Which personality traits make a leader?

What does the research say about personality and leadership?

Leadership has been studied against personality for most of a century, and for much of it the answers did not add up, because every research group used its own list of traits. The five dimensions now used to organise the evidence came out of decades of work on the words people use to describe one another, and survived repeated attempts to replace them (Goldberg, 1993). Recoded into that framework, the older studies made a pattern.

The summary most people are reaching for is a review that pooled 222 correlations from 73 samples (Judge et al., 2002).

• Extraversion was the strongest and most consistent correlate, at r = .31, across settings and across both emerging as a leader and being an effective one.
• Conscientiousness came next, at .28. Planning and follow-through are not what the word leadership conjures, and they sit close behind it.
• Openness to Experience related at .24, and Neuroticism at -.24, so more emotionally stable people tended to be rated higher.
• Agreeableness was close to zero, at .08, the one dimension this evidence does not support as a leadership predictor.
• The four relations other than Agreeableness generalised, with more than 90 percent of the individual correlations pointing the same way.
• Together the five had a multiple correlation of .48 with leadership, substantial for personality research and still leaving most of the variation to everything else.

What does a correlation of .31 mean for one person?

Almost nothing, and that is the honest answer. A correlation is a statement about a crowd. Line a large group up by how extraverted they are, then line the same people up by how much they lead, and at .31 the two orderings resemble each other loosely. Plenty of people sit high on one and low on the other.

Put it as a bet. Pick an outgoing person and a quiet person at random, wager that the outgoing one carries more leadership responsibility, and you would win more often than you lose. You would also lose often. Traits do predict outcomes such as occupational attainment about as well as socioeconomic background or measured ability does (Roberts et al., 2007), which makes them worth knowing and well short of prophecy.

Is emerging as a leader the same as leading well?

No, and the distinction does more work here than any single number. Emergence is who ends up in charge: who a group turns to, who is promoted, who is rated as leadership material. Effectiveness is what happens next: whether the unit performs, whether people stay, whether the work gets finished.

The review pooled both criteria, and Extraversion was the most consistent correlate across both (Judge et al., 2002). Hold that carefully. Mixing emergence with effectiveness means the pooled figure cannot settle what people most want settled, which is whether extraverts actually run things better. Being noticed and being useful are different achievements, and a group can reward the first long before it evaluates the second.

How does each dimension relate to leadership?

The corrected correlations, with what each trait tends to contribute. The third column is description, not a finding.

One qualification belongs with the Extraversion row. A separate meta-analysis of job performance found Extraversion a valid predictor for managers and sales staff rather than for occupations in general (Barrick & Mount, 1991).

How much do assertiveness and social boldness matter?

Extraversion is not one thing. Underneath it sit narrower tendencies, two of which carry most of what people mean by a natural leader.

• Assertiveness is the willingness to state a position, ask for something, take a decision and hold a line under disagreement. Direction rather than volume.
• Social boldness is comfort under attention: speaking to a room, approaching someone senior, being watched while you work something out. Exposure rather than direction.
• They come apart. Someone can be at ease on a stage and reluctant to make a call, or immovable about a decision while hating a microphone.

The meta-analysis worked at the level of the five broad dimensions, so it cannot say which facet carries the link (Judge et al., 2002). It says only that the dimension containing both tendencies is the one most consistently tied to leadership. If you want to build the capacity rather than measure it, the facets are the better handle: asking for a decision in a meeting is a practisable behaviour, and being more extraverted is not.

Can introverts be good leaders?

Yes, and the size of the correlation is the reason to expect it. At .31, Extraversion leaves most of the variation in who leads unaccounted for (Judge et al., 2002). A moderate correlation is a slope in a loose cloud of points, and a cloud that loose holds many quiet people running teams and departments.

Two of the other correlates are open to people who do not find groups energising. Conscientiousness at .28 and Openness at .24 are not far behind, and neither requires being the loudest person present. What a lower Extraversion score predicts fairly is that the visible parts of the job cost you more energy. That is a scheduling problem, not a verdict: front-load the exposed work, and think before the room rather than in it.

What can you do with your own trait profile?

• Lead from the trait you have. Conscientiousness at .28 sits close behind Extraversion at .31 (Judge et al., 2002), and predicts job performance across nearly every occupational group (Barrick & Mount, 1991). A leader who is always prepared is not a consolation prize.
• Supply the structure your profile does not give you free. If speaking up in the moment is hard, send the position round before the meeting. If finishing is hard, put the deadline where other people see it. Behaviour is what gets rated, and behaviour responds to arrangements.
• Separate being seen from being useful. The evidence mixes emergence with effectiveness, so work on both and track them apart. Ask one colleague what the team needed from you last quarter, and another whether they knew you did it.

How does Wellington report this?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot is 60 questions and about 7 minutes. It scores 6 dimensions, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience, Honesty-Humility, returning a percentile and a written page for each, so every trait in the table above is covered. The first ten questions are answered before anything is asked of you; after question ten you sign in with an email so answers are saved and results can be shown. There is no card.

The Wellington Membership, $4.99 a month, adds the Portrait, 336 questions in 4 chapters, to reach 90 traits: every facet beneath the six dimensions, with assertiveness and social boldness scored separately, and all 24 VIA character strengths, one of which is leadership as a character strength. A domain score says Extraversion is high; the facets say whether that is comfort in a crowd, a readiness to decide, or both. It then continues toward all 255 traits across eight domains. Each trait is the average of several statements on a five-point accuracy scale, reported as a percentile against the reference sample, in one of three bands: Quiet below the 30th, Balanced to the 70th, High above. The bands and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. Norms are provisional until the norming sample is complete, and the methodology shows how the writing works.

Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. It is not built for hiring, selection or promotion, and should not be used to assess anyone but yourself. You can export or delete your data at any time.

Questions people ask

Which personality trait is most linked to leadership?

Extraversion. In a review of 222 correlations from 73 samples it was the strongest and most consistent correlate of leadership, at r = .31, across settings and across both emerging as a leader and being effective (Judge et al., 2002). Conscientiousness followed at .28, Openness at .24.

Can an introvert be a good leader?

Yes. The Extraversion link is moderate rather than decisive, so most of the difference in who leads is explained by other things (Judge et al., 2002). Conscientiousness and Openness are nearly as strongly related, and neither depends on enjoying crowds. A quieter profile mainly predicts that the visible parts of the job cost more energy.

Is Agreeableness bad for leadership?

The evidence does not say that. It says Agreeableness correlated .08 with leadership, close to zero and the weakest of the five (Judge et al., 2002). A near-zero correlation means the trait neither helped nor hurt on the criteria these studies used, and warmth may still matter for outcomes they did not measure.

Can a personality test tell me whether I am leadership material?

No. The correlations are averages across thousands of people, far too loose to sort one person into a category. A trait profile is useful for working out which parts of a leadership role cost you effort and which come cheaply. That is a preparation question, not a verdict.