- Possessing certain personality traits can make it a lot more likely that you'll ascend to a leadership position in your company, your government, or your school.
- A meta-analysis of decades of leadership research examines how the so-called "Big Five" personality traits shape executive success.
- Of those traits — openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — extroversion had the strongest connection with becoming leaders.
- While extroverts may be more likely to rise to leadership roles, they're not always the most effective executives once they're there.
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If you want to become a better leader, it may help to cultivate certain personality traits.
A meta-analysis of decades of leadership literature points to a model known as the "Big Five," which maps personalities across the following traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Of those traits, psychologist Timothy A. Judge and colleagues found that extroversion had the strongest connection with individuals rising into leadership roles in business, politics, and academia.
In addition, Judge et al found that being agreeable had the weakest correlation with emerging leadership.
Even so, becoming a leader is only part of the equation. How you lead is just as important, if not more so, as research on introverts from professors Adam Grant and Susan Cain have demonstrated.
While you can freely interpret these findings for your own personality, it's not recommended that you apply them to others. Personality assessment is a highly specialized skill best done by trained professionals.
Here's what Judge's research found about the role of the "Big Five" personality traits with respect to leadership:
Extroversion was the strongest predictor of leadership emergence
Across leaderless situations in companies, governments, and schools, it's the extroverts who step up and take charge, but the trait is a better predictor of emergence than effectiveness.
What's more, when the study authors deconstructed extroversion into distinct parts, they found that dominance and sociability better predicted leadership than extroversion as a whole.
This makes sense, the study authors write, "as both sociable and dominant people are more likely to assert themselves in group situations."
Conscientiousness was the second strongest predictor of new leaders
A person's tendency to be organized and hard-working makes them more likely to rise to a leadership role.
"The organizing activities of conscientious individuals (e.g. note taking, facilitating processes) may allow such individuals to quickly emerge as leaders," the authors wrote.
Like extroversion, conscientiousness was more closely linked to leader emergence than to leadership effectiveness.
Openness to new experiences is as important as extroversion in business
A willingness to do new things was the third strongest predictor of leadership in general, but in business in particular openness was just as strongly linked to leadership as extroversion.
Highly neurotic people are not especially likely or unlikely to become leaders.
Neuroticism was not a strong predictor of leadership, meaning that obsessing like Steve Jobs over details won't necessarily lead you to the corner office.
Agreeableness was the 'least relevant' to leadership emergence
Agreeableness, or friendliness, is the least likely of all the traits studied to land you the top spot of an organization, but that doesn't give you license to be mean.
The authors write: "Because agreeable individuals tend to be passive and compliant, it makes sense they would be less likely to emerge as leaders."
When the researchers looked closely at leadership effectiveness, agreeableness was more strongly related. Being nice helps your team.
SEE ALSO: Science says these 2 personality traits predict whether you'll be a successful leader
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