Bad Personality Traits Create Good Leaders
I just read an article about the so-called bad personality traits being useful when it comes to leadership development. The article was on CNN.com in October of 2010. In the article it described the study of 900 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point during their second, third, and fourth year. The study found that several of the bad personality traits, such as narcissism, being overly dramatic, being critical of others, and being extremely focused with complying with the rules, actually helped with various aspects of leadership development. Studies have shown that the good personality traits have a positive impact on leadership development, but this was the first study to examine the bad personality traits. The study’s authors say that the results may be unique to the military and that more studies need to be performed in order to really understand the role of these personality traits in the workplace. I think that it will apply to more industries other than just the military. In the business world, a leader has to have a narcissistic sort of personality, to an extent. That individual has to feel that they are the best, or at least among the best, in order to feel confident about their work and their leadership abilities. If a person has no level of narcissism in their personality, then their confidence in their abilities will suffer. This will create a leader with no “backbone” so to speak. They won’t have the confidence to stand up against adversity and believe that they can succeed. Obviously, there is such a thing as too much narcissism and this would also create a bad leader. Also, being critical of others is a necessary personality trait in a successful leader. Again, this is needed to an extent. A leader has to be able to critique his/her subordinates in order to make sure that they are performing to the level that they are able. Once again, too much criticism is not a good thing. If a leader is too critical, the subordinates will feel that they are being treated unfairly and that the leader is micromanaging. This article shows that certain personality traits are necessary to create good leaders but that too much of a good thing is not a good thing.
Posted by: David Ashbeck
Their can always are spectrum when it comes to different behaviors and like you mentioned depending on which end of the spectrum you operate on it can have relatively positive or negative results. So there has to be some type of balance(the middle of the spectrum). Like in chapter 7 how we discussed that they is good stress and bad stress. Although people generally associate stress as a negative thing you need some stress(at the proper level) for your body to function properly. Figure 7.4 on page 154 of our text gives a great example of this.
ReplyDeleteQuasheena Ellis