Understanding Leadership
The question of what makes an effective leader has been a heavily debated one in research and in business. Does it stem from one's inherent capacity to be able to lead and encourage others to achieve their best? Or is it a learned behavior that everyone can potentially achieve?
According to Yukl (2013) leadership is “the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to understand and influence the people, to realize what is to be done and how and to realize the shared objectives.” Effective leaders have the ability to create the vision of the organization, to ensure that the employees are directed on this vision, and show their commitment to the organization.
But what makes an effective leader?
While research is and will continue to be ongoing, as good leadership is a multidimensional construct, there is a common consensus that it all ends up in being the one who can successfully assemble other people who will collaboratively work to achieve desirable ends in a wide variety of circumstances. A substantial part of research has examined leadership through the lens of individual characteristics. Considering this micro-view of effective leadership ability, research has found specific innate characteristics of individuals which can reliably differentiate successful leaders from other individuals.
How Bryq Measures Leadership Effectiveness
Using well-established associations between effective leadership and personality dimensions as conceptualized by the 16PF model, Bryq has created the Leadership Effectiveness Indicator. By using this Indicator you would be able to assess whether a candidate is likely to be an effective leader.
Do note that like all personality questions, this will cover most common scenarios, but there will always be exceptions that confirm the rule.
Leadership Interview Questions:
A few interview questions that will be helpful for you during your interview.
What are the most important values you demonstrate as a leader? The most favorable answer is for the candidate to provide examples of trust/integrity.
How have you gained commitment from your team? With this question, you are seeking the type of management style.
How can a leader fail? Give an example of that. Nobody is perfect. Here, you want the candidate to provide an example of a failure and to ensure that this was a lesson learned.
What is your greatest strength? This question is a good way to probe if the leader is inspirational, influential, and strives to achieve goals.
How do you lead through change? The answer should be positive in reacting to change and embracing the transition.
What was the hardest decision you have taken as a leader? What helped you to prompt the best course of action?
References:
Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Bass, B. M. (2000). The future of leadership in learning organizations. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 7, 18-40.
Bass, B. M.& Avolio, B. (1994). Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bono, J. E. & Judge, T. A. (2004). Personality and transformational leadership and transactional leadership: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 901-910.
Chan, K. Y., Uy, M. A., Chernyshenko, O. S., Ho, M. H. R., & Sam, Y. L. (2015). Personality and entrepreneurial, professional and leadership motivations. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 161–166.
Crant, J. M.& Bateman, T. S. (2000). Charismatic leadership viewed from above: The impact of proactive personality. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 63-75.
Giberson, T.R., Resick, C. J., & Dickson, M. W. (2005). Embedding leader characteristics: an examination of homogeneity of personality and values in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1002-1010.
Felfe, J. &Schyns, B. (2006). Personality and the perception of transformational leadership: The impact of extraversion, neuroticism, personal need for structure and occupational self-efficacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 3, 708-739.
Foster, C. & Roche, F. (2014). Integrating trait and ability EI in predicting transformational leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 35, 316-334.
Hogan, R., Curphy, G. J., & Hogan, J. (1994). What we know about leadership: Effectiveness and personality. American psychologist, 49(6), 493.
Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780.
Lounsbury, J. W., Sundstrom, E. D., Gibson, L. W., Loveland, J. M., & Drost, A. W. (2016). Core personality traits of managers. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31, 434-450.
Sonmez Cakir, F., & Adiguzel, Z. (2020). Analysis of leader effectiveness in organization and knowledge sharing behavior on employees and organization. Sage Open, 10(1), 2158244020914634.
Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in organizations (Global ed.). Essex: Pearson.