Raymond Cattell, a Leading Pioneer

¶ … Raymond Cattell, a leading pioneer in the field of personality assessment, there are several traits which make up his Leadership Potential equation. He derived this equation based upon the study of military leaders, and it is still used today to determine an effective leader. Cattal's traits of an effective leader include the following attribubutes: (1) Emotional stability, (2) Dominance, (3) Enthusiasm, (4) Conscientiousness, (5) Social boldness, (6) Toughmindedness, (7) Self-assurance, and (8) Compulsiveness ("Traits of Successful Leaders," 2004). While the foregoing traits which comprise Cattell's Leadership Potential equation will undoubtedly help a manager in a position such as Bill Myers, recent research in the area of business leadership and management reveals that there are behaviors which one can practice regardless of the personality one possesses. Accordingly, recent research sets forth the notion that leadership is a process of guiding the behavior of others toward completing the organization's goals. The main goal of leadership is to see that things are completed and this task is done predominantly through communicating effectively with the staff (Business Encyclopedia).

In the case of Bill Myers, Bill has some of the characteristics noted as part of the Leadership Potential equation; however, he lacks others. Namely, he is certainly enthusiastic about his work. His enthusiasm as displayed toward his previous years of hard work and dedication is indeed, what led him to the leadership position in which he finds himself today. Likewise, Bill is certainly conscientious as he continually reflects over how he can do a better job and he has tried a variety of strategies in order to obtain his objective. Despite the difficulties he has faced, he has not given up. However, either on a situational or on a more permanent level, Bill is lacking many of the other qualities on Catrell's list such as emotional stability, dominance, social boldness, toughmindedness, and self-assurance. For instance, his emotional stability seems to have wavered while standing in the shoes of a middle manager and his ability to demonstrate dominance over others is further diminished by the fact that his crew consists of former friends. It is noted that he tried an authoritarian role; however, no one took him seriously and, in fact, they laughed him off. Perhaps, either they did not see him as genuinely dominant or perhaps, this personality trait needs to be coupled with another behavioral strategy. Bill has been put in an awkward position where he has gone from a peer to a position of authority and management. As such, he is not self-assured. He does not necessarily know how to best approach the new position; and, as a result of this wavering, he sends out mixed messages as one day he approaches his crew with empathy of understanding their roles from having done the job himself to berating them. In fact, when he berated his employees, he showed a lack of emotional stability which further undermined how the crew views him as a leader.

Does the fact that Bill lacks some of these traits either permanently or situationally mean that he lacks the competence as a leader? To some who ascribed solely to the personality theory of management, they would contend that he does not have what it takes intrinsically. However, fortunately for those born without the exact personality traits delineated above, recent research reveals that in leadership and management, there's more than just a personality-centered approach. In fact, successful leaders can be trained and they can develop the behaviors necessary to lead others into producing the behaviors that the leader and the organization would like to see.

Based upon the personality trait theory of leadership as noted by Cattell, one must have the disposition or the personality to lead; however, such an approach fails to take into consideration that an effective leader does not need to lead solely by personality, but by strategies to change and motivate the behavior of others. Presently, management theory asserts that leadership ability should not and cannot be solely explained by one's inherent personality traits; this is especially true because individuals, through training programs and education, can learn skills that foster effective leadership (Encyclopedia).

Modern research, indeed, expands effective leadership from possessing certain personality characteristics to possessing an understanding of how to behave in order to enlist a group to support your leadership requests. In order to do this, Morris and Upchurch developed certain behaviors which are critical to effective leadership practice: (1) understand and negotiate the right management contract, (2) be yourself, (3) listen, (4) refuse to gossip or speak negatively about others, (5)? be a role model, (6) rely on your ability to support, not on your ability to do, (7) give up the illusion of changing anyone except yourself, (8) blow your team's horn, not your own, (9) Focus on your team's strengths, (10) take charge of your own growth, (11) be patient, and (12) work on your emotional intelligence. As per Goldman, there are five parts to emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, social skills, self-development, and telling the truth (Morris & Upchurch, 2008).

Through a combination of these behaviors, a middle manager such as Bill Myers, can then use more than just personality traits to harness and lead his employees toward the accomplishment of the organization's overall goals. In Bill's case, he found out unfortunately while on the job, that his position truly was "middle" management as he did not have any authority to levy penalties or provide rewards for the employees; thus, all he had to rely upon was his own ability to motivate others. When the ability to motivate others is not working, oftentimes, the threat of or actual reprisal will work to provide change in employee behavior. Accordingly, Bill needs to renegotiate his role with management so that he has the ability to enforce his protocols or, at a minimum, so that there is some consequence to not following Bill's directions.

Throughout this transformation of roles, Bill has violated the "be yourself" rule to management. It is understandable since suddenly after years of being an employee, he is now promoted to the role of manager. It may, indeed, take some time for Bill to feel comfortable being himself in this role; however, since his crew truly knows him, they will sense when he is disingenuous and they will react negatively because he loses credibility. Furthermore, in his management, he totes his own horn of how good an employee he was and he has failed to focus on the merits of his team. While it is important to be competent, as a manager, it is more important to focus on team-building as opposed to focusing on how you, the manager, would do the job more effectively. Bill would be wise to shifting his angst into supportive behavior as opposed to behavior focused upon reprisal and hostility. Through reprisal in the form of negative outbursts, nothing positive will come of this because he cannot follow up with it through any type of enforcement. Thus, the employees just see him as emotionally unstable which negatively affects his credibility as well as demeaning to their sense of self-worth.

2. Bill encountered difficulties when first assuming the leadership role from the ranks of employees because as middle manager, he was placed in the proverbial situation of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. In terms of management theory, Paul Osterman conducted research into the role of the middle manager and concluded that for the most part, research on leadership pertains to upper level management. Thus, Osterman examined the middle manager's role and found that the job is very demanding because they are put in the position of implementing the organization's overall goals through actually working with the crews. His research revealed that much like Bill, middle managers care tremendously about their work, but despite their dedication, they encounter many struggles, especially when they obtain the middle management position from moving up the ranks of the organization and then must contend with stepping into a new role when everyone else sees them as an employee or a peer or a friend, not a manager (Osterman, 2009). Osterman points out that respect and recognition come to middle managers only grudgingly, if at all (2009). Indeed, this is the cornerstone of the issue faced by Bill Myers. He was simply not respected as a manager. His work crew respected him as a fellow employee; but, they did not see, accept or respect him when he assumed a new role.

According to Management Consultant Robert Tanner and author of Why Smart People Fail at Management, there are three critical things that a first level manager in a difficult position must do to achieve success in his new position: (1) the first level manager who is promoted to a middle manager must realize that the skills that brought him success in his former role are less critical at this higher level, (2) through education and mentorship, he must develop his interpersonal and conceptual skills which are more critical to his success, and (3) the middle manager must embrace 360 degree feedback or, in other words, feedback from his crew as well as feedback from his own supervisors (Tanner, 2010). In Bill's case, while he was very enthusiastic, he seems to be relying on his work ethic to help him through the role of manager. While work ethic is definitely helpful, a successful manager needs more than just to be able to work hard, he needs to be able to work "smarter"; namely, he needs to understand that without involving others in his management and effective intrapersonal skills, he will not be effective regardless of how hard he works. Furthermore, Bill needs to avail himself of a basic educational foundation in how to be a leader. We now know that leadership skills can be enhanced and developed; they are not necessarily innate to all. Moreover, he needs to develop a new relationship with his crew and effectively listen as well as communicate with them. Thus far, either fear or intimidation or lack of respect or lack of self-assuredness or total and complete frustration seems to have interfered with effective communication. Until he builds a rapport and a managerial relationship with his crew, he will continue to work harder, not smarter and he will continue to lose the respect of his employees.

3. With a little foresight and education regarding his choices of sources of power, Bill can map out how to strategically approach his goal to become more than a boss, but an effective leader.

According to Rowe's studies in leadership development, she asserts that even though one might occupy a position as a manager, supervisor, leader, and that position might give you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization (aka, "assigned leadership"), this assigned power does not magically transform you make you a leader. Rather, it simply makes you that person's boss (Rowe, 2007). Ross makes the critical distinction that leadership differs from being the boss in that leadership makes the followers want to achieve high goals (aka, "emergent leadership"), rather than simply bossing people around (Rowe, 2007). To this point, Bill has really just relied upon his past as an employee and his new position or assigned leadership to propel him into a position where the employees actually acted upon his suggestions. To date, he has not developed the skills or the credibility necessary to turn assigned leadership into emergent leadership.

In order to develop into a leader, Bill should look into models of leadership such as the Managerial Leadership Grid which was developed by Blake and Mouton in 1985, wherein there are two axis: (1) "concern for people" axis along the vertical axis; and, (2) "concern for task or results" axis along the horizontal axis of the grid. In this managerial framework, Blake and Mouton found that most people fall somewhere between the middle of the two axes in a place called middle of the road. Sometimes, however, people score on the far end of the scales. There are four types of leaders that emerge: (1) authoritarian leader who is strong on tasks, weak on people skills, (2) country club leader who is strong on people skills, weak on tasks, (3) impoverished leader who is weak on tasks and strong on people skills, and (4) a team leader who is strong on tasks and strong on people skills. The goal of effective leadership is to lie at least in the middle of the road range or, optimally, in the team leader area of the grid (Blake & Mouton, 1985).

In examining Bill's situation, he is definitely strong on the tasks portion of this job as he has performed them for years; however he is weak in his people skills as noted in his outbursts and failure to build interpersonal skills and obtain real feedback from his employees. Thus, Bill lies in the authoritarian portion of the grid and, in order to move to the team range, he needs to obtain guidance, education, and/or mentorship in team-building and, moreover, effectively communication skills in the workplace. As it stands, he has not begun a real dialogue or feedback or connectivity actions between his employees on the level as manager. By doing this, he will also move from a place of merely having "assigned leadership" to the level of "emergent leadership" wherein his employees are motivated to complete tasks based upon his direction.

Furthermore, according to the "total leadership" model, the basis of effective leadership consists of possessing and demonstrating honorable character and selfless service to your organization. Thus, according to this model, "In your employees' eyes, your leadership is everything you do that effects the organization's objectives and their well-being" (U.S. Army, 1983). Respected leaders therefore concentrate on three critical things: (1) what they are [be] (such as beliefs and character); (2) what they know (such as job, tasks, and human nature); and, (3) what they do (such as implementing, motivating, and giving direction). In short, this model may be summarized as the "Be, Know, Do" model of leadership (U.S. Army, 1983).