Essential Personality Traits for Effective Leadership

What exactly are personality traits?

Personality traits are used to describe habitual individual differences in behaviour, thought and emotion between one and another. They are products of both biology and environment and remain fairly stable throughout life.

Personality is a new line of research. Not long ago, we don’t even know the concept of personality. But even back then, we still use adjectives to describe people such as “responsible, outgoing, creative or emotional”. Nowadays, we view these terms as examples of personality traits.

Five-factor model of personality

Although there are many theories about personality traits, early research found that these common adjectives to describe someone’s personality traits clumped into five categories or a five-factor model of personality (the Big Five). And each of these five personality factors includes hundreds to thousands of personality traits.

• Extraversion (versus introversion): This might include assertiveness, attention-seeking, sociability etc.

• Agreeableness (versus hostility): This might include affiliation, cooperation, empathy, friendliness, tolerance, warmth, trust etc.

• Conscientiousness (versus undependability): This might include achievement, autonomy, order, control, self-sufficiency etc.

• Neuroticism (versus emotional stability): This might include anger, depression, anxiety, vulnerability etc.

• Openness to experience (versus close-mindedness): This might include creativity, thoughtfulness, novelty-seeking, being rule-free etc.

Personality Traits Test

Under the Big Five, each of us has more or less of the five personalities. To see where a person will fall on the continuum of these traits, online personal quizzes are available with some questions used in research on the Big Five personality traits. Therefore, individuals are ranked on a scale between the two extreme ends of five broad dimensions.

Basically, the test results have shown that none of us is 100% extroverted or 100% introverted. Rather, we might be mostly extroverted, mostly introverted or somewhere in the middle.

Take the free Big Five personality test here

Do personality traits predict leadership?

Using the Big Five personality model as above, it suggests that certain traits such as extraversion, emotional stability and openness to experience are characteristics of strong leaders. While this statement makes sense, many people who possess these traits don’t become leaders or an extraverted person does not guarantee he or she will be effective in a leadership role.

More controversial is the confirmation bias that some people’s potential to lead is ignored due to lacking the traits to become leaders. It just overlooks the changing environmental conditions and how leadership is defined. Within this realm, the ability to influence is arguably more important than the ability to lead.

Essential personality traits of effective leaders

Empathy

Empathy is a vital skill that is unfortunately overlooked for good leadership. By definition, an empathetic leader can understand the needs of others and connect with them on an emotional level. As a leader moves up the corporate ladder, learning to become more empathetic will help them work well with varying teams, departments, countries, cultures and backgrounds.

Demonstrating empathy in the workplace will help improve human interactions, lead to better job performance, and higher staff engagement and the leaders will be trusted more by their co-workers.

Resilience

In general, resilience is the human capability to face adversity, trauma and vulnerability and recover from them to live life fully. Resilience is seen to be a crucial characteristic of high-performing leaders. Leadership is sustainable only if individuals can sustain their energy level under pressure, to cope with disruptive changes and adapt.

However, a leader is not born with a resilience trait, instead, it requires multiple practices and mental training. In many cases, people become victims of toxic professional situations and working relationships. Nelson Mandela is a stunning example of a resilient leader, who spent 27 years in prison, yet he still advocated a fight against the racism laws after he was set free.

Compassion

In order to lead others well, leaders need to be compassionate. Compassion is more than showing empathy and seeking to understand others, it requires one to take productive supporting other team members as they work through challenges, look for systemic ways to reduce friction and make it easier for good people to do great work. Being compassionate helps leaders strengthen trust with their team, increasing organisational collaboration and decreasing turnover rates.

More critically, to have compassion for others, one must learn to be compassionate for themselves. Self-compassion means being supportive when one’s facing life challenges, feeling inadequate or making a mistake, instead of mercilessly judging and criticising oneself for shortcomings.

Curiosity

The fact is that most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history are the result of curiosity. In business, curiosity becomes more important than previously thought. If cultivated at all levels, it can help leaders and employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures. Curiosity has these positive effects because it leads us to generate alternatives and more creative solutions.

Nevertheless, leaders often face restraints when encouraging curiosity in others and themselves due to requirements to complete the job quickly. They just literally have little time to ask questions about broad processes and overall goals. The good news is an organisation can start to foster and deepen a culture of curiosity through the hiring process and modelling inquisitiveness.

Authenticity

Authenticity means being genuine and true to who you are. To succeed in leading roles, a leader needs to embody their best self, the version that’s not only highly effective but also capable of motivating and inspiring those around you. That requires a commitment to investing and bettering themselves, a keen sense of self-awareness and putting it into practice such as delivering feedback or communicating with colleagues.

Being authentic will make leaders feel more ‘on the ground’, gaining interest in their work and experiencing a high level of job satisfaction. Employees will feel more attracted to authentic rather than superficial leaders, get inspired and be willing to work alongside them.

Adaptability

Adaptability in leadership is about being flexible and responsive to changes and adjust to ever-shifting demands. The world we live in is evolving faster than ever because of emerging technology and artificial intelligence. The post-COVID-19 pandemic has proven the disruption of many traditional ways of dealing with work and operational issues, in which leaders are required to respond quickly to different dynamics, pivot when needed, and embrace new opportunities and challenges.

References

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Berg, J 2018, ‘The business case for curiosity’, Harvard Business Review, available at <https://hbr.org/2018/09/the-business-case-for-curiosity>.

Cherry, K 2023, ‘What is personality?’, Verywell Mind, available at <https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-personality-2795416>.

Cherry, K 2023, ‘Trait theory of personality: overview and traits’, Verywell Mind, available at <https://www.verywellmind.com/trait-theory-of-personality-2795955>.

Center for Creative Leadership 2023, Characteristics of a good leader: tips for new managers, Center for Creative Leadership, available at <https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/characteristics-good-leader/>.

Corporate Finance Institute 2023, Leadership traits list: 16 essential traits of a good leader, Corporate Finance Institute, available at <https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/leadership-traits-list/>.

Goleman, D 2021, ‘Does personality predict leadership?’, Psychology Today, available at <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/202107/does-personality-predict-leadership>.

Harvard Business Review 2023, ‘8 essential qualities of successful leaders’, Harvard Business Review, available at <https://hbr.org/2023/12/8-essential-qualities-of-successful-leaders>.

Harvard Business School Online n.d., Authentic leadership: what it is and why it matters, Harvard Business School Online, available at <https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/authentic-leadership>.

Johnson & Wales University 2023, MBA personality traits of effective leaders, Johnson & Wales University, available at <https://online.jwu.edu/blog/MBA-personality-traits-effective-leaders/>.

Loeb Leadership n.d., The importance of adaptability in successful leadership, Loeb Leadership, available at <https://www.loebleadership.com/insights/importance-adaptability-successful-leadership>.