What we know about Leadership

Abstract

This article reviews the empirical literature on personality, leadership, and organizational effectiveness to make 3 major points. First, leadership is a real and vastly consequential phenomenon, perhaps the single most important issue in the human sciences. Second, leadership is about the performance of teams, groups, and organizations. Good leadership promotes effective team and group performance, which in turn enhances the well-being of the incumbents; bad leadership degrades the quality of life for everyone associated with it. Third, personality predicts leadership—who we are is how we lead—and this information can be used to select future leaders or improve the performance of current incumbents.

Constraining free riding in public goods games: designated solitary punishers can sustain human cooperation

“…There may be compensatory benefits for acting as a leader. Some individuals more readily fulfil this role than others based on heritable differences in personality (Hogan et al 1994). In human societies, leaders acquire status and prestige ( Van Vugt 2006), which may translate into increased reproductive success (Henrich & Gil-White 2001;Fieder et al 2005).…”

Narcissistic CEOs and executive compensation

“…To reconcile the positive and negative aspects of narcissistic leadership, researchers have distinguished what is referred to as the "bright side" and "dark side" of personality (e.g., Campbell et al, 2011;Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). In focusing on the positive attributes, researchers have noted that many successful leaders can be characterized by high self-esteem, internal locus of control, self-efficacy, and having control over one's emotions.…”

Employee Maintenance: Examining Employment Relationships from the Perspective of Managerial Leaders

“…Both Machiavellianism and psychopathy have been meta-analytically linked to decreased performance (O'Boyle et al, 2012), and narcissism, too, has been linked to poor performance when performance dimensions are interpersonal in nature (Blair, Hoffman, & Helland, 2008;see Campbell et al, 2011, for a review). Yet, research with narcissists suggests that they are unable to learn from their mistakes (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005) and are unlikely to be receptive to negative feedback. The inability of narcissists to learn from negative feedback may be attributed to their tendency to blame others and unwillingness to hold themselves accountable for their own actions (Campbell et al, 2000;Campbell & Sedkikes, 1999).…”