Leadership And Traits

7 Pages 1819 Words

hundred years, dozens of leadership theories emerged. Of these, one of the most intensely studied perspectives was traits and their correlation with leadership.
Ralph Stogdill studied 124 traits in people in an effort to determine what traits differentiate leaders and nonleaders. The study spanned most of the first half of the twentieth century. In 1948 Stogdill concluded, “A person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits.” He determined that the traits varied by situation, and that no one trait could be found responsible for effectiveness. This revelation caused researchers to explore new theories of leadership.
In the early fifties, John Flanagan introduced his “Critical Incident Technique”. This study combines critical incident methods used by trait researchers with behavioral research. Flanagan used an interview method to obtain “an in-depth analytical description of an intact cultural scene.” Subordinates, peers, and the boss, were interviewed and asked to describe effective and ineffective leader behavior. He theorized that leaders exhibit certain behaviors in a given environment. This proved to be true, however, the behaviors found were inconsistent from one study to the next. The report relied on employees’ opinion about what good leadership is, and a vague collective recollection of incidents that were sometimes biased. Beca...