Early trait theory and height in presidential elections

Trait Theory

The central premise in the argument that leaders tend to be taller than followers is based on a logical fallacy concerning the nature of trait theory and leadership in general. Leadership theory focuses on what makes leaders effective, not the characteristics that put people into a leadership position in the first place. This essay will break down the argument for trait theory, why trait theory fell out of favor and why the point about leaders' height is irrelevant to the entire argument.

Trait theory is based on the assumptions that people are born with inherent traits, and that many of those traits are suited to leadership -- those who make good leaders are those with the right combination of traits in the right amount (ChangingMinds.org, 2011). In general, trait theory was based on personality traits as opposed to physical -- adaptability, assertiveness, decisiveness, self-confident, tolerant of stress, intelligence and creativity to name a few (Ibid). These traits were derived primarily in observational studies of successful leaders. Unsuccessful leaders were generally not studied during the heyday of trait theory.

Trait theory became eclipsed as a major leadership theory with the emergence of behavioral theories. These theories were similar, but focused on the behaviors exhibited by leaders (outputs) rather than the underlying traits of the leaders (inputs). Over time, it became apparent that leadership is something that can be exhibited in a wide range of situations, and successful leaders can take different forms (Doyle & Smith, 2009). Contingency theory emerged as the role of context became better understood, and as society began to accept a wider range of leadership styles beyond the traditional industrial/military archetypes that dominated in the early 20th century. By the 1970s, it became apparent that effective leaders were successful largely because they adapted their style to fit the situation -- and leaders who were effective under some circumstances could not be counted on to be effective in other circumstances. An example of this would be the visionary leadership needed to transform an entity vs. The leadership needed to drive complex micro-actions that sustain the entity. Consider the relative effectiveness of Lech Walesa or Nelson Mandela in the transformation process (very high) with their effectiveness as a transactional leader in the post-transformation period (moderate). As with trait theory, behavior theory and contingency theory both focused on what made leaders successful.

What was never a part of leadership theory is the concept of how people become leaders, especially in politics. Followers may well be attracted to height, but being voted into a leadership position is not the same thing as being a successful leader. There is no shortage of unsuccessful elected officials. Further, height was never considered by the early trait theorists, so there is little if any documentation to back up any theory about height being correlated with leadership success. There are tenuous connections that can be drawn between, say, height and confidence (Case & Paxson, 2008) or other such traits that were considered important, but evidence appears to be anecdotal and riddled with exceptions. These exceptions were the reason that trait theory fell out of favor -- it was simply a poor way to describe effective leadership. There are hundreds of traits that could be found in successful leaders, the definition of effective leaders is ill-defined and it is difficult to order the traits in terms of their importance (no author, 2011).

Ultimately, the appeal of trait theory is that it is intellectually lazy. By cherry-picking examples, setting one's own definitions and relying on anecdotal evidence, one can make an argument for trait theory easily. Such arguments, however, are weak. A strong argument for trait theory would need to set firm definitions of leadership success. It would then need to develop a concise determination of traits and be backed by rigorous statistical analysis using a significant sample size including both successful and unsuccessful leaders. Even with that, the selection of leaders in a popularity contest such as an election is an inherently poor method of measuring leadership success. It assumes a priori that elected officials are successful, a spurious assumption at best; and it assumes that the electorate is a good judge of leadership effectiveness, an even more spurious assumption. While the electorate my subconsciously believe that height is important in a leader, that they subconsciously act on that belief does not validate the idea.