Confucianism, Personality Traits, and Effective Leaders in Japan and the United States

Personality and Leadership One of the original and enduring theories of leadership is trait theory. This approach emphasizes attributes of leaders such as personality, motives, values, and skills. The assumption underlying this approach is that some people are natural leaders who are endowed with certain traits not possessed by other people (Yukl, 2002). Although considerable research has focused on behaviors and situational constraints, there are a number of personal attributes that are expected in good leaders. For instance, Lord, Foti, and De Vader (1984) identified 59 leader and 26 nonleader attributes. The 59 attributes (e.g., intelligent, honest) were strongly correlated with leader prototypicality ratings. The 26 nonleader traits (e.g., Blue Collar, Coordinated) were negatively correlated with leader attributes. Following this study, Lord, De Vader, and Alliger (1986) reexamined how personality traits were related to the perception of leadership. In a meta-analysis they found that intelligence, masculinityfemininity, and dominance were significantly related to leadership perceptions. Leaders were perceived to be more intelligent, more masculine and more dominant than non-leaders. The Lord et al. (1986) meta analysis was conducted prior to the widely accepted Big Five Personality Factor taxonomy of extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability and openness to experience. With the ascension of the Big Five typology in psychology, leadership researchers have since investigated the relevance of the Big Five to leader prototypicality and effectiveness. Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt (2002) used the five-factor personality model as a framework to estimate relationships between personality and leadership. In addition, using two criteria— leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness (Lord et al., 1986)—Judge et al. (2002) estimated personality-leadership relationships. Their findings that most of Big-Five traits were significantly related to both leadership criteria (except for agreeableness and leadership emergence, which did not significantly correlate) suggest that the Big Five typology is useful to examine the dispositional predictors of leadership. Specifically, extraversion and conscientiousness were most strongly correlated to leadership emergence. After these traits, openness was the next strongest correlation to leadership emergence. Concerning leadership effectiveness, extraversion, openness, and neuroticism were strongly correlated to this leadership criterion. Agreeableness and conscientiousness were more variable and did not show high correlations to leadership effectiveness. Judge et al.’s meta analysis demonstrated that personality and the Big Five in particular are relevant to understanding perceptions of leadership. Nevertheless, the samples have been drawn predominantly from American samples. Considering the pervasiveness of the global economy, we suggest that assessing the relevance of the Big Five cross culturally is also important. Among the strongest economies of this global economy are nations of the Pacific Rim—China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. To appreciate fully the cultures of these nations requires a consideration of Confucian ideology.