Through out my life I have been told many times that I was born to be a leader, or that I was a natural leader. The most recent time that this happened to me what when I was working towards a promotion, which was to become a manager. On this particular day my manager told me that I was going to run the shift as if I were the manager in charge, like I would have to do after completing the training and getting the promotion.
At first, I remember struggling, and feeling as if I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Even though I have been working for this company for over a year. It was at this point that my manager pulled me to the side and told me “You were born to be a leader!” She explained that the employees naturally followed my lead and that I knew how to do the job, and I knew how to do it well. After our little talk I felt much better, and I realized that I did know exactly what I needed to do. I was just over thinking the situation.
The statement that my boss made about me being born to be a leader makes leadership seem as though it is a trait. This is a common though among many people. But, this is not entirely accurate. Leadership is defined as “a process whereby an individual influences a group to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2016). From this definition, leadership has four component; leadership is a process, it involves influence, it occurs in a group context, and it involves goal attainment.
People who see leadership as a trait or personality characteristic are looking at leadership through the personality perspective. The personality perspective is when you see leadership as a combination of traits that a person has which allows them to get other to accomplish a task or goal (William, 2018).
Reference:
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles. SAGE.
Williams, J. (2018) Looking at leader ship through many lenses. Psych 485.
Jessica Bonner says
Miranda,
I think you make a great post! I think when someone becomes a leader for the first time, they can be hesitant to fail. But if we’re using the trait approach to manage this situation, you would know that as a leader, you don’t have to possess certain traits. Instead, you have traits that help you in certain situations you are in (Northouse, 2016). So, in your situation, you inherently knew what to do as a leader, because you already possessed the traits inside you-you just had to find them! In the text, there are ten traits that are associated with good leadership (Northouse, 2016).. I thoroughly believe that you possess some of these qualities, which is what made you a good leader in the example you provided. I’ve listed them below.
1. Drive for responsibility. It appears to me that you definitely have this, as you strived to become a manager, after only a year! That’s impressive.
2. Persistence. Again, it appears you were persistent and never gave up on yourself, leading to your promotion to manager.
3.Self confidence. While you were hesitant at first, you ended up succeeding once you found your confidence again. This makes a great leader. You have to be confident in your abilities so that your followers can be confident following you!
I think if you analyze yourself using the trait approach you will be able to see how good of a leader you are or the spots you may need some improvement. The trait approach functions best when it is used for personal awareness or for analyzing your traits (Northouse, 2016). However, just remember that the trait approach does not have definitive traits it uses to define leadership; so although intelligence may be listed as a positive leadership trait, you may be very intelligent, but not a leader, according to our text (Northouse, 2016). Just something to keep in mind when analyzing oneself using the trait approach!
Christian Daly says
Miranda makes a very good point. You are very right to say that leadership cannot only be defined by traits people have. But you cannot say that it doesn’t have an affect. I agree that process theory is probably one of the closest definitions to leadership so far but I think that leaders also have traits. Your boss telling you that the employees naturally follow your lead, actually shows that you are an emergent leader. Emergent leadership is “when others perceive an individual as the most influential member of a group or organization, regardless of the individuals title” (Northouse 2016). The boss is telling you that the employees “support and accept your behavior”, which essentially makes you an emergent leader (Northouse 2016). Furthermore it was found that different traits are connected to emergent leaders, such as being more confident in your performance (Northouse 2016). Again, you are very right to say that leadership can’t be defined just by traits, but traits definitely play a role in it. Lastly I find the situation you were put in very interesting. You were essentially put in an “assessment center”, except it was real (Lesson 1 Commentary). Very good post.
References
Lesson Commentary 1
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles. SAGE.
Mirand Weitzel says
You claim that it is incorrect to examine leadership via the trait approach. I can agree that leadership is not entirely dependent upon a set of inborn personality traits resulting from our DNA, but I also don’t think it’s right to completely disregard this approach. I think that leadership is a complex combination of traits, skills, past experiences, and situations. These components of leadership are all closely related and they affect most aspects of our being. If you do not believe that the trait approach is accurate, which approach or approaches do you think is most accurate and why?