Commonsense Leadership

Chapter 3Personality and Leadership

Even though personality is not a topic typically discussed in business books, it's very, very important when we begin to evaluate whether or not a certain person has the leadership traits that we're looking for in a certain position.

Now, it needs to be understood that less is known about leadership, how it's formed, and the role of culture or inheritance than we'd like people to think. We seem to agree that a person's personality, the basic structure, is pretty well established by seven years of age.

One major conflict about personality comes when we try to determine what influences the development of leadership traits. There are two schools of thought. In the first it is believed that 80 percent of personality is inherited and 20 percent is culturally developed. In the other, the inverse is believed: 80 percent of personality is culturally developed and 20 percent is inherited. I would probably lean more toward the first, where 80 percent of personality is inherited and 20 percent is culturally developed. But when we begin to look at basic personality traits, there is confusion about not only how they develop but also in how they are defined.

There are many personality inventories that have been developed over the years to be used to evaluate corporate people, athletes, and others that are going to be involved with a certain group of people. Now, what we need to understand is that many times the results of these inventories are misused because ...