Let’s take a look at the Up and Down sides of the Approach
The Up Side
- It’s an appealing approach, most of the people have an idealized image of a leader. So, it’s natural to expect that the leader has “great” qualities or traits.
- There’s a lot of research and Leadership studies based on this approach. This gives it a respectable foundation to its findings.
- Gives Light on traits that a leader should have. There’s a lot of research on traits and personality assessment. This means, from a personal point of view, that you can learn a lot about yourself and what leadership skills you have with tools that have been developed through out the 20th century. All of them, based on the traits research.
The Down Side
- There is not a Universal list of traits.Every new leadership study brought up a new set of traits, some were coincident with prior studies, but some not.
- The findings of each study are subjective, they are biased by the author’s experience and his interpretations of the situations in which the leader’s traits were observed.
- The leader is the only focus of study, this means that there is no information on how the leader influences or achieves its goals, or generates outcomes within the group or the organization.
We’ve seen that the 20th century started with the researchers focusing their attention on great leaders, and what traits they had. To figure out what traits a leader has, is the main goal of the leadership approach. Many leadership studies were conducted in this line of research.
By 1948, the trait approach was challenged by Stogdill, but later on (1974) he retracted himself considering traits an important part of the leader’s component in leadership, this may have been the first step in the revival of this research field on leadership studies. Just when other lines of investigation were developing, contingency theories, the situational approach.
There are several ups & downs with this approach to leadership, on the up side: Lots of research to backup findings, practical use of traits in personal assessment helping to identify one’s strenghts. On the down side, there’s not a single or universal list of traits a leader have to posses. The traits are extremely subjective and prone to different interpretations. The studies focus solely on the leader and not in the outcomes that specific traits can have or generate in the process of leadership.
Bottom line: The starting point to study leadership, lot of research, and many traits that are important. Go find a self assessment tool and look who you are.
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