Practicing Leadership

CHAPTER 3

Leadership Traits and Attributes

Introduction

There is no doubt that extensive resources have been devoted to the search for “traits” and “attributes” of effective leaders, as well as characteristics of dysfunctional leaders. In fact, one of the earliest and most popular conceptions of leadership that flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, often referred to as the “great man” theory, assumed that certain individual characteristics, or “traits,” could be found in leaders but not in nonleaders and that those characteristics could not be developed but must be inherited.¹ Much of the work based on this theory was conducted under the umbrella of settling debates about whether leaders were “born or made” and, to the extent that ...