Topic 2:

LEADERSHIP TRAITS AND SKILLS

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 Objectives
At the end of this topic, students should be able to:
1. Define a trait
2. Identify personality traits for effective leadership
3. Determine the skills for effective leadership
4. Discover the competencies for effective leadership
5. Describe situational relevance of skills

Assessment: Role play, Report

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 What is a Trait?

Trait refers to a variety of individual

attributes, including aspects of personality,
temperament, needs, and values.

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 Traits for Effective Leadership

1. High energy level and stress tolerance

2. Internal locus of control orientation
3. Emotional maturity
4. Personal integrity
5. Socialized power motivation
6. Moderately high achievement orientation
7. Moderately high self-confidence
8. Moderately low need for affiliation

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 High Energy Level and Stress Tolerance

• People with high energy level and stress tolerance can

cope with the hectic pace, long hours, unrelenting
demands of jobs, and stressful interpersonal situations,
such as a troubled subordinate, an uncooperative peer,
or a hostile client.
• Hence, leader who are energetic and able to manage
their stress are capable to remain calm, focus, make
better decision and provide decisive directions especially
during crisis.
Exercise (stress test):
https://www.psychologistworld.com/stress/stress-test

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 Internal Locus of Control

• People with a strong internal locus of control orientation (aka

Internals) believe that events in their lives are determined
more by their own actions than by chance or uncontrollable
forces.
• Leaders who are internals take more responsibility for their
own actions, confident in their ability, and learn from set-
backs.
• Hence, the leaders have more future-oriented perspective,
more likely to proactively plan, and more flexible, adaptive,
and innovative which can be beneficial to organizations’
performance.

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 Emotional Maturity
• A person who is emotionally mature is well adjusted and does not
suffer from severe psychological disorders.
• Leaders who have high emotional maturity have higher level of
cognitive moral development, and able to maintain more cooperative
relationships with subordinates, peers, and superiors because of their
self-awareness, self-control, less self-centered, and less defensive.

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 Personal Integrity
• Integrity means that a leader’s behavior is consistent with espoused values,
articulated repeatedly to followers.
• Integrity leaders are honest, keeping promises, responsible, and keeping confidence.
• Integrity leaders is perceived to be trustworthy, and able to retain the loyalty of
followers or to obtain cooperation and support from peers and superiors.

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Exercise In-Class

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 Socialized Power Motivation
• Someone with a high need for power enjoys influencing people and events.
• Leaders with strong need for socialized power actively influencing others to build
up the organization and exercise power for the benefit of others such as to
organize and direct group activities, negotiate favorable agreements, lobby for
necessary resources, advocate and promote desirable changes, and to impose
necessary discipline.
• Because of their orientation toward building organizational commitment, this
kind of leader is more likely to use a participative, coaching style of behavior, and
is less likely to be coercive and autocratic.

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 Moderately High Achievement Orientation
• Leaders with achievement orientation is motivated to seek opportunities
involving challenging and risk objectives, concern with performance, willing to
take the initiative to identify problems and to assume responsibility for solving
them.
• But, a leader need to have moderately high level of achievement orientation. A
very strong achievement orientation is not proper because the leader will focus
on his or her own individual achievement and advancement rather than toward
the achievements of the team or work unit headed by the leader.

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 Moderately High Self-Confidence
• Leaders have moderately high confidence in attempting difficult tasks, setting
challenging objectives, taking more initiative to solve problems, and introducing
desirable changes.
• They are more decisive in crisis and decision-making.
• Their optimism and persistence in efforts to accomplish a task and solve
problems are likely to increase commitment by subordinates, peers, and
superiors to support the effort.
• Excessive self-confidence may make a leader overly optimistic about the likely
success of a risky venture, and it may result in rash decisions and denial of
evidence that a plan is flawed.

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 Moderately Low Need for Affiliation
• People with a strong need for affiliation receive great satisfaction from being liked
and accepted by others, and they enjoy working with people who are friendly and
cooperative.
• A leader should not be too high or too low in the need for affiliation. If too high,
the leader may concern too much on harmonious relationships, avoid unpopular
decisions, and show favoritism. If too low, the leader may have rigid and cold
relationship with followers, which prevent effective discussion and team working.

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Skills for Effective Leadership

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 Technical Skills

• Supervise the work of others need extensive knowledge of

the techniques and equipment used by subordinates to
perform the work
• Deal with disruptions in the work due to equipment
breakdowns, quality defects, accidents, insufficient materials,
and coordination problems
• New product developments

Requires leaders to have

technical skills

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 Interpersonal Skills
• Develop and maintain cooperative relationships with subordinates,
superiors, peers, and outsiders.
• understand another person’s motives, values, and emotions
• understand what types of behavior are socially acceptable in a
particular situation
• Influencing others
• use cues from others to understand one’s own behavior and how it
affects other people

Requires leaders to have

interpersonal skills

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 Conceptual Skills
• Planning, organizing, and problem solving
• Understand how the various parts of the organization relate
to each other and how changes in one part of the system
affect the other parts
• Analyze events and perceive trends, anticipate changes, and
recognize opportunities and potential problems

Requires leaders to have

conceptual skills

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Competencies for Effective Leadership

Emotional Intelligence
Combination of
specific skills and Social Intelligence
complementary
traits
Learning Ability

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Emotional Intelligence

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 Social intelligence is defined as the ability to determine the
requirements for leadership in a particular situation and select
an appropriate response.
Social Intelligence

Social Behavioural
Perceptiveness Flexibility
A leader with high social A leader with high behavioral
perceptiveness understands flexibility knows how to use a
what needs to be done to variety of different behaviors
make a group or organization and is able to evaluate his or her
more effective and how to do behavior and modify it as
it. needed.

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Learning Ability

• Leaders must be flexible enough to learn from mistakes,

change their assumptions and beliefs, and refine their
mental models.
• Involves self-awareness, which is an understanding of
your own strengths and limitations (including both skills
and emotions)

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 Situational Relevance Skills
• Leaders need many types of skills to fulfill their role requirements, but the
relative importance of the various skills depends on the leadership situation:

Managerial Nature of
Types of
External
Level Organization
Environment

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Skills and Managerial Level
The higher the level, the lesser the
technical skill and the more
conceptual skill needed.

Human skills are especially needed for

those who have a lot of interaction with
the top and lower level people. Other
skills are equally important.

The lower the level, the more the

technical skill and the lesser
conceptual skill needed.

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Types of Organization

• Different organizations may operate in different industries.

• The requirements for technical skill may differ especially for
specialized technical knowledge and skills. Lower-level
managers cannot easily transfer to a different functional
specialty (e.g., from sales manager to engineering manager),
because the technical skills needed at this level of
management are so different across functions.

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 • Organizations evolve and must adapt to a changing environment Leaders
Nature of External

need a mix of skills for effective leadership, and these skills may change
as the situation changes.
Environment

• The skills needed to lead an organization with a stable, supportive

environment are not identical to the skills needed to lead an
organization facing a turbulent, competitive environment.
• As the pace of globalization, technological development, and social
change continues to increase, competencies such as cognitive
complexity, empathy, self-awareness, cultural sensitivity, behavioral
flexibility, systems thinking, and the ability to learn from experience and
adapt to change also must be strengthen.

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 Further Readings
1. https://live-
sagecompanion.gotpantheon.com/sites/default/files/02_TraitLeade
rship.pdf
2. https://www.iedp.com/articles/why-learning-agility-is-key-to-
leadership-success/

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 Watch

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjvSLwaze5I
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8iTtDaGkY
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zSVu76AX3I

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 Listen
1. https://www.npr.org/2011/08/25/139948703/how-steve-jobs-ran-
apple

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 Activities

• Puzzle 1: Leadership Traits

• Discussion “Michael Jordan 'Maybe It's My Fault' Commercial”

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End of Topic 2

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