Personality predictors of leadership styles and the self–other agreement problem

Abstract

Whereas it has been acknowledged that personality plays an important role in leader emergence and effectiveness, most studies have shown weak relations between personality and leadership styles. In this study, it is argued that one of the reasons for this lack of association may lie in the low level of self–other agreement among leaders and subordinates. In this study both leader- and subordinate ratings of leader personality and leadership styles are employed to inspect the relations between HEXACO Honesty–Humility, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness on the one hand and Ethical, Charismatic, Supportive, and Task-oriented leadership on the other. Using an instrumental variable procedure, strong direct effects of Honesty–Humility on Ethical leadership, Extraversion on Charismatic leadership, Agreeableness on Supportive leadership, and Conscientiousness on Task-oriented leadership were observed. The results imply that the relatively weak relations between personality and leadership styles in previous studies are mainly due to relatively low levels of self–other agreement.