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) Academy of Management Executive, 1991 Vol. 5 No. 2

Leadership: do traits matter?

Shelley A. Kirkpatrick and Edwin A. Locke, University of Maryland
Executive Overview

The study ot leader traits has a long and controversial history. While research
shows that the possession of certain traits alone does not guarantee leadership
success, fhere is evidence that effective leaders aredifferent from other people
in certain key respects. Key leader traits include: drive (a broad term which
includes achievement, motivation, ambition, energy, tenacity, and initiative):
leadership motivation (the desire fo lead but not to seek power as an end in
itself): honesty and integrity: self-confidence (which is associated with emotional
stability): cognitive ability: and knowledge of thebusiness. There is less clear
evidence for traits such as charisma, creativity and flexibility. We believe that
the key leader traits help the leader acquire necessary skills: formulate an
organizational vision and an effective plan for pursuing it: and take the
necessary steps to implement the vision in reality.

Article

Few issues have a more controversial history than leadership traitsand
characteristics. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "great man" leadership
theories were highly popular. These theories asserted that leadership qualities
were inherited, especially by people from the upper class. Great men were, born,
not made (in those days, virtually all business leaders were men). Today, great
man theories are a popular foil for so-called superior models. To makethe new
models plausible, the "great men" are endowed with negative as well as positive
traits. In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, for example. Slater and
Bennis write,
"The passing years have . . . given the coup de grace to another force that has
retarded democratization—the 'great man' who with brilliance and farsightedness
could preside wth dictatorial powers as the head ofa growing organization."'
Such great men, argue Slater and Bennis, become "outmoded" and dead hands
on "the flexibility and growth of the organization." Under the new democratic
model, they argue, "the individual is of relatively little significance."
Early in the 20th century, the great man theories evolved into trait theories. ("Trait"
is used broadly here to refer to people's generalcharacteristics, including
capacities, motives, or patterns of behavior.) Trait theories did not make
assumptions about whether leadership traits were inherited or acquired. They
simply asserted that leaders' characteristics are different from non-leaders. Traits
such as height, weight, and physique are heavily dependent on heredity,
whereas others such as knowledge of the industry are dependenton experience
and learning.
The trait view was brought into question during the mid-century when a
prominent theorist, Ralph Stogdill, after a thorough review of the literature
concluded that "A person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of
some combination of traits."^ Stogdill believed this because the research showed
that no traits were universally associated witheffective leadership and that

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situational factors were also influential. For example, military leaders do not have
traits identical to those of business leaders.
Since Stogdill's early review, trait theory has made a come back, though in
altered form. Recent research, using a variety of methods, has made it clear that
successful leaders are not like other people.'The evidence indicates that there are
certain core traits which significantly contribute to business leaders' success.
Traits alone, however, are not sufficient for successful business leadership—they
are only a precondition. Leaders who possess the requisite traits must take certain
actions to be successful (e.g. formulating a vision, role modeling, setting goals).
Possessing the appropriate...