What makes a good leader? According to the trait approach to leadership studies, there are certain personality traits that make individuals either good or bad leaders that ultimately cause them to either succeed or fail. If you take a moment to think about it, several prominent leaders probably come to mind, and with that comes an idea of what exactly about these people made them good leaders.
For example, when I think of the political leader Nelson Mandela, the former South African political activist who diligently fought against apartheid and spent over twenty years in prison as a result, before being elected president of his country, I think of the traits of determination and persistence. When considering Stogdill’s 1974 survey that resulted in ten characteristics that are positively associated with leadership, many are apparent when considering Mandela, such as the drive for responsibility and task completion, vigor and persistence in the pursuit of goals, risk taking in problem solving, a willingness to accept the consequences of decisions and actions, a willingness to tolerate frustration and delay, and an ability to influence other people’s behaviors (Northouse, 2016). He helped to fuel and bolster political change for an entire nation, despite the many obstacles and challenges that he was faced with. Instead, he became an influential leader and a positive example for many.
On the other hand, when I think of Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Records and the head of the Virgin Group that now encompasses over 200 companies internationally, that also keeps him qualified as a billionaire (Kurtz, 2012), I think of different qualities, some of which overlap Mandela’s, but also some that are more business-minded. At the very least, Branson is a successful entrepreneur who owes much to his creativity and self-confidence in his ability to not only build a business, but make it into a household brand name. With a very public persona that is fueled by an active social media presence and an extraverted personality, Branson leads a company with what appears to be two of the three types of intelligence that are part of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence developed by Sternberg (1985, 1997 as cited by PSU WC, 2016), which include analytic, practical, and creative intelligence. Branson’s dyslexia prevented him from ever completing his formal education (Biography.com Editors, n.d.), but it never prevented him from being successful in the business world. So while he may fail to have what can be considered analytic intelligence, he still has enough problem solving ability, common sense “street smarts”, and ability to come up with new and useful ideas and the ability to cultivate this in his employees to be successful in business and as a leader who heads a multitude of companies. According to Branson himself, he is a risk-taker who is driven to challenge himself and those around him with a can-do attitude (Kurtz, 2012). Combined, it appears that he essentially has what it takes to lead others and be massively successful.
On the flipside to this, there are also leaders who are unsuccessful, and some of this might be attributable to their personality traits. In recent news, Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical company CEO who made headlines in December 2015 after being arrested by the FBI, immediately makes me think of the type of leader one hopes that they do not find themselves under. What originally caused Shkreli to make the news was the fact that he price gouged a drug meant to treat toxoplasmosis, a deadly parasitic disease for those with compromised immune systems and pregnant mothers and their unborn babies, raising the price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill, under the premise that insurance companies would be the ones to pick up the tab (Smythe & Geiger, 2015). After public outrage sparked debate over this move, Shkreli announced that he would lower the price, but then reneged on this promise and publicly stated that he should have raised it even further in order to increase profits for investors. This speaks of someone who lacks integrity and fails to exhibit honesty or trustworthiness (Northouse, 2016). To top it off, he was arrested for securities fraud after he allegedly lost investors’ money and then lied to them about it and illegally used assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors from another, much like a complicated Ponzi scheme (Smythe & Geiger, 2015). Yet, Shkreli claims he did nothing wrong and conducts business like others in his same position. But one has to wonder if this makes a leader that employees want to follow, considering that his former company, Retrophin’s board of directors ousted him from his position as CEO and then later sued him under the claim that he used company assets to pay off hedge fund investors from previously failed investments (Smythe & Geiger, 2015). In consideration of his actions, Shkreli seems to possess more of the dark-side personality traits than anything. He comes off as having interpersonal insensitivity, and being both impulsive and narcissistic, as he fails to care how he appears to others or possess any empathy at all, while being incredibly ambitious but also overly self-confident and self-centered, as he fails to keep promises and commitments while he pushes the limits despite how his followers feel and then fails to recognize the consequences of his actions (PSU WC, 2016). And when one takes into account his lack of self-awareness to how he comes across to others, lack of empathy, and also considers his motivations for financial gain at the expense of others in business, while Shkreli may have had considerable cognitive ability, he very much seems to be lacking in emotional intelligence. When combined, all of these negative personality traits have Martin Shkreli coming across as not only a villain, but also the type of leader that most people probably aren’t going to want to follow because of his overabundance of negative personality traits and lack of positive ones.
When comparing these leaders side by side and taking into consideration the situations in which these leaders are effective or ineffective, it becomes apparent how much of an impact that personality traits can have on a leader’s ability to be successful or effective. While putting these individuals into different situations would undoubtedly change their effectiveness, at the core of it all is who these people are inside as individuals that affects their ability to lead others.
References
Biography.com Editors. (n.d.). Richard Branson Biography. Biography.com. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/richard-branson-9224520#virgin-galactic.
Kurtz, R. (2012, December 17). Richard Branson on Being Richard Branson. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225295.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice, 7th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2016). Lesson 2: Trait Approach. PSYCH485: Leadership in Work Settings. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/02_lesson/03_page.html.
Smythe, C. & Geiger, K. (2015, December 17). Shkreli, Drug Price Gouger, Denies Fraud and Posts Bail. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-martin-shkreli-securities-fraud/.
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997). The concept of intelligence: Its role in lifelong learning and success. American Psychologist, 52(10), 1030-1037.http://http://dealbreaker.com/2015/11/hedge-fund-manager-turned-pharma-ceo-turned-public-enemy-number-one-seeks-music-producers-with-real-grimy-beats/