Early Approaches to Leadership
The Trait Approach to Leadership
The trait approach to leadership is based on early leadership research that assumed a good leader is born, not made. Primarily, this research attempted to describe successful leaders as precisely as possible. The reasoning was that if a complete profile of the traits of a successful leader could be drawn, it would be fairly easy to identify the individuals who should and should not be placed in leadership positions.7
Many of the early studies that attempted to summarize the traits of successful leaders were documented. One of these summaries concluded that successful leaders tend to possess the following characteristics:8
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Intelligence, including judgment and verbal ability
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