LEADERSHIP

Leadership is all about influence and inspiring others to achieve a common

goal. The dearth of genuine leadership is a challenge faced by corporations

and nations. True leadership is service to mankind, it is not about you but

about others. The traits of leadership can only arise from the fact that the

leader is willing and determined to guide and steer people to a common

purpose or goal. In our lifetime we all come across leadership whether in our

place of work, community or in different scenarios of life. A man’s character

depicts his personality and in essence we can say that individual personality

is not far from the traits of leadership exhibited by a leader. Personality

predicts leadership, who we are, is how we lead (Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.,

2005). A personality that exhibits integrity would always be a leader that

followers can rely on, and on the other hand a personality with a lack of

integrity would definitely be a leader who cannot be relied upon. In fact some

would say that without integrity there is no true leadership, but is this truly the

case?. Ideally a person cannot give what he does not have and in my opinion

the style of leadership depends to a large extent on an individuals’

personality.

In the course of life we have all experienced different styles of leadership and

this is as a result of the different personalities assuming the position of

leadership. One then begins to wonder about the popular debate on whether

leaders are born or made. Secondly, based on the notion that who we are is

how we lead, can this also mean that leadership effectiveness can be
determined from individual personality. These are major leadership questions

researched over the years by management scholars.

Jane Nnogo, 2010

Reference

Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2005) ‘What we know about leadership’, Review of

General Psychology 9 (2), pp. 169–180