Most people would quantify both the President of the United States and a corporate CEO as “leaders”. Politicians, for the most part are a necessary evil. We need them to provide leadership and guidance, determine and set policy, and make the various parts of our government run. We need them to do what they say and say what they mean, unfortunately but the opposite happens. Rarely does a politician make a campaign promise that is enacted, although sometimes it is not for a lack of trying. Political leadership is a beast unto itself and has a set of challenges unique to public office because there is a formalized balance of power. In other words, the President is not able to do a whole lot without the other two branches of the federal government agreeing. On the other hand, a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is hired to run a company and make decisions with the reasonable expectation that implementation will occur or people will be fired. Being an election year, the public is bombarded with news and advertisements regarding the candidates. Both men are leaders, but only one candidate has corporate leadership experience. Is this type of leadership necessary? Helpful? Harmful? This year’s election poses a very interesting question: do successful business leaders make successful political leaders?

 

       Both jobs require traits that are consistently identified with leadership potential, but the individual is paramount to the actual process of attaining a leadership role in either the private or public sector (Kirkpatrick, S.A. and Locke, E.A. 1991. pp. 58-59). A person that doesn’t have leadership-oriented traits is not going to make a successful leader, however, just having those traits does not mean that individual will become a CEO or the President of the United States. The leadership traits provide an aptitude for acquiring skills or knowledge that are necessary to attain leadership positions at a high level. People that are clearly leaders in one situation do not necessarily translate into leaders in a different situation (Redmond, 2012).

 

       Both candidates encompass the five traits including: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability to be successful (Northouse, P. 2013. p. 23). It would also be fair to assume that both Romney and Obama have different areas of strengths and weaknesses if they were given a Leadership Trait Questionnaire, but would Romney’s areas of weaknesses be bolstered by his additional business acumen and conversely, would Obama’s weaknesses undermine his ability to lead? Both candidates are highly intelligent and self-confident. In rating the five traits, I would identify sociability as one of Obama’s greatest strengths, as he has superb social skills and is extremely articulate. On the other hand, I define integrity as one of his weaknesses because he has had difficulty taking ownership of his actions on a consistent basis (Northouse, P. 2013. p.25). This is evidenced by the continual blaming of former President George W. Bush years after Obama’s own policies failed to have a positive economic impact. As for Romney, I would consider determination to be one of his greatest strengths because his approach is more proactive and he is not prone to quitting. Sociability is definitely his area of weakness, and may ultimately cause him to lose the race. While Romney appears to be friendly, cheerful and outgoing, he has been criticized for failing to connect with people that are not in his social class, and in some instances alienating them. When asked about income equality on the Today Show, which aired January 11, 2012, Romney stated, “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare” (Sargent, G. 2012). Instead of trying to help close the discussion of class warfare, he perpetuated it and answered the question in a very non-politically correct way.

 

       In business, a CEO does not need to worry about hurting feelings or being politically correct at all times as long as the company is producing favorable results, whereas, in politics, a gaffe can kill a career. Political experience seems to be an important step between the private and public sector. No President has ever made the transition from the private sector directly into the office of the President of the United States (Mataconis, D. 2012). While this does not appear to be earth-shattering news, it is a rather important detail to consider when deciding if business experience will enhance a President’s leadership ability. All former Presidents have had some sort of governmental experience prior to being elected, including the two candidates that are running in the 2012 election. That is important fact because political skills are important to navigating Washington D.C. and having success a President. Barack Obama was a senator prior to being elected as the 44^th President of the United States. Mitt Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts after being the CEO of Bain Capital.

 

       Every President has held political office or had public sector experience in some way prior to getting elected. This demonstrates that it would be more difficult to get elected President without any political knowledge, than to be elected President with business experience. Several former Presidents have had a business background in addition to political experience before getting elected, but that does not mean that they performed any better or worse than those without (Mataconis, 2012). Performance is dictated by the individual’s strengths and weaknesses of leadership traits, skills, and experiences. Romney wants voters to believe this business acumen gives him a unique understanding of economic change that needs to occur in America, but will voters buy it? I guess we will find out on November 6, 2012.

 

References:

 

Kirkpatrick, S.A. and Locke, E.A. (1991). Leadership: do traits matter? The Executive, 5.

 

Northouse, P.G., (2013). Leadership: theory and practice sixth ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

 

Mataconis, D. (2012). Do businessmen make good Presidents? Retrieved from http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/do-businessmen-make-good-presidents/.

 

Redmond, Brian (2012). Lesson 1: Introduction to Leadership. Retrieved from Penn State World Campus Psych 485: Leadership in Work Settings website https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/001/content/01_lesson/01_page.html.

 

Sargent, G. (2012). Romney: questions about inequality and Wall Street driven by envy. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/romney-questions-about-wall-street-and-inequality-are-driven-by-envy/2012/01/11/gIQAJ6L2qP_blog.html

                Every four years we reach a cross roads in our country it is time for a presidential election.  This year as I contemplate my decision, putting all of the political mudslinging aside I am thinking about what leadership traits I need to look for in our future president and what leadership means to me.

                Some past leaders such as President Abraham Lincoln have been identified as having traits as described in the “Great Man Theory” (Northouse, 2010).  It was believed that certain people were born with the ability to be great (Northouse, 2010).  What leadership qualities make someone such as Abraham Lincoln so different from the common man?  In the mid-20^th century this topic was researched.  Some researchers felt that leaders were brought about by the situations they were in while other researchers felt that personal factors people exhibit in leadership were important (Northouse, 2010). 

                Researchers have been working on the trait approach theory which lists individual leadership traits an individual leader may possess (Northouse, 2010).  How can a list of personality traits help with my decision?  The trait theory could help us profile what presidential candidate we think is best for the office based on his personality traits.  Using this theory could help us get an idea of what the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate are (Northouse, 2010).  The trait approach could also help us compare the two candidates and figure out what we see to be their strengths and weaknesses if they were to become President (Northouse, 2010).

                One risk that we take with using the trait approach in our decision is that it doesn’t take into account how a president will react under a specific situation.  We can’t predict the future and how a certain situation will affect the decisions a president may make when leading the country.  The downfall of using the trait approach is that it provides us guidance in what traits we are looking for in a leader; it can’t predict the outcome of what will take during the four years after a president has been elected.

                So with all of this being said what traits do I think are important for the next leader of our country to possess?  To narrow down my list of traits I executed the LTQ Leadership Trait Questionnaire (Northouse, 2010).  I feel to lead our country you have to rate high on all traits listed.  I rated all of the following traits with a score of 5 Articulate, Perceptive, Self-Confident, Self-Assured, Persistent, Determined, Trustworthy, Dependable, Friendly, Outgoing, Conscientious, Diligent, Sensitive, and Empathetic (Northouse, 2010).  What do I do with this information?  From now until Election Day, I will be watching how the events of the election unfold.  I will be evaluating each candidate based on these traits and how I feel they align with my opinion of what our country needs.

                I know the LTQ is recommended to be used as a self-evaluation for ourselves or an evaluation of an immediate supervisor. My approach is slightly different since I don’t know either of the Presidential Candidates on a personal level, but then again how many of us do.  I feel the LTQ can be a useful tool to help us make an educated decision about what we think our country needs for a leader when we hit the polls on Election Day.

REFERENCE:
Northouse (2010) Trait Approach, Leadership Theory and Practice (pp.15-38).

 

Earlier this week, I was brought in to consult and do some analysis on a new project at work. During the kick-off meeting, the project manager said that he was looking at our current employee base for some natural leaders to pluck for this project. I didn’t want to correct him during his presentation, so I jotted down a reminder to revisit the topic with him sometime later.

The opportunity to discuss this with him came the very next day when he called and asked me to meet with him for an hour to discuss some of the details about how the project would work and what our technology challenges might be. I took this as an opportunity to explore what his ideas on natural leadership were. During the course of my investigation, I discovered that one of his leadership maxims was that one of the best ways to lead a new project or to lead a company in a new direction is to seek out natural leaders within the company by looking for the expression of key traits in those that are currently not in leadership roles. Doing so, his maxim reasoned, would effectively empower those natural leaders to pull the rest of the employee base in the new direction for you. He thought of these embedded leaders as sleeper agents, having already made contacts and alliances that could be leveraged towards the company’s success and growth. He also theorized that such a showing of internal advancement should give the rest of the workforce hope for advancement which he felt would materialize into great amounts of energy and enthusiasm to be applied to the new goal or direction.

I explained that while I would tend to agree with some of the benefits he thought might come along with promoting from within, his ideas on innate leadership traits and born leaders were not without significant flaws. While I already had some cursory knowledge from studying some trait theories in personality in other psychology classes, the Northouse text allowed me to drive it home in a stronger context as it applied to leadership. I explained that one of the problems with his procedure for spotting new leadership talent is that even if there were such things as born leaders, the process he engages in ignores the very real possibility that there are candidates that have strong leadership qualities that are not in the situation to express them and get noticed and that, as Northouse also explains, showing leadership qualities in one situation doesn’t necessarily mean that those qualities and the resultant leadership prowess or potential will actually carry over to any other situation (p.31, 2013). I also paraphrased the views of Mitch McCrimmon (Ph.D. Philosophy of Psychology) from a piece that he wrote for the leadership resource website, Leadersdirect.com. McCrimmon suggests that in order to lead others by challenging things as they are and showing followers that there is an alternative and better way, leaders must have some measure of natural rebellion. That’s not to suggest that leaders are born, as he explains that in fact it’s quite the opposite and stipulates that the situation matters greatly (just as Northouse does). As he explains it, “exploratory, rebellious characters could become criminals rather than leaders depending on circumstances, so it is the potential you are born with, not full scale leadership” (McCrimmon, 2011).

Over the course of our conversation, I came to realize that he holds a certain disdain for academic ideas and research and as such, he wasn’t very receptive to the ideas contained in textbooks, scholarly articles or studies that, in his words, don’t have any link to the real world. I attempted to explain to him that the best studies are often done in real world situations and the best research consists of the meta-analysis of multiple types of studies that reach similar and strongly supported conclusions. I tracked down one of the studies noted in our text and another one from Bernard Bass that helped support my position, but he didn’t get past the abstracts of either. He dismissed the studies as relying too much on lab sciences and not enough on social science (the irony of his choice of terms was sad, but amusing to me). One thing I was able to pick up on was that he was a big fan of Forbes magazine and he tended to rely on it for leadership and management ideas and advice. I managed to track down an article about some research that showed that leaders aren’t really born that supported my point and happened to mention the Bernard Bass concepts from the study I tried to get him to read (Varghese, 2011). While it didn’t cause him to completely change his stance, I think it did increase his envelope for being open to new ideas and changes in leadership concepts.

Because his leadership views are based on personal experiences and insights molded into his own business maxims, he remains resistant to changing or discarding them. These personal experiences, I believe, make him more attached to the ideas than is healthy for growth as a leader and retards the search for true solutions to the problems that he faces and is charged to address. I don’t think he is yet open to the concept that some of his success might not be due to his maxims, but rather, might occur in spite of them, suggesting that he has some measure of untapped potential at his fingertips that is obscured by his persistent belief in things that are likely untrue or at the very least, unsubstantiated. He remains a work in progress.

 

References:

McCrimmon, M. (2011). Leadersdirect. Retrieved from http://www.leadersdirect.com/are-there-born-leaders

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Varghese, S. (2011, Nov 27). Forbes.com. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/29/leaders-born-fordism-lead-ceo-cx_sv_1129varghese.html

One of the strength’s to the Trait Approach is said to be that it naturally draws people in due to its tendency to appeal to the popular image of leader’s being gifted (Northouse 2010).  I am not sold on this being such a good thing.  Yes, the Trait Approach falls in line with current thoughts on who a leader should be, but is that such a good thing?  I see how it perpetuates the stereotype, but at the end of the day I’m afraid that that’s all this view of a leader is. We need to level the playing field to make Leadership an obtainable goal for just about everyone.  The trait approach’s limited scope in what it thinks a leader should be helps keep popular opinion from including people who might not fit it’s limited definition.

A negative to the Trait Approach is said to be that it does not take situations into account (Northouse 2010).  It does not allow for different types of leader’s to even exist.   From high school to college to running my own businesses there are always people I see who would be fantastic leaders but don’t agree with me.  When I was running my landscaping company I needed someone to run another crew in another part of town.  There was an employee who was organized, did immaculate work, and got along with everyone else but knew how to get things moving when they got stagnant.  He did this without thinking about it, so when I asked him to run my new crew he looked at me like I had five heads and said he wasn’t smart enough for that.  Whether he was smart or not had nothing to do with it, he just had the innate ability to be good at this crew.  What he lacked was the self-confidence, a very important major leadership trait.   Due to that, he never took the job and I was not about to force him.  He needed to know he could do it for it to truly work.   The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence allows for three separate and distinct types of intelligence (Northouse 2010).  Each of these types of intelligence could easily define a different type of leader.    The analytic intelligence type is linked to successful leadership, however in a situation where the leader has too much of this it can actually be counterproductive to establishing healthy lines of communication (Northouse 2010).   In a case like this perhaps Practical Intelligence type would be more suited to the situation.  I would also classify my would-be crew leader as having a Practical Intelligence type.  Due to his predefined notion of what a leader is supposed to be however, he would not let himself even try.  The Trait Approach does not consider situations such as this.  It holds before us a popular definition for us to measure ourselves against, not find our own personal leader within us based on our own personal strengths.   It strives to seek out a select few that measure up to its standards and hold them on a pedestal. 

This is where we get the stereotype.  The theories that developed when people started to seek out what made a leader great, were called “great man” theories (Northouse 2010).  The Trait Approach is one such theory that defines what the stereotype of a Great Man is, but doesn’t effectively describe what makes a person a good leader.  It cannot do such a thing, as the answer is not so simple that you can define a leader as one type of person.  The Trait Approach’s definition of a leader is so narrow it almost exhibits the essence of a maxim, not a theory.  When the Trait Approach was being developed scholars were looking at the great leaders such as Gandhi, Lincoln, and Napoleon.  A theory is a culmination of evidence from numerous research to explain something (PSU World Campus 2013).  A maxim is based upon one person’s experience (PSU World Campus 2013).  The Trait Approach uses the traits of a finite group of people to boil it down into one generality of what qualities these great people had that made them significant.  Essentially the Trait Approach is not based on many bits of research, but on one narrow train of thought.  It’s not a bad thing to glean what we can from the greats, but it only looks at social, political, and military leaders.  It does not look at great leaders of the great schools or other people in history such as directors, coaches, or others that lead just in a platform that is not part of the narrow scope that limits the people studied to classic leaders.  This encapsulates the  essence of a maxim rather than the spirit of a theory. 

As long as we keep defining leaders in such a limited way, public opinion of who their leaders should be will be hard pressed to change.  People need to know what specifically makes a leader (Northouse 2010).  The Trait Approach may be an easy answer, but the reality is the answer is not so cut and dry.  The Trait Approach oversimplifies and in doing so perpetuates the classic leadership examples.   This leads to people not thinking they have leadership qualities, when in fact many people would excel at leading and they just do not know it yet.  In my high school all the school leaders more or less follow the major leadership traits.  They are all high achievers, confident, driven, and outgoing. That describes a small group of people in a big school.  The paradigm was set up that leaders followed these traits.  Even at the time I knew friends or people I was familiar with would be wonderful at certain group leaders or school council.  These people however did not fit the paradigm.  For example there was this girl that wanted very much to start a new club in school that helps the environment.  This student was sociable, honest, and driven but not have the best grades.  She told me once that she started to look around at all the school leaders and sees that they are all high achievers.    This person might be the perfect leader of this club, however due to perpetuating stereotypes of classic leaders it never happened.  The idea was dreamed and never realized in the blink of an eye and this person might never realize what a perfect leader they would have made in this situation.  The next year the school president started the Environmental Club and my friend was too upset, at herself and in general, to even join. 

The trait approach’s limited scope in what it thinks a leader should be helps keep popular opinion from including people who might not fit it’s limited definition.  This helps solidify the thinking that leaders must be certain things.  The truth however, is that leaders are many things.  Many different types of leaders for many different situations.  The Trait Approach is not wrong, just limited.  Instead of being seen as being one theory of one type out of many, it seems to be accepted as a standard  against which people compare themselves.  If we can just level the playing field it will open the door for all types of people to find a leader in themselves that they never knew was there. 

 

References:

PSU World Campus. (2012). Lesson 1: Introduction to Leadership. Retrieved from:

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/001/content/01_lesson/04_page.html

Northouse, Peter G. (2010). Leadership, Theory and Practice. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Pubications.