Chapter 3
Personality 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 of the different way particular traits are defined by clinicians.
In sport, for example, there is a personality inventory called the Athletic Success Profile that was developed by the Athletic Success Institute. This inventory obviously contains a lot of questions related to sport and commonly used coach and athlete terms. If you want to look at a player's personality, then you would call the Athletic Success Institute and they would administer an inventory and send you a pretty thorough summary of that athlete's traits. The Athletic Success Profile is used by a group called the Major League Scouting Bureau where Major League Baseball teams can join and pay a fee to get the personality summaries for a group of athletes, primarily players they're looking to draft.
The problem with this has been that many teams have been members of the organization for years, but when they get the reports, they put them in a closet and never look at them.
Many years ago when I was the sports psychologist for the Houston Astros, I went into our first meeting and asked if they were members of the Major League Scouting Bureau. They answered that they were, so I asked to review some of the inventories. But the Astros couldn't find them. They turned up in a closet where they had apparently been for years.
The reason I had asked to see them was that I use an inventory developed by psychologist Raymond Cattell, the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). It's a personality inventory developed many years ago and it includes 16 basic personality traits that it scores from 1 to 10. From that 16, the standard scores are weighted to establish eight second-order traits. When I have dealt with corporate groups, the Cattell 16 is the test I've used, and I've also used it with athletes. Since 1975, I've administered as many as 300 to 400 per year for Major League Baseball teams.
The problem with the Athletic Success Profile is that it was developed from the 16PF and they changed a lot of the terminology, so there are many contradictions in the results. If you read about athletes being very coachable on one page, the next page may say that they prefer to make their own decisions and they're not team-oriented, so I never wanted to use that to describe players.
The other thing that needs to be mentioned here is how these scores should be used. There are not only corporate people but also Major League Baseball teams that use these personality scores to rate people and to put them into certain positions on their draft board or organizational chart. I've always been bitterly opposed to that. For example, if you believe a player has major-league talent but his personality profile shows that he may not be the easiest to coach or get along with, and you decide to draft that player, you need to make sure that you have coaches available who can deal with those traits. You also need to have a plan if coaches have issues with that athlete during the season. On teams I've worked with, they could always call me and we could talk about different ways to work through difficulties.
In the corporate environment, personality inventories have been used, and I think misused many times, to hire and fire people. What I've always thought is that—in any environment—talent is an overriding factor. On the one hand, if you have talent and I like that, then it's my responsibility to put you into an environment where your personality serves you best. On the other hand, if you have what I consider a great personality but no talent, there isn't any position I can put you in for success; you're going to fail. So we need to take paper-and-pencil tests and inventories with a grain of salt.
Many researchers over the years have tried to define personality and categorize traits. It's interesting when you look at coaches at the college level. Often they will tell you that they're familiar with the personality traits of their athletes, but many don't realize that what they are seeing are the surface traits, or what we call external traits.
Deep-seated personality traits, those referred to as source traits, are less evident in performance. It is by observing these surface traits that coaches as well as corporate leaders form a specific idea of the traits that an employee must have in order to succeed. Very few corporate leaders refer to their own personality traits, but they often refer to those of the folks they supervise.
If you put a leader in a corporate environment and allow that person to hire a team, you would find that, in most cases, talent being equal in prospective employees, the leader would hire people with personality traits that are most like his or her own. We found in researching coaches over the years, that they tend to subconsciously recruit athletes who share their personality makeup. If there were conflicts between the coach and the players, it most often involved players who were coached by a previous coach who obviously had different personality traits.
And so it's very important that leaders try to surround themselves with people who have the talent to be very good at their jobs, but that they also make an effort to include different personalities within their team. That's very, very difficult because behavior is the toughest thing to change in an adult. While leaders may be able to make adjustments to the surface traits of their personality, it is unlikely that they will change their core personality traits.
While you could hang your hat on any number of definitions of personality, I like to describe your source traits as your core, the personality blueprint you were born with. I think over time that your cultural environment does, in fact, cause you to put some of those traits in your pocket and magnify others.
One thing that's very interesting when you look at personality is that what you most often see in people are surface traits, what I've always called sales traits. These are the traits that people want you to see. I've found that you're more likely to see a person's source personality traits when they're playing golf, and it's sometimes very surprising.
When you administer a personality inventory to someone, they might also be very surprised by some of the traits that you discover.
Over the past 35 years, I have done a lot of research on the personalities of left-handed players versus right-handed players, pitchers versus hitters, new coaches and old coaches, players versus coaches, and in every case I've been surprised at some of the things that I discovered.
The one thing that holds true in almost every environment is that people who are talented and have self-confidence will more often show you their basic personality traits. People, on the other hand, who have self-doubt or a low level of self-confidence many times will try to show you their more appealing surface traits.
As I mentioned earlier, all 16 traits evaluated on the Cattell 16PF is scored 1 to 10. If I'm working in a group, what I like to do is have the people around me score themselves on the 16 traits, and show them the results of the 16PF. Many times the results are pretty consistent with what they expected, but as I said, there are also surprises.
The only reason for this is that people have been taught from a very young age not to show certain traits, aggression being one example. An eight or a nine on aggression might not be accepted in a classroom environment but it is encouraged in a sport environment. Aggression, by one basic definition, is the intent to inflict harm. I don't think that's especially true. I look at a high aggression score as being an indication that a person is stubborn and wants to be the boss, wants to lead the way.
It's not up to me to decide if that is a desirable trait in any corporate environment. It's the leaders' decision whether or not they want people who are high in aggression. Many times if leaders have high aggression scores (e.g., an 8 or a 9), then they don't make very good leaders because they tend to be micromanagers. If I had a choice, I'd rather have someone who was toward the middle on aggression because that person could be a leader when needed and a follower when needed. Someone like that would not stifle the growth and development of team members within the corporate environment.
Now, before we go further, let's take a closer look at the personality makeup as described in the 16PF. Note that each personality trait corresponds to a letter or letter–number combination, but the test does not assign a trait to every letter (e.g., there is no Trait D on the 16PF).
Trait A is reserved, meaning introverted, detached, critical, or cool, versus outgoing, meaning extroverted, warm-hearted, easygoing, and participatory. There are certain environments where a person needs to be more extroverted than others. Sales positions come to mind. I also think it's very good for a leader in a corporate environment to be middle to higher in extroversion.
Trait B has to do with intelligence. On the lower end of the scale would be someone who thinks more concretely, while the higher end would indicate a greater capacity for abstract thought. This is the most misinterpreted trait on any inventory because a lot of people who are concrete thinkers are very bright people. They figure out ways to get things done using common sense, which I'm all about. More intelligent people who are abstract thinkers don't always have the same common sense.
If as a leader you're looking for someone to work in a computer environment and not interact a lot with colleagues, then you might go more toward an abstract thinker. If you need a get-it-done kind of person who's going to go through trial and error every day until it's right, you may go more toward the middle to the lower end of concrete thinking.
Trait C deals with how a person is affected by feelings. A lower score would indicate that someone is emotionally less stable and more easily upset, whereas a higher score shows that someone is more emotionally stable, meaning he or she faces reality and is calm and mature.
There is something in research called a critical learning period, which is the time when things come together for someone in a specific environment. For example, someone in sport may be physically developed and, by all observations, ready to compete, but the package may not have come together as far as emotional maturity, dealing with winning and losing, and other intangible factors. This person hasn't yet gone through a critical learning period and is not really prepared for high-level competition. Despite this, many young people find themselves competing, which is one reason why, I think, 75 percent of kids drop out of sport at 13 years old. They're put into competition before the critical learning period has taken place.
Critical learning periods don't have a set timetable. It's not necessarily going to happen at age 13 or 14. It may be 20 or 25 for some people, so we need to understand when we hire people to look at the talent first. Then, one of your responsibilities as a leader would be to help people who don't appear to be emotionally mature as they deal with adversity and the reality of the corporate environment. It is up to their leader to help them recover more quickly from emotional issues.
Trait E is humility versus assertiveness. This scores how mild, accommodating, and conforming a person is versus how independent, aggressive, and stubborn. Many traits are defined in different inventories as being aggressive and not aggressive. This particular inventory uses humble and assertive.
Now, you will find that, depending on the task involved, it may be critical that a person be assertive in order to be successful. In other tasks, it's vital that a person be more accommodating, conforming, and team-oriented to reach a goal. As a leader, you need to understand the role of assertiveness on your team because it's an important factor to have when needed.
Trait F scores how sober a person is, meaning how prudent and serious versus how happy-go-lucky, impulsive, lively, and enthusiastic. There are places for both in the corporate environment. A leader has to know the team and its characteristics, and know what type of person is going to fit in regard to being serious versus enthusiastic and impulsive. I think there are always places for both types of people. I have yet to run across a corporate environment where having fun is a bad thing. There are a lot of people who like to be serious (and I often equate that to the banking industry) but there's no rule that says that you can't have fun and be a good employee. As a leader in the corporate environment, you need to keep that in mind.
Trait G tracks expediency, rule evasion, and a lower sense of obligation against conscientiousness, perseverance, and being bound to rules. I think most of us would agree that, as a leader, you would like to have folks who are on the conscientious side of this trait. It seems that in most every environment in which I've worked, the conscientious person would be much more dependable and much more comfortable to be around.
Trait H is shyness, meaning restraint and timidity, as opposed to social boldness, daring, lack of inhibition, and spontaneity. I've always thought that shy people tend to get mistreated in a corporate environment because they don't “fit the mold.” They're not outgoing or up for the spontaneity of a party. This doesn't make them bad people. In most cases they're very good people. They're not venturesome people and maybe that's culturally defined. Maybe they were raised in a nice suburb where kids are supposed to be seen and not heard and go to the right schools and do the right things, and as a result they're basically shy people.
It's interesting that you find more shy people in individual sports even though the pressure is greater than in team sports. I've oriented some athletes away from team sports toward sports like golf and tennis and they have ended up being very good athletes. Their shyness didn't undermine their talent, but it made it difficult for them to feel comfortable and find success in a team environment.
I've always liked to look at Trait I. On one side you have tough-mindedness, self-reliance, and a realistic, no-nonsense approach to life. On the other side you have tender-mindedness, dependence, overprotection, and high sensitivity. This is where sometimes you may see the sales trait, the surface trait, because most people don't want you to think they're tender-minded. Most folks in a corporate environment, as in a sport environment, like to portray themselves as being more tough-minded, more self-reliant. But with more observation, you will eventually be able to see who has a more sensitive source trait.
If you are a leader in a corporate environment, you probably want people who are in the middle of the scale. You want people to be independent, but you also want them to be willing to be dependent in certain situations. In other words, you want them to be willing to ask for help from their colleagues or from the leader, so being in the middle is probably good.
If you're looking at a sport environment, you probably want people to be more toward the tough-minded side. This means they come to work every day, they are work-oriented and self-reliant; and if they know how to play the game, they play it hard and they play it well.
Trait L concerns being trusting versus suspicious. I think the interpretation of this trait has changed over the years. Years ago trusting people would be seen as being free of jealousies, easy to get along with, and pretty adaptable, and I think a lot of people still score highly on that trait. But the suspicious side of the trait, where people are self-opinionated and hard to fool, I think you're seeing more in young people. They're not afraid to ask leaders for reasons why they should do something. As a leader, when you ask somebody to do something in a corporate environment and they ask why, the wrong answer is: Because I'm the leader. The right answer is whatever reason that you're asking them to do a certain task. People deserve to know why they're being asked to do things, and in today's environment they seem to be much more willing to ask those questions.
Now, Trait M is practicality, being careful, conventional, and proper versus imaginative, which is being careless of practical matters. I've always thought that it's kind of exciting to have people who are both sides of this trait. Being practical is very good and it works in many cases, but imaginative people have creative skills that are also very appropriate in many corporate environments. So as a leader, you need to be appreciative of both.
Trait N is forthrightness, being natural and sentimental, versus shrewdness, which is being calculating and penetrating. I've always enjoyed dealing with forthright people. I think that many times if people are on the shrewd side of this trait they carry an air of secrecy that is not very helpful in a corporate environment.
Q1 is conservative, respecting established ideas, versus experimenting, which is critical, liberal, analytical, and free thinking. Like the practical–imaginative trait, I think it is very healthy to have experimenters on a corporate team in addition to having just enough conservative people to keep the balance right.
Q2 is group dependent, which includes people we might describe joiners or real sound followers, as opposed to self-sufficient, which means people who prefer their own decisions and being resourceful. Obviously it's good to be resourceful and to have confidence in the decisions you make, but at the same time, you need to be able to appreciate the greater good of the team as opposed to whatever personal advantage you might get by making a certain decision. So again, as a leader, this is one of those traits that are kind of interesting for keeping you on your toes, and you probably need a bit of both.
Q3 tracks a person's discipline and their threshold for self-conflict. I love this trait. On one end, you have people who are careless of protocol and follow their urges; on the other side you have people who are controlled, socially precise, and act in a way that upholds their self-image. Now, it depends on what your self-image might be, but I find in most definitions of personality that the other side of undisciplined self-conflict is strong self-discipline. It's very important in most corporate environments that you have some level of self-discipline. It doesn't have to be incredibly high. It needs to be high enough so you accept accountability and you make changes when necessary. So again, it's one of those traits that it might be interesting to have people from both sides of the scale on the same team.
Q4 is the person's level of relaxation, which is the state of being tranquil and not frustrated as opposed to tense, which means that you're frustrated and driven and overwrought many times. In sport, it's nice to have players who are in the middle on that trait. If you buy the idea that you're going to be the best performer if you approach every task at as high an emotional level as you can control, then if you're on the low side of the relaxation spectrum and you get very frustrated in performing a task, then at worst your attention or anxiety level may increase, but only to the middle range, which means you're still basically under control. However, if your source trait for levels of relaxation and attention are typically about 7 on the 10-point scale, and you get frustrated, then your anxiety level spikes to somewhere between 8 and 10, which means you're out of control. That's why it's nice to be at the middle or low end on that particular trait.
Now, what we try to do is take those 16 traits and come up with a standard score in what are called second-order traits, and those traits include leadership, independence, and anxiety level. Those are the kind of traits that we look at many times in a corporate environment—and in 40 years of using this test, I've never attempted to tell a corporate person that they should be a leader because they're high in the leadership trait on this inventory. As we said before, there are different types of leadership, that which is inherent and that which is assigned. There are any other number of ways that you can categorize leadership, but I've always thought that it's earned through performance. And when I say earned, I mean that you gain your teammates' respect through your performance. After you've gained that respect, then your personality plays a role in your leadership going forward.
The best leaders that I've ever been around were people who either didn't want to be leaders but were great performers, or those who performed well and let their leadership be determined by the way they played the game.
I think the same thing holds true in a corporate environment. Leadership is earned and once that respect is lost, it's virtually impossible to get it back unless you change environments because a level of suspicion develops in the work force. Your colleagues begin to wonder why you're making certain decisions or trying to get close to them when you just did something to lose their respect. And so it's virtually impossible to get leadership back once you've lost it.
Suffice it to say that personality plays a very important, even critical, role in leadership, but it needs to be approached in a very commonsense manner. I find it difficult to understand why people are evaluated more on personality than performance. That happens a lot in corporate environments and I don't think there's an excuse for it. I think if you hire people to do a job, then their performance should be based on whether or not they do the job.
You've got to realize when you hire people that they are who they are. You can't expect them to change. As I said before, the toughest change to make is a behavioral change. It takes a very long time even if change is successful. And most of the time, if a behavioral change is made, it's made in the surface traits. It doesn't flow down to the source traits. Once your blueprint for personality is developed, it's there. From that point on, you make decisions when you're growing up about whether or not to reveal particular traits to people. And some traits you keep in your pocket your whole life. You may be an eight on a certain trait, but you never show it because it's not appropriate in the environment in which you work.
As a leader in a corporate environment, when you have several people who look to you for leadership, you need to understand that everybody's different. When you try to assemble a group of people with the same personalities, it's not going to work most of the time. You need variety. You need people who are sometimes going to challenge you. And the only way you become a better leader is to understand that it's supposed to be challenging. How would you ever appreciate a good environment if you never had challenges and adversity? Look at personality as an important factor, as good knowledge to have, but don't look at personality as determining whether or not you're going to hire somebody. It just doesn't have a good end result.
Personality
Personality Traits Needed for Leadership
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Actions to Show Your Personality to Your Team
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