Can I be a good leader?
This is a question that often plagues young individuals as they embark on their first year at university, first job, first promotion, first start-up venture, and so on. As I progress through my college career as a Psychology major, I too have become quite intrigued by the concept of leadership, how it operates in group settings, and the attempts made to understand it in the past. Being a summer intern at ThreeFish Consulting has also given me the opportunity to become acquainted with some psychometric tools that have been developed to understand and assess this very construct, thereby helping me find answers to some of my questions.
Part of what I have understood is that whether within an organizational setup or not, leadership is largely a social phenomenon. The leader might be a single individual, but the process of leading inherently involves social interaction and interpersonal dynamics. In light of the above, and as an attempt to prelude ThreeFish and Hogan’s Leadership–related solutions, I bring to you an overview of a few Social Psychological perspectives on Leadership. As Dr. Hogan says, leadership is one of the most consequential social phenomenon.
Great Person Theory
The Great Person Theory of Leadership became popular in the 19th century. It states that certain key personality traits decide whether a person will be a good leader, regardless of the situation or context. Particularly, these traits are something people are born with, making leadership an entirely inherent ability.
Interestingly, this theory originated as the ‘Great Man Theory’ and laid down largely masculine traits as key indicators of good leadership. Fortunately, this problematic notion has since been refuted with later research straying away from the idea of a fixed set of situation-independent traits being necessary to be a good leader.
Leadership Styles
An alternative proposal is that instead of having specific personality traits, good leaders simply adopt specific leadership styles. Bernard M. Bass, an American Psychologist, among others, established a distinction between Transactional and Transformational leadership styles, which involve a focus on short-term and long-term goals respectively. Again, these leadership styles are said not to be related to any particular personality trait(s).
It has since been acknowledged that these styles are actually not mutually exclusive, and that effective leaders must combine aspects of both in their functioning. However, to me, the ‘Leadership Style’ explanation continues to leave unconsidered other contributing factors that extend beyond just the style adopted by a leader.
Contingency Theory
Fred Fiedler, a leading industrial and organizational psychologist, in 1967 put forth the Contingency Theory of Leadership, which represents an intriguing approach to leadership. This theory employs the ‘Right Person in the Right Situation’ understanding of good leadership. It does so by highlighting the importance of the characteristics of the leader, the social situation, and the interaction between these in predicting leadership effectiveness accurately.
This theory conceptualizes leadership effectiveness in terms of the orientation of the leader (personal) and the amount of influence they have on their group (social). Particularly, leaders who are task-oriented i.e., more concerned with getting work done, rather than with workers’ feelings, lead better in situations of either high or low control. Control here refers to the extent to which a team perceives their leader as powerful, and to which the required work is structured and well defined. On the other hand, leaders who are relationship-oriented, i.e., concerned more with workers’ feelings and relationships, are said to be most effective in situations of moderate control. This is because moderate power and moderately defined work requirements seem to necessitate the promotion of strong interpersonal relations to facilitate effective working.
By therefore adopting a nuanced understanding of leadership effectiveness, as a combination of factors inherent and external to the leader, this theory seems to strike a balance between giving too much importance to either personality traits or adopted leadership styles in this regard. This theory has since been validated in studies involving different types of leaders, including business managers.
Evidently, perspectives throughout history have taken varied positions towards the role of personality in determining leadership effectiveness. While this article covers only a few such schools of thought, in doing so, it aims to give a sense of how current ideas of leadership in organizational contexts may have evolved.
Personally, my basic understanding of the field of social psychology has brought me to appreciate the interplay between individuals and the environment within which they exist, as a key operator in determining their behavior. What follows from this is the ‘Right Person in the Right Situation’ understanding of leadership that to me, also rings closest to Hogan’s approach to psychometric assessment. While providing insight into a certain set of personality traits, Hogan also advocates for considering these insights in context of the job and job environment. ‘Job fit’ becomes an important idea, with no blanket judgements about which personality traits are necessary for good leaders universally. At the same time, the role of personality in understanding leadership is not disregarded, as reflected in the belief that “Who we are is how we lead.”
References
Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Sommers, S. R. (2021). Social Psychology Global Edition (10th ed.). Pearson Education Limited.
Cherry, K. (2011). The Great Man Theory of Leadership. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/the-great-man-theory-of-leadership-2795311
Hogan Assessments. (n.d.). What Is Leadership? Hogan. Retrieved June 28, 2023, from https://www.hoganassessments.com/guides-and-insights/what-is-leadership/
