Lilienfeld, S. O., Waldman, I. D., Landfield, K., Watts, A. L., Rubenzer, S., & Faschingbauer, T.
R. (2012). Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(3), 489-505
The main gist of this journal article is that there is a growing assessment that traits commonly associated with psychopathic personalities and tendencies are not "maladaptive" in all instances. Indeed, they assert that such leadership trains can be useful when applied to certain leadership positions and that this has already happened in more than one situation and more than one way. A study was done to explore this phenomenon and whether this theory has any truth to it. The sample for this study was 121 raters that came from a wider population of experts that specialize in leadership personality traits. They assessed the 42 presidents up to and including George W. Bush. The results were a mixed bag. There were some correlations but there were some theories that were clearly or at least somewhat disproven. An example would be that Presidents with general disinhibition and externalizing properties were not associated with poor Presidential performance. However, one of the measures used (FFM-1A) was positively associated with Presidents that ended up getting impeached. One strong takeaway statement that can be gleaned from this study is that the people doing the study were clear in their assertion that they are not associating psychopathic traits positively with the Presidency and/or that our past Presidents could or should be classified in the same way.
Van Eeden, R., Cilliers, F., & van Deventer, V. (2008). Leadership styles and associated personality traits: Support for the conceptualization of transactional and transformational leadership. South African Journal of Psychology, 38(2), 253-267.
This study looked at the personality traits associated with certain leadership...
The abstract notes that they also included laissez-faire patterns as well. A study was done of a group of managers. The study looked at the traits they exhibited and which styles they tended to emulate. Two clear patterns emerged. One trend were managers that blended transactional and transformational styles while the other trend were managers that did a little of everything when it came to management styles. The former of those two were extremely non-passive in terms of how they behaved. The sample was a group of managers from the population of managers in the South African production sector. The feel and scope of their behaviors was measured through carefully crafted questionnaires. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Form 5X (MLQ 5X), the Occupational Personality Questionnaire 32 (OPQ32) and the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, SA 1992 Version (16PF, SA92) were the instruments used as part of the study. As partially noted above, all of the managers used the transactional leadership style at some point while laissez-faire was used rarely if ever by each manager. A major takeaway from this report is that transformational leadership is especially good to use because of the resilience and self-confidence that is employed when it is in use.
Odom, S. F., Boyd, B. L., & Williams, J. (2012). Impact of Personal Growth Projects on Leadership Identity Development. Journal of Leadership Education, 11(1), 49-63.
As indicated by the title, this article focuses on leadership identity development and how personal growth projects can impact the same. These personal growth projects (PGP's) were assessed in this study using the "lens" of the Leadership Identity Model as enumerated and described by the work of Komives in his 2005 work on the subject. One part of this study was a literature review and conceptual framework description. The population and sample for the primary research in this study was gone…
