I would consider myself a thinker and a very open minded individual and I have personally thought about what makes up a good leader a time or two. I am an Engineer by trade, so I naturally analyze the data that’s in front of me and draw conclusions based upon what I see and what I’ve experienced. Based on the experiences that I’ve had in my life I had drawn my own conclusions as to what makes a good leader and I would argue that 80% of who we are…we are born with…including leadership abilities. As a self proclaimed engineers, engineer, I have never, I repeat, never taken any formal leadership or psychology classes during my academic career; so the concepts and theories that I’ve been introduced to thus far in psych 485 are foreign, new, and refreshing to me. As a novice to psychology in general I’d like to discuss a few of the topics that have caught my attention.
Before reading one sentence of formal leadership literature, my definition of a leader would have been defined as: A person with the ability to influence an individual or group of individuals to accomplish a task. I have also thought about what makes a “good” leader and I would define a good leader as the following: A person with the ability to influence an individual or group of individuals to accomplish a task happily and to the best of their abilities. By adding “happily and to the best of their abilities” to the definition emphasizes a point that not all leaders and good leaders and I believe good leaders are born with leadership traits that gives the an advantage of those who are not born with those traits. As a person who already believed that 80% of who we are we are born with, the trait approach to leadership obviously caught my attention. Northouse (2013) states that the “trait perspective suggests that certain individuals have special innate or inborn characteristics or qualities that make them leaders”. One argument of trait leadership is that traits alone do not guarantee a leader. This is the reason that the trait argument fell out of favor for so long by the leadership scholars. Many studies have tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together and I came across a table in Wikipedia that was created by Steve Zaccaro, a professor at George Mason University.
The table describes the distal (trait-like) and proximal (state-like) attributes that “good leaders” possess. It combines both the innate traits of the individual with the skills that are learned throughout life to describe a successful leader. Zaccaro describes the cognitive abilities, personality, and values of a person combined with the social skills, problem-solving skills, and expertise of an individual yield itself to an effective leader (Zaccaro, 2004). This is the best model that I have seen thus far that aligns with my personal assessment of good leadership.
Table 1: Leader Traits based on Zaccaro’s (2004) Model
As a novice to the academic study of leadership, I am intrigued by the topic. Many of my personal beliefs will now be changed based upon the research that has been done in this area. I am however glad to see that my thoughts of leadership are somewhat valid. I’m looking forward to my transition from a novice to someone who is knowledgeable in the subject.
References
1. Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (Sixth ed.). (pp. 5,13). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
2. Penn State World Campus. (2014). Lesson 1: Introduction to Leadership. Retrieved June 21, 2014, from Psych 485: Leadership in Work Settings: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/su14/psych485/002/content/01_lesson/printlesson.html