Personality traits in leadership behavior

Correlational analyses of the personality traits measured by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) and three leadership styles, that is, Change, Production, and Employee (CPE) measured by Ekvall and Arvonen's (1991) CPE questionnaire, were performed. The sample was 106 Norwegian leaders. Three common factors comprising leadership styles and personality domains were interpreted as "looking for new possibilities," "hard working," and "dealing with people." Considering personality traits as behavior tendencies in unspecified situational contexts and leadership styles as behavioral tendencies in the leadership context, and due to the self-report nature of the data, it is argued that the factors show consistency in self-perceptions independent of context. The strongest predictors of the CPE total score were Conscientiousness and Extraversion; Openness and Agreeableness were specific predictors of Change and Employee, respectively.