduring need for approval and admiration, social approval “has been identified as a motive for gaining consensus in
political and influence processes associated with [both transformational and] transactional leadership” (Sosik & Dinger, 2007;
p. 148). Thus, to reduce ego threatening conflicts, narcissistic leaders may modify the nature and pattern of interpersonal
interactions to preserve (and control) the positive impressions they seek to make on others (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). In addition,
when organizational goals and leadership assignments are ego-centric, offering the opportunity for narcissists to compare
themselves favorably with others or with previous standards, narcissistic leaders are likely to report more enjoyment and
more positive affect associated with the assignment (Morf, Weir, & Davidov, 2000) and less apprehension about pursuing the
challenge.

Lastly, narcissistic leaders favor bold, aggressive, and magnanimous actions that are likely to draw attention to their vision and
leadership. This preference has implications, sometimes positive, for firm strategy and performance. Chatterjee and Hambrick
(2007), for example, used an unobtrusive measure of narcissism among 111 CEOs and evaluated strategic innovation and
performance over a 12-year period. Narcissism was positively related to the number and size of corporate acquisitions, a benchmark
the authors regard as a proxy for strategic dynamism. Although these narcissistic CEOs ultimately achieved organizational
performance that fluctuated over time, their firms’ performance was essentially no different from those with less self aggrandizing
leaders.

7.2. Hubris

Similar to narcissism, hubris is characterized in part by high self-esteem and pride, and the tendency to enhance one’s own
positive impression on others. Individuals with high self esteem tend to be likable and attractive, and more willing to speak up
in groups (Baumeister et al., 2003), a behavior that often results in the emergence of leadership. According to Zuckerman &
O’Loughlin (2006), those prone to self-enhancement are more readily able to maintain their levels of efficacy and self-esteem
when faced with a difficult challenge. As leaders, those with hubris are likely to project power, strength, and authority in difficult
situations, inspiring confidence among their followers and peers. Indeed, hubristic entrepreneurs are more likely to act with
confidence and commitment, move quickly to innovate and form new ventures (Hayward, Shepherd, & Griffin, 2006), and test the
limits of their organization’s productive capacity.

7.3. Social dominance

Dominance was among the first traits associated with leadership and leader emergence (Mann, 1959). Dominant individuals
command the attention and respect of others, consistently attain high levels on influence (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009), and behave
in ways that make themselves appear competent, even when they are not. As such, individuals who get high scores on ratings of
dominance are more likely to emerge as leaders and more likely to be promoted to positions of authority (Foti & Hauenstein, 1993;
Son Hing, Bobocel, Zanna, & McBride, 2007). In addition, socially dominant leaders display a strong desire for achievement and
control (Cozzolino & Snyder, 2008), making them attractive to willing followers. Anderson and Kilduff (2009), for example, argued
that trait dominance is associated with the appearance of competence, which may explain why Hare, Koenigs, and Hare (1997), in
a field study of 260 managers, reported that both managers and coworkers, regardless of gender, believed that ‘model’ managers
should be more dominant than they are usually rated to be.

7.4. Machiavellianism

Although most 20th century descriptions of Machiavellianism describe a method of management that is cunning, manipulative,
immoral, and comfortable with the use of brute force (e.g., Barker, 1994), the original discussions of power contained in The Prince
(Il Principe) are far less vial than commonly described. Indeed, lessons from the original works are as relevant today as they were in
16th Century (Galie & Bopst, 2006). Machiavellians aspire to positions of management and formal authority, tend to have a high

871T.A. Judge et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 20 (2009) 855–875

motivation to lead (Mael, Waldman, & Mulqueen, 2001), and are willing to invest in their own social capital for the sake of
achieving their goals. Managers who have a strong need for social power are willing and able to use a variety of leadership and
influence tactics, attending carefully to the subtle idiosyncratic psychological preferences of their targets (Bass, 1990; Yukl, 2002).
In this way, Machiavellian leaders are very strategic in their thinking, able to navigate power dynamics in complex business and
governmental organizations.

In particular, high Machiavellian leaders show considerable flexibility in handling structured and unstructured tasks, are
directive and are often described as charismatic (Deluga, 2001; Drory & Gluskinos, 1980). In addition, they engage in a variety of
influence tactics conducive to building political connections which may include strategic self-disclosure (Dingler-Duhon & Brown,
1987). As such, they seek out positions that provide extensive resources and means of controlling others particularly within
management and law (Corzine, 1997; Dahling, Whitaker, & Levy, 2009; Fehr, Samson, & Paulhus, 1992).

Simonton (1986) demonstrated that Machiavellians tend to serve the most years in national elective offices and were also
positively associated with numerous legislative behaviors. In a study on presidential personality, Machiavellian presidents
were positively associated with the total number acts passed during their administration, total number of legislative victories
and lowest number of defeats over administration-sponsored bills in Congress (Simonton, 1986). Such behavior from leaders
carries with it the potential to positively affect countless followers should such legislation prove to be beneficial both for the
Machiavellian leader and his/her followers. Simonton (1986) added that Machiavellian presidents were particularly effective
when they also demonstrated intellectual brilliance.

8. Conclusions

The leader trait perspective has had a long intellectual tradition, with decades of great prominence in the literature followed by
years of skepticism and disinterest. The trait approach had been criticized for its simplicity and futility, for its failure to explain the
sources of trait development, and for its inability to adequately integrate context into the perspective’s utility. Recent advances
in personality research, however, including the development of comprehensive and valid trait frameworks, have inspired a
reassessment of previously held assumptions about the role of individual differences in leadership, and sparked renewed interest
in trait approaches to understanding leader emergence and leadership effectiveness. So too have advances in evolutionary
thinking in organizational behavior research (see Ilies et al., 2004, 2006), and behavioral genetics (see Nicholson, 2005; Nicholson
& White, 2006) inspired our thinking in general, and our model in particular.

In this paper, we attempt to place the leader trait perspective in the context of supporting intellectual traditions, including
evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, and socioanalytic theory. Each of these approaches to understanding individual
differences inform our examination of how personality traits develop, how traits are selected in an evolutionary sense, how traits
enhance (or compromise) leader emergence and leadership effectiveness, and how traits are subject to countervailing effects,
associated with positive outcomes in some circumstances but negative outcomes in others. In so doing, we recognize the interplay
of traits and context, describing both the positive and negative consequences of socially desirable (and undesirable) traits. Finally,
we propose a Leader Trait Emergence Effectiveness heuristic model integrating the genetic and evolutionary sources of trait
development, as well as leadership motive and emergence processes in the associations between traits and both subjective and
objective measures of leader effectiveness.

While it is our hope that the model and arguments advanced in this paper contribute to the conceptual foundations of the
leader trait paradigm, we also hope that our efforts might spur future research. Though we do not agree that the trait paradigm
has produced weak results, we are mindful of the critics who believe otherwise (Morgeson et al. 2007, Murphy &
Dzieweczynski, 2005). Whether one sees the yield from leader trait paradigm as meager, we believe that tests of the bright and
dark sides of leader traits generally, and of the moderating and mediating links in the model specifically, stand the promise of
showing that, in many theoretically appropriate situations, the link between leader traits and leadership emergence and
effectiveness is quite significant.

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The bright and dark sides of leader traits: A review and theoretical extension of the leader tr…..

Theoretical perspectives underlying leader trait paradigm
Evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology
Existence of traits
Efficacy of traits
Paradox of traits
Behavioral genetics
Socioanalytic theory
Conceptual model
Causes of traits
Traits, leader emergence, and socioanalytic theory
Leadership effectiveness and moderators
Trait effects and paradoxes
Bright side of bright traits
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional stability
Openness to experience
Core self-evaluations
Intelligence
Charisma
Dark side of dark traits
Narcissism
Hubris
Social dominance
Machiavellianism
Dark side of bright traits
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional stability
Openness to experience
Core self-evaluations
Intelligence
Charisma
Bright side of dark traits
Narcissism
Hubris
Social dominance
Machiavellianism
Conclusions
References